If there were no noise, would the idea of silence occur to us?

Question

Paulred: true, the very idea of sound would not occur to us. As to the lack of it, we are constantly in that lack; only, will there be awareness of that lack, or is there any way by which that awareness may come about? Forget about words: in the absence of its opposite, is a quality or condition perceptible? This is the idea.

Answer 1

nope.  just like if clothing were not a concept, would we care that we are naked?

Answer 2

If by noise you mean sound then I believe the idea of silence would occur to us. If you have ever been close to large speaker at a nightclub you will have experienced the vibrations emanating from it.

We would all be effectively deaf but we could see ripples from a stone dropped into a pond and could eventually figure out that the same might happen in air. Therefore when that is not happened then it would be silence.

Answer 3

no we would have no ears either

Answer 4

it would to me. then i would ask why is there silence and/or am i dead? =P

Answer 5

Not really because we have never experienced noise. Therefore, you are used to it.

Answer 6

if there was no noise then it would be silent all the time  

Answer 7

Hmmm.....would anything occur to us without exposure to it first.  How do you describe colour to a blind person??

Answer 8

The simple answer, that several have already given, is that if there was no sound there would be no such thing as silence.

BUT in your question you said 'noise', not 'sound'.  And I wonder if you really meant noise.  Noise and sound are two completely different things!  Noise is extraneous sound, sound that interferes with the sound we're trying to listen to.  If that didn't exist, of course we'd still have sound, and we'd still have silence.

Answer 9

Yes, but it would be like the idea of the edge of the universe.

Answer 10

No. Sound wouldn't occur to us either.  

Answer 11

not in the way we perceive it now,

but possibly in a different way yes...

if sound could travel through space and the noise of the sun was so deafening that we communicated trough little antenay on our heads silence might be not moving these antenay,

if you catch my drift

Answer 12

If there were no noise, the idea of silence would be all that we have. I'm sure the idea of noise would occur to someone at some point, but would we really know what it is? Why would we call it noise?

Answer 13

Have you thought about the absence of floffam?  No.  Do you know why?  Because you don't possess the ability to perceive floffam when floffam occurs, so the absence of floffam doesn't occur to you.

###EDIT###

I don't agree with your response.  How do you know floffam doesn't already exist if you are not equipped to detect it?

Answer 14

Look at a blind dog, does he howl and bark because he can't hear anything? Look at bacteria, do you see them flipping out because they can't? Nope. If there was no noise, then we would simply not even think or know about it. When your born without something that no one else has, then it doesn't exist.

Answer 15

I think to answer that we need to understand the term "noise".  If there is any audible sound at all I think our awareness of that would lead to wonder what it would be like without it.

I would like to rephrase the question; If there were no sound, would the idea of silence occur to us?

Answer 16

If there were NEVER any noise, there would be no concept of silence.

You can only have something, to recognize its loss.

Answer 17

If you took a healthy child at birth and somehow isolated he or she from sound or even a child with a birth defect that caused him to be deaf and also isolated or kept him from becoming aware that others around him could hear he would be aware there is something missing although he probably wouldn't know exactly what. This is true because sound and hearing are part of the human experience and have been since the beginning and therefor ingrained in our "communal" knowledge or instincts.  On the other hand if no human since the start of time ever experienced sound it would be no more missed than a rainstorm is to deep sea dwellers

Answer 18

Not really, because if we never knew sound, then it would be impossible to distinguish it from silence.

Answer 19

In life, there is MORE silence than noise. When mankind discovered noise,  he used it to fill the gaps between regular routine noises and his vast emptiness.

People naturally fear silence.  Fearful people therefore like to surround themselves with noise.

Noise can occasionally be called music. They come through headphones,  car speakers, microphones, PA systems,  and cellphones.

When one hears no noise, one is forced to listen to the voice of one's soul.

Answer 20

no.

silence=absence of noise

and even if we lived in silence, we wouldn't know it was silence because we'd never need to distinguish it from noise...

Answer 21

would the concept of sound even occur to us? never mind the lack of it...

Answer 22

i don't believe so. Silence would not have occured if we didn't have noise. Because silence would have been normal with no noise.

Answer 23

I honestly don't know, because unless you have been in that situation then you would not know how your mind would work without sound. If there were only sound and no silence, I think that we would imagine the idea of silence because it would be an absence of a thing we know, but I don't think that the idea of something completely unknown would occur to us. We wouldn't be able to make sound, because then there wouldn't be silence, so sound would not even be a concept.

Silence is simply the absence of sound. Dark is the absence of light, numbness is the absence of feeling. If there were only dark, would the concept of light occur to us? If there were only numbness, would the concept of feeling occur to us? We cannot know having never been in that situation. Even a blind or deaf person are aware of light and sound, even if they have not experienced it, but if it never existed then it would never be a train of thought that we would follow, and therefore the idea would not occur to us.

Answer 24

This must be what profoundly deaf people at birth must experience.  We can hear and can grasp the concept of  silence - or lack of sound we can hear.  But if we were born profoundly deaf, never heard any sound, would the concept of silence occur to us?  I'd have to say yes.  I can hear, and the idea of sound occurs to me, so if I never heard sound and only knew silence then the concept of silence would occur to me.

Answer 25

You can only have silence if noise existed.  We would probably have no need for ears either

Answer 26

No, the idea of noise would occur to us...

Answer 27

No I don't think so because if you couldn't hear at all then how would we know that there is something to hear, that we can't. um I hope I made sense.

Answer 28

..Pardon me?

Answer 29

I don't think so.  I think silence has to somehow be defined in terms of noise, or sound or vibrations or something.  So, without these things, I don't think the idea of silence would ever occur to us.  Like I'll make a word called 'jummering', which is defined as the absense something you don't know about and have not experienced.  You'd be like what?????