Edward Donkersloot
PHI3882 – Paper #1(Re-make)
Does anything render statements about the past true, apart from the evidence that exists in the present?
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make any sound? This is a popular philosophical dilemma that many have struggled in the past trying to answer. When observed the falling tree makes a lot of noise, especially at the moment of hitting the ground. If we then, found a fallen tree in the forest we could with extreme confidence assume that the tree made noise when it fell, even if we don’t have any evidence but I remember, and I quote my chemistry professor who always repeated with great wisdom “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.
The tree did make noise when it fell, we can tell this from previous observation. Even if no one heard the tree falling, how do we know if it did any noise then? Is it possible that it fell silently? Experience tells us that this is not probably the case, if we had experienced a falling tree before we would probably remember the sound, or at least heard stories from others that have experienced such event; of course, here we are assuming that the unobserved world behaves the same way as the observed world (when, of course, observation doesn’t affects outcome). If we ignore theories that the unobserved world functions differently than the observed world we then can use previous observation as concluding evidence. It may be possible that not all trees fall in the same way, to the same direction or at the same speed, we couldn’t use previous observation as an irrefutable evidence for determining these, but it is certain that all falling trees make some kind of noise and in this particular case previous ...