What if a tree fell in the woods but . . .
1 . . . nobody heard.
Could you really say that a tree had fallen?
2 . . . one man heard
and was struck by the falling tree and died on the spot.
While the man was alive, could you say that a tree had fallen, but after
he was killed, that a tree had never fallen?
3 . . . one man heard,
then was struck by the falling tree and fell into a deep unconscious coma,
only to awaken six months later with a full memory of the tree falling.
While the man was in a coma, could you say that no tree had fallen, but
after he regained his memory, could you say that a tree had fallen?
4 . . . one man heard,
then was struck by the falling tree and fell into a deep unconscious coma
from which he has not yet recovered.
Could you say that no tree has fallen, but that if the man recovers, a
tree will have fallen?
5 . . . though no-one
heard it, the sound was recorded by a minidisc recorder and sent on
a T1 dedicated line up to iTunes. Unfortunately a couple
bytes at the start of the digital sequence were scrambled so a million
people downloading it to their iPods heard only random noise. It is unlikely that
the data will ever be recovered and made intelligible unless a highly
skilled person does a lot of work on it, and even then she will have
to be lucky as well.
Could you say . . . anything?
6 . . . nobody knows
if anyone heard it fall or not.
Is it possible that the tree may have fallen?
7 . . . the person who
claims to have heard it fall is notoriously unreliable.
Must you then deny that it has fallen?
8 . . . nobody heard it
fall. However, someone heard a different tree fall and mistook it for the
first.
Could you say that a tree had fallen, though you would be mistaken?