For this, the brain needs the concept of “Tree” and what trees can do, such as fall in a forest. This concept can come from prior experience with trees, or from learning about trees in a book, or from another person’s description. Without the concept, there is no crashing timber, only the meaningless noise of experiential blindness. A sound, therefore, is not an event that is detected in the world. It is an experience constructed when the world interacts with a body that detects changes in air pressure, and a brain that can make those changes meaningful.1 Without a perceiver there is no sound,
...more
