In my journals I have page after page of large and small ideas, research ideas, notes to myself, and occasionally share them. Here’s one from today.
– The philosopher’s puzzle of whether a tree that falls in the woods makes a sound, posits that someone walking in the woods discovers a fallen tree, and wonders whether it had made “a sound” when it fell. It presents it as a general question about unanswerable questions.
Endless discussions on subjects like that still consume philosophical discussions. What they seem to miss is whether it matters, whether what we can conclude about a lack of information makes any difference. It can, but it might also be only a difference in what we know, and in how we observe it.