New edgy thread

My point is that Berkeley has a serious reason for defining sound in that way for his purposes, and that makes it not just a matter of definition. He's interested in how we get from the things that are available to sense experience to things that aren't, and he is genuinely concerned about that. It's not as if it is in any way part of common sense to define 'sound' as anything other than something dependent on our senses.

Agreed, and I see what you are saying, but science doesn't deal with commonsense, it that reasonable ?

Without drifting too far down some philosophical backwater, when it comes back to the pseudo profundity of "if a tree falls and no one is there - does it make a sound" - from what I can see Berkeley (who is probably a racist) would answer 'no' - and he would give this answer on the foundation of his definition of sound (as you outlined above) - so I still maintain that the question "if a tree falls and no one is there - does it make a sound" is a matter of definition and not a puzzling philosophical conundrum, mere semantic trickery - that is not to take anything away from what this fella' Berkeley puts forward.

And pedantry or no pedantry, the claim that the sound we hear is caused by the dissipation of pressure waves is a hypothesis and not a theory worthy of the name.

Get out of here !? :)

I haven't looked it up (out of laziness) but surely the idea that sound propagates though a medium is well established as a theory and not still languishing as a hypothesis !! Surely !