Though experiments are important.

Does a falling tree make a noise?I am having trouble follownig pro's arguments, as they appear to change and contradict from the first post to the second. First, pro seems to admit that trees make sound when they fall ("These sound waves, or vibrations, don't make noise untill they are picked up by a perciever") but disagrees that they make a noise upon having defined noise as sound that is "picked up by a perceiver". In the second argument, pro then seems to disagree that trees make sound at all, even though they do emit sound waves. This seems to be to be trying to redefine "sound". One can no more decouple sound from sound waves than saying something emits electromagnetic radiation but not light. One is simply the quantification of the other and can be used interchangably.Continuing this, I feel like con is attempting to construct a trivial argument. For example, if we take the stated 'prerequisite of perception' to classify noise - something which I have shown is not consistent with how the term is normally defined - and take pro's second sentence of Round 2, we can expand out the word noise and replace it with its definition: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, it does not make a noise" becomes "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, no one hears the sound it makes." This is a sentence without any information content and tells the reader nothing. Whilst the expanded sentence is trivially true, this does not concern me as I have shown pro's useage of the word "noise" to be incorrect.Pro also takes issue with my use of the word "can", and says this does not imply it will [make noise]. However, having provided both video evidence and a quantatative study showing the noises produced by falling trees, I feel that I have definitely shown that falling trees do, in general, produce noise when they fall. Perhaps if we took a small tree, and covered the surrounding area with foam mattresses, it may not produce noise ("loud sound"), but this scenario is obviously not the context of discussion.Given my arguments, I believe pro's only possible refutation would be to demonstrate that the laws of physics are contingent on our continual observation, as it follows only from the laws of physics that a large mass such as a tree toppling to the ground would produce noise.The train switchI would argue that Kantian ethics would lead one to flipping the switch. The categorical imperative - to value people in and of themselves rather as means to an end - is the precise reason why one would flick the switch - those people have value individually. And whilst the other person too has value in and of himself, one would have to argue his value is greater than that of the others for a Kantian ethicist to not flip the switch - in my opinion (ethics is difficult to debate, being so subjective).Pro then makes an emotive argument against my use of utilitarian and consequentialist ethics. It is true that by changing the scenario, pro has made the scenario more traumatic and creates a far greater sense of personal responsibility. This however, does nothing to address the reasons why flicking the train switch would be morally right in those frameworks. For pro to refute that argument, she must show that the utility or consequence (respectively) of flicking the switch must negative, not simply try and make the scenario so emotionally traumatic people do not want to pick it.Pro also asserts that "with consequentialism, anything at all can be justified. Imagine the very worst possible action, and consequentialism can find a way to justify it". This seems to me to be a completely unsupported claim, and is easily disprovable. For example, if I honestly believed that flicking the train switch would a better outcome than leaving it, it is morally right to flick it. The only way to justify not flicking it is to convince yourself that the outcome would not be better. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument in question. Pure and simply, if, a consequentialist believes flicking the switch produces a better outcome, they are morally obligated by their framework to flick it, and - in their mind at the very least - doing so was morally right.The chicken before the eggThank you to pro, both for the argument compliment and the pun. I missed it the first time I read your response.As to drawing the line of speciations, the chickens alive when it was drawn were not the first chickens (as species is a biological term, not a contingent legal term), they were simply the first to be labelled chickens.