New edgy thread

I have never seen that apparent conunrum as anything more that an issue with defining terms.

If, before you pose the question, you tell me what you mean by sound, then the question asnswers itself.

If - for example - you define sound as a vibration of the air falling on your ears and then being electrochemically (through nerve impulses) translated into the abstract we call sound in our brains, then of course if there is no one there then there is no sound.

If- on the other hand - you define sound as the dissipation of pressure waves through a medium such as water or air - then regradless of whether there is anyone there the dissipation of pressure waves through air happens, thus sound (as defined) happens.

The question is not a profundity, it is sophistry and equivocation, it is a trick question that relies on the equivocation of the word 'sound'.

Berkeley would say that the dissipation of pressure waves through an independent medium is just a hypothesis that you arrive at by abstracting from the only things you truly know, which are the things you know directly through sense perception, which is the sound as you hear it, the noise 'inside your head' so to speak.