Scientific Question

Quote: Jufo81

However the alien race who have eyes in place of ears and vice versa would disagree that the word 'sound' is correct here.

I occasionally get told that there will be deaf guests at events where I DJ. In those cases, I turn up the bass. They still can't hear it, but they can feel it.


Whether it is heard or not, the sound is there.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

I occasionally get told that there will be deaf guests at events where I DJ. In those cases, I turn up the bass. They still can't hear it, but they can feel it.


Whether it is heard or not, the sound is there.

Blimey.

Ok. Say I see poosmells at the burrito shop tomorrow and decide to punch him in the head for the grief he's caused me. But when I arrive, he has already left and is not there. Does he still feel pain? No, he does not. For while the energy of my punch is there, his neurotransmitters are not. There is nothing to process the energy of my punch, it remains only as kinetic energy. Kintetic energy itself is not a feeling, it is the cause of feeling. Without reception, there cannot be a feeling.

What the deaf guests are sensing is low frequency mechanical radiant energy by way of touch. They FEEL the energy. As they have not the processing ability of hearing, they hear nothing. There is no sound for them. There IS sound, in your example, because you and the other guests CAN receive and process the energy. But if every single person there was deaf, I'd argue that there was no sound whatsoever. MRE, the cause of sound, would be there, but sound would not as Sound Is a Perception.

Perception - the result of perceiving
Perceive - to become aware of through the senses.

If the sense is not there, there cannot be a result of being aware through the senses.
If there is no hearing, there cannot be a sound.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

I occasionally get told that there will be deaf guests at events where I DJ. In those cases, I turn up the bass. They still can't hear it, but they can feel it.


Whether it is heard or not, the sound is there.

That example exposes the flaw in the "you have to hear it for it to be sound" definition". Technically, wind is also mechanical energy propagating through air (and propagating the air itself), so if you asked the question

"If the wind blows in the forest and nobody is around to feel it, is it still windy?"

then the tautology becomes obvious.

Quote: Face

What the deaf guests are sensing is low frequency mechanical radiant energy by way of touch. They FEEL the energy. As they have not the processing ability of hearing, they hear nothing. There is no sound for them. There IS sound, in your example, because you and the other guests CAN receive and process the energy. But if every single person there was deaf, I'd argue that there was no sound whatsoever. MRE, the cause of sound, would be there, but sound would not as Sound Is a Perception.

Perception - the result of perceiving
Perceive - to become aware of through the senses.

If the sense is not there, there cannot be a result of being aware through the senses.
If there is no hearing, there cannot be a sound.

I still maintain that your definition is inconsistent with the commonly-held understanding of what "sensory perception" is about.

Which of the following are perceptions that do not exist without being perceived?

a) Light
b) Sound
c) Heat
d) Pressure

Unless you answer "all of them", you're faced with reconciling a definitional inconsistency.

Quote: MathExtremist

I still maintain that your definition is inconsistent with the commonly-held understanding of what "sensory perception" is about.

Which of the following are perceptions that do not exist without being perceived?

a) Light
b) Sound
c) Heat
d) Pressure

Unless you answer "all of them", you're faced with reconciling a definitional inconsistency.

OK, let me take a breath and settle down.

In a previous post I referenced Doc and another post. This is were I tried to explain where I was coming from and the explanation of my belief on this topic. In an everyday, general, real life "commonly held understanding" way, yes, a tree falling makes a sound, a bathroom with a light on is lit, fire is hot, swamp gas stinks and Mountain Dew is delicious. All of these go without saying.

But, technically speaking from a view that I don't know the name of, are these things REALLY true? Light is electromagnetic energy. Electromagnetic energy comes in a wide array of wavelengths from radio to gamma. If I had a flashlight that emitted radio waves and shined it in a room, would the room be bright? No, we cannot perceive radio waves visually so the room would only be bombarded with radio frequency electromagnetic energy. Crank up the wavelength to visible light. This light is shone into the room, but now nobody's there. Is the room bright? I would still say no because there's a piece missing, there's no receptor; it would only be flooded with visual frequency electromagnetic energy.

Same goes for taste. My can of Dew has a number of chemical properties, all of which cause a reaction on my taste buds that get processed by my brain into deliciousness. Without the tongue and brain, my can of Dew is simply a solution of chemicals that will CAUSE taste, but are not taste themselves.

Extend this way of thinking onto any of the senses and this is where I'm coming from. Does a sharp pin cause pain? Yup. But what of someone who has broken their neck, does it still cause pain? With no sensory perception, pain (sench of feel/touch) cannot exist. Is the sun bright? Yup. How 'bout to a blind man? He cannot perceive, therefore there is no bright (sight). Does a tree falling make a sound? Sure does. But if there's nothing to hear it.......

Quote: Face

OK, let me take a breath and settle down.

In a previous post I referenced Doc and another post. This is were I tried to explain where I was coming from and the explanation of my belief on this topic. In an everyday, general, real life "commonly held understanding" way, yes, a tree falling makes a sound, a bathroom with a light on is lit, fire is hot, swamp gas stinks and Mountain Dew is delicious. All of these go without saying.

I disagree. I think Mountain Dew is unpleasant. But I digress...

The specific words that you picked are very explicitly sensory perceptions. Brightness, for example, refers to the intensity of light *relative to the retina*. The light from a flashlight at 1 meter is brighter than the light from the same flashlight at 10 meters, not because the light emitted from the flashlight has changed, but because less of it reaches my retina. The same is true of pain: pain is a neurochemical reaction involving the excitation of certain neurons. If those neurons aren't excited, there is no pain. A bullet flying through the air does not cause pain unless it impacts a creature and excites those neurons. It doesn't make any sense to suggest that the bullet wasn't fired unless it hurts someone.

