Some Easy Answers

Three questions that are commonly thought of as profound 'philosophical' puzzles are actually easily resolvable. 1. 'If a tree falls in the forest, but there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?'--The definition of a 'sound' is the effect of certain waves on a receptor, so if there is nobody there, then there is no sound. 'A recording device?'--There is no sound until someone plays it back, etc. 2. 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?'--Some theories of Time are linear and finite, which means that there are things that came before other things. But other theories have Time as eternal recurrence, which means that nothing came before anything else. In other words, that is a loaded question. 3. 'Is the glass half empty, or, half full?'--To someone who is thirsty, the important question concerns the content of the glass. But beyond that, the glass is plainly both half full and half empty, the lesson of which is something like, 'Appreciate what you have, but don't get complacent.' Instead, an example of a serious Philosophical question, perhaps the fundamental one, is what Aristotle called the problem of 'the One and the Many', e. g. 'Why is there both something and many things?' All theories, Religious, Secular, East, West, at bottom tackle this theme in one form or another, and the way that they do so is the essence of the differences between them.