The GIF and Hume, Sapir, Whorf, and Goodman

It's a piece from late 2017, but still quite interesting.

Some people hear GIFs.

Yes, those looped bit videos that have no sound.

Some people hear them, normally in cases where sounds would be expected in real life, such as a GIF of hands clapping, one of police lights (with inferred sirens), and such.

Are such things being heard?

Yes, indeed, an audiologist professor told the Times' journalist.

Two cognitive neuroscientists said it is similar to the "filling in" of some types of optical illusion. They added that people with synesthesia are more likely to do this.

That said, why the author, Heather Murphy, stopped with scientists, I don't know, but it presented a punches-pulled story.

Obviously, this has connections to empirical philosophy of centuries past, and per the cognitive neuroscientists, connections to cognitive philosophy today, namely the issue of qualia, and within that, how specific qualia may be in the auditory world. (Murphy does loop in Christof Koch, but, academically, despite his gushing about pantheism, he's a scientist, not a philosopher.)

Of course, hearing exists inside our heads.

"If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" It makes sound waves, but it doesn't make a sound until it's heard. (That said, there are plenty of foxes, bears, deer and squirrels to hear it.)

This is partially what the whole idea of empiricism is about. But, David Hume, and his predecessors, didn't really wrestle with the issue behind sensory experience. (Of course, 300 years ago, they weren't really able to wrestle with how the brain works!)

It focuses itself in modern philosophy with the discussion of qualia. As a sidebar, and not to go too Sapir-Whorf, but per Nelson Goodman's new problem of induction, there's the issue of how we experience a sound based on not only our genetics, as in the synesthesia, but also based on our individual developmental histories. (The Inverted Spectrum idea, a thought experiment often discussed in thinking about qualia, more directly connects to Goodman.) To riff on Sapir-Whorf, an Inuit may hear 20 different sounds from snow at different temperatures, different thicknesses and different degrees of compaction and you or I might here three. But, a recording microphone will show the same sonic signatures for the Inuit's 20 sounds and my three.

And, this leads me to wonder aloud on other things.

Other than feeling vibrations from clapping, especially, let us say, large group clapping at a concert, political rally, etc., do deaf people have the equivalent of "hearing" clapping? If so, how would they respond to these GIFs?