A question for the ages. If a tree fell in the woods and no one heard it

[Midlodemocrat]

would MrCoffee switch to tea? :shrug:

[MrCoffee]

1. The sea will boil, the sky will catch fire, the sun will grow cold and dark

and yet, in spite of it all, there will, at the very least, be a jar of Taster's Choice lying around somewhere.

[Midlodemocrat]

3. Why do you hate International Coffee? It's delicious.

:cry:

[XemaSab]

6. Dogs and cats living together...

Mass hysteria. :o

[flvegan]

2. MrCoffee work a teabag?

I dunno...

[MrCoffee]

4. I'm not even gonna say it, Trebek.

Ask your mother.

[Midlodemocrat]

5. Ooh, the mother references. This will get good.

:popcorn:

[flvegan]

7. His mother gets it good quite a bit, actually.

[Midlodemocrat]

10. .

:rofl:

[Fran Kubelik]

8. I thought this was going to be another post about

wood carving.

[flvegan]

9. Ruh roh

:popcorn:

[Chan790]

11. Hume's answer is still the same...

Empirically, if there are no witnesses to the tree falling, it can't be proven to exist and we cannot know that it fell. We can only infer that it fell. Objects are defined by sensory experience of them and do not exist unsensed, inference is thus as useless to the empiricist as untestable hypotheses are the scientist.

That's what Hume as seeking, a more-scientific approach to epistemology, a rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics and Cartesian logical-inference. That which cannot be sensed doesn't exist in his philosophy, that which has not occurred cannot be inferred. Ironically, it undermines the very scientific-approach he seeks to attain as it makes hypothesizing any future result impossible. We can't infer that that sun will rise tomorrow because it rose today, yesterday and for 10,000 years.

To answer the posed question...if there are no witnesses, the tree didn't fall and Mr. Coffee would have no impetus to switch to tea.