James Vornov, MD PhD Neurologist, drug developer and philosopher exploring the neuroscience of decision-making and personal identity.
If things in the world are real, then so are their properties
Today’s question: “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?”
I answer, “Absolutely”. We’ll use it to work toward our goal of establishing that there is purpose in the world. In Finding Purpose in the World, I made the argument that things in the world count as real. First, I argued that we need to agree to talk about things like rocks and tables as being real because otherwise we’re stuck with only quarks or the wave function of the universe as reality. Maybe true, but not useful for talking about the material world. So stability became our definition of a thing, which we then extended to include dynamical systems with stablity like living organisms and hurricaines. Even though dynamical systems are taking in and leaving behind matter and energy, they are stable configurations too, just not in equilibrium. And thus our list of what’s real in the world.
So the tree is real. Independent of any observer its a stable assembly itself, so it doesn’t need me or a dog or any other thing in order to be a real, material object. {If real things can exist without observers, then their properties can too.} It falls and creates atmospheric pressue waves. What are we going to say now?
Properties Are Real
Lets take a step back. Is an apple red? Does the tree have mass? Now red isn’t a real, stable thing, its a property of the apple that it absorbs visible light of shorter wavelength, reflecting the longer wavelengths we call red. It will have that spectral output whether there are eyes to decode the spectrum into a subjective color. Once again, its certainly reasonable to retreat to the position that red is a color, wavelength is a physical property and that’s fine. I only want to assert that what we percieve as color is a real property of the real object of apple whether or not you or I or a dog sees it.
This reflection is relational in the real world. The sun is a another real thing, and so are the photons, the daylight streaming through the window glass to reflect off or be absorbed by the apple. Of course the apple is sitting on the table because it has this property of mass, deforming space-time or some such thing and the big old earth has its mass that keeps the apple at rest on the table. Each part of the scene is inanimate and stable for the most part in its equilibrium. In general, it’s easy to draw the outlines around things in the world and talk about their interactions whithout bringing observers into it. Which again is my whole point: real things with real properties in the absence of observers.
It follows that when the tree falls in the forest, (mass and gravity again) it sets off those vibrations in the surrounding atmosphere through these same kind of physical interactions. The tree is real, the air is real and the vibrations are a property in the air created by the tree falling. Does it make a sound? I’ll say just as much as the apple is red when no one is around to look. Sure red and sound are subjective events in awareness, but their physical correlates are real even without me and my big brain.
Dynamic interactions are just as real
The vibrations in the air from our tree that no one heard are ephemeral. Friction, air movement all conspire to limit that property in time. But we want to think of dynamical systems like hurricaines, bacteria, dogs, and people as being just as real as apples and tables. Just becuase they are stable assemblies over time, just requiring energy and mass input to sustain themselves. And I see no reason why the properties of these dynamical systems should be any less real than those of more long lived equilibrium things like tables.
So the hurricaine that topples the tree has properties of wind speed, direction, movement and destructiveness. One of its properties is the ability to topple trees and generally destroy things in its path. Trees don’t know they’re toppled and the hurricaine has no intent to be destructive. This is why I like the word property. Its a general way of talking about how one of these real things interacts with other real things.
Hurricaines don’t know they’re doing something, but you and I do. My dog does. Can we call agency a property of these kinds of complex dynamical systems?
Agency Is Real
At first glance, agency seems really different. Its an active somehow emergent description of how the object acts. A dog responds to environmental stimuli, orienting and reacting to the sound of a tree falling. Hackles rise, posture changes until the threat is assessed. Then its off to sniffing and finding half eaten hamburgers in the picnic area. Or seeking attention from its human companion. It’s a dynamical system with goals, emotions, needs. And people? Even more complex in our agency and actions in the world. Purposeful.
I see no reason not to collapse all of that into the same idea of system property. It’s marvelous that evolution resulted in mammalian brains with so much emergent behavior, but in the end it’s not of a different kind than the emergent behavior of a hurricaine or the sun or Jupiter’s giant red spot. There are all sorts of stable dynamical systems and their behavior can be simple and stable, chaotic and stable with some attractor, or complex ands stable through actions that are required for it to persist like finding and digesting
Agency is a great invention for brains. I don’t know if the E. coli system for finding food where it models the food gradient biochemically through alternating tumble and run movement is agency, but it sure looks like it from the outside. The little bug, put in a dish with a food source will orient to the food and head for it like it sees it there. We understand the mechanism, but it looks to me like agency. {Maybe it’s not different in kind, only in level of complexity.} Is recognizing the cookie jar and opening it very different, other than in level of complexity?
Yes, agency, whether its E. coli or a dog, is a property of the thing, the dynamical system. I’ll go one step further and say that this is one of the properties that allows the system to persist over time. For these kinds of systems its a necessary property. Otherwise, they’d dissipate into the environment. They die.
Obviously, E.coli and dogs has these purposeful goal directed behaviors before people showed up on the planet, before we invented microscopes and biochemistry. Like red, like sound, these descriptions of agency I’m providing are indeed my descriptions of them, but they were system properties before we were aware of them. All observer independent.
Yeah, but, purpose?
I haven’t gotten to purpose yet, but I promise we’ll get there in the next post. We just had to establish that all these things like rocks, apples, E. coli, dogs and people were real things and then make the case that the real things have real properties indepedent of observers to describe them. And agency in living things is just another property. Hurricaines do things and E. coli or dogs do things. It’s just alot more sophisticated involving goals and discrimination.
Ah, but purpose. That’s not what things do and how they interact, that’s the “why” question. Why do dogs sniff the fire hydrant? Why do I write these posts? What’s your purpose here on earth?
Next time
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© 2026 James Vornov MD, PhD. This content is freely shareable with attribution. Please link to this page if quoting.