You are classifying the word "sound" in the same way. In other words, you are defining "sound" as "auditory perception" and then arguing that "if a tree falls in the forest but there is no auditory perception of that event, then there is no auditory perception of that event." That's circular.

It is telling that you did not argue, for example, that there is no light in the bathroom when the light is on but nobody's in there. That's because by any sense of the word, "light" is a thing that exists independent of any observation thereof. So does heat, and so does sound.

To use yet another example, suppose you're sitting in front of a roaring fireplace at a ski lodge on a chilly winter's evening. You see the light, hear the sound, and feel the heat of the fire. If you were blind, you would still hear the sound and feel the heat, but you would not see the light. Your perception of light (sight) is gone, but the light itself still reflects off your body and the other items in the room. The light is still there and can be measured, even if it is not perceived by you. There cannot be any dispute about that, I hope.

The same would be true if you had a bizarre physical ailment such that your thermoreceptors (the nerves that sense heat) were inoperative. You would see the light and hear the sound of the fire, but not feel the heat. But the heat energy is still there and can be measured, even if it is not perceived by you. Again, I trust there is no dispute on that.

Similarly, if you were deaf and sitting in front of the same roaring fire, you would see the light and feel the heat but not hear the sound. As above, the sound can be measured even if you do not perceive it.

Light is electromagnetic energy, not the perception of electromagnetic energy -- that perception is called "sight". Similarly, sound is mechanical energy, not the perception of mechanical energy -- that perception is called "hearing". If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, it makes a sound but that sound is not heard.

Quote: Face

Blimey.

Ok. Say I see poosmells at the burrito shop tomorrow and decide to punch him in the head for the grief he's caused me. But when I arrive, he has already left and is not there. Does he still feel pain? No, he does not. For while the energy of my punch is there, his neurotransmitters are not. There is nothing to process the energy of my punch, it remains only as kinetic energy. Kintetic energy itself is not a feeling, it is the cause of feeling. Without reception, there cannot be a feeling.

So what your saying is, if i see face fishing in a creek somehwhere and kiss him on the cheek, if he is not there his cheek will not get wet.

Quote: Face

Extend this way of thinking onto any of the senses and this is where I'm coming from. Does a sharp pin cause pain? Yup. But what of someone who has broken their neck, does it still cause pain? With no sensory perception, pain (sench of feel/touch) cannot exist. Is the sun bright? Yup. How 'bout to a blind man? He cannot perceive, therefore there is no bright (sight). Does a tree falling make a sound? Sure does. But if there's nothing to hear it.......

Than it makes a sound that no one hears...

ME, I am glad you have participated in this. Even though you disagree, you seem to understand the point I'm at least trying to make, and that helps. I thank you, sir.

Anyways...

My post previous to this was hurried, and I didn't post quite to the degree of specification I would have liked. Using "pain" and "bright" wasn't true to my own point. My mistake. But without rehashing past posts, let's move to your fire example. I don't disagree with any of what you wrote, let me say that right out front. Whether it's the heat, light or sound from a fire, light from a bathroom, or the booming crash of a tree in the woods, they all realease types of energy that exist and can be measured, without a doubt. Perhaps the problem arises from me believing in an incorrect definition of the word "sound". I'm looking at this as though sight, smell, feel, taste and sound are senses. I look at senses as being the result of the process of stimuli. By that thinking, without something to process the stimuli, there cannot be a sense. Even if you feel this is incorrect, this makes sense, right?

That's what I was arguing. Believing sound wasn't MRE but the result of MRE being processed, there could not be a sound without a processor. The ingredients are there; there's a tree to put energy out, there's air to transmit it, but without an ear to process it, there couldn't be a sound. To make a bad analogy, there's milk, flour, eggs and sugar in my kitchen, do I have a cake in my kitchen? If I don't have an oven to process the ingredients, then no, I do not. Your final sentence, I think, may have finally made the gong go off in my head. Basically, light is to sight what sound is to hearing. If there can be light without sight, there must be sound without hearing. I think that about sums it up nicely.

BUT...the definition of sound: 2 - "the sensation produced by the sense of hearing".

Half credit, at least? =)

(P.S. kind of unfair using fire, as nothing I know of exists at 0*K, making it impossible for something to exist without heat regardless of being able to sense or measure it =p)

Half-credit, perhaps, but the M-W dictionary also says:

Definition of LIGHT
1
a : something that makes vision possible
b : the sensation aroused by stimulation of the visual receptors
c : electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that travels in a vacuum with a speed of about 186,281 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second; specifically : such radiation that is visible to the human eye

The point is not whether your definition was correct or not; the point is that, in order to know *which* definition to use, you should pick an interpretation that is consistent with how you would interpret analogous terms. Senses *are* the result of the process of stimuli; the question is whether "sound" is a sense, or whether "hearing" is a sense. I think, using those terms, "hearing" is the sense and "sound" is the stimulus.

And bonus points for the fire piece -- the way humans sense heat is with thermoreceptors which primarily detect changes in temperature. That's why if you go from a cold room to a hot room, you notice it right away, but if you gradually increase the temperature you have to really be paying attention to catch it consciously. But it sort of re-emphasizes the point: heat is indeed always there, but it's only detectable by humans under certain circumstances.