Sound and Nihilism

[Thumpalumpacus]

Which brings us to sound.  If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?  The answer is no.  It creates vibrations.  What makes sound is our eardrums converting the vibrations into whatever we hear in our head.  I'm not sure of the physiological details, and I don't think they are important.  The key being vibrations exist, and our noggins convert those vibrations into the sound we hear.

Woods have animals living in them. Those animals have ears. Their brains also convert vibrations to sounds.

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Your idea of meaning won't exist in terms of your brain when you're dead, but it's effects on your actions will affect others. This may alter their idea of meaning, and so on.

Unless you lived in total isolation of course.

I'm not following your point.  You're trying to say my meaning lives on?  That's clearly false.  As my meaning only exists in my brain.  It is not floating about in reality.

It is easily transmitted by words, such that I have influenced my son's sense of meaning in the world and have in one sense imparted the meaning in my brain onto him. Even if he doesn't agree with me about meaning, that he understands it means that he at least has an accurate model of my "meaning circuit" (pardon the inelegant phrase) in his head.