The sound of a lonely tree falling

Dear Matthew Alice: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Some say yes. Some say no. What is behind the question? — R.A. Denbow, San Ysidro

Behind the falling tree is a bunch of dueling philosophers. Philosophy, after all, is the clever art of making a living arguing issues the rest of us don’t care about. (But on the positive side, philosophers don’t get hit up for free advice at cocktail parties.) If each of us had to fret over questions like “What is reality?” before we got up every morning, our resumes would be considerably shorter.

The falling-tree dilemma is less a yes or no question than a debating point that challenges the logic of Irish-born 18th-century, philosopher George Berkeley (though the question is not traceable to any one philosopher or teacher). To reduce George’s years of contemplation to a single sound bite, he was fond of arguing that the material world does not exist. (Critics were fond of gaping at George, pointing their index fingers at their temples, and moving them in little circular motions.) Esse et percipi, to be is to be perceived, continued George. Nothing exists in itself; all knowledge of matter comes through our sensory perceptions, and those perceptions are entirely in our minds, not in the objects themselves. But since things undoubtedly remain in the world even when we haven’t seen them for a while, some “omnipresent, eternal mind” must be perceiving them. For Berkeley, that mind was God’s. All in all, I’d rather know if I answer a question and there’s no one there to read it, am I out of a job?