I find the question, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?", to be very interesting. The reason why no one hears any sound of the tree, for example, is because no one has any knowledge of the tree falling.
This strikes me as peculiar. Isn't it true that by making the very statement, "If a tree falls in the woods--" we are imparting knowledge of a tree falling in the woods to anyone who hears the statement? It's no guess that anyone hearing that statement can imagine themselves next to a falling tree in the woods, and imagine themselves hearing a loud "CRAAACK!".
But the trick is the second part of the statement, which says, "and if no one is around to hear it." This always struck me as strange. Why? Because, technically, there is somone who is around to hear it: The two people discussing the question. It is already established that a tree has fallen in the woods among the speakers discussing the question. Knowledge of a tree falling has reached human minds. How can you then possibly follow up with, "And no one is around to hear it?"?
It may be the truth that for the question to be valid, it can not be brought up into the minds of humans. That would be the only way we can insure that no knowledge of a tree falling in the woods has reached human "ears", so to speak. And of course, do we then hear the sounds of the tree falling? The answer, surprisingly, is that we don't hear the sound of the tree falling.
It would seem that there are an infinite number of things that we could experience but are not able to at this moment, and as a result, do we consistently try to imagine or see if we experience all those possible things at once? We would be here till the heat death of the universe to try and do that. And while it makes sense that if a tree did just fall int he forest, it would make a sound, It is much more practical to assume that because we have not heard the sound of a tree falling, no tree has actually fallen.
After all, if we went about our business trying to pin down all the things that are happening when we aren't around to experience them, we'd go insane, I think.
What do you guys think? :detective:
(p.s. I love that smiley.)