[lit-ideas] Re: Bishop Berkeley -- and Popper

I  haven't been able to find a passage in which Hume addresses this 
question, but surely Berkeley would have stopped it in its tracks by 
pointing out  that if there were no one around there would be no tree 
(and maybe no  forest), so that a fortiori there would be no  sound.

_____
from "An Essay Concerning Clear Cutting"

Since the trees are made of wood and so possess no abstract reasoning 
about quantity or number or no experimental reasoning about matters of 
fact and existence, they can be safely clear-cut and sold to Japanese 
cabinet makers.

Knowledge of cause and effect is not a priori, but experiential, so if 
you have heard one tree fall, you've heard 'em all, or at least you can 
infer the sound.

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