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The answer is a counter-question: 'What is noise?' If you reply, as you probably would, the sounds
picked up by our ears, then the answer is indubitably 'yes'. For you do not literally have to be on site
to witness the event for it to be a definite event of a definable classit would do to have a tape
recorder as a proxy witness; and if other creatures are present, such as wolves or birds, the answer
would still be yes.
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The answer would, however still be 'yes' in another theoretical situation which is probably what was at
the back of your mind when you asked the question — which, by the way, is a very ancient standby in
the philosophy of mind and perception. Over the centuries, thinkers have responded variously,
depending on their conception of the nature of perception, some going to the extreme of claiming that
only a human is capable of identifying or interpreting such a noise, therefore it would not be, if
humans became extinct. These and similar claims do not, however, meet the requirements of the
case. For in saying that the answer must still be 'yes', I am asserting something about 'priority', i.e.
what comes first? Necessarily the noise must come first, for the aerial molecular energy involved in
the fall of the tree is a fact of the environment which organisms learn about, adapt to and eventually
respond to. In other words, the pre-existence of the noise is responsible for the evolution of ears.
Plainly then, to maintain the opposite opinion, requires of the holder of such a belief to explain what
function ears are intended to fulfil. I would suggest, moreover, that this 'fact' is misplaced in mind
theories; the perception of falling-tree-noise has no ontological component worth mentioning, nor is it
implicated in any significant way in the theory of the mind. Falling-tree-noise is just a plain sensation
and verifiable by probably several hundred thousands species on earth which do not possess a mind.
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