Thank you for your very detailed reply, DT.

Actually, to clarify, whilst my post was inspired by this question (and by seeing the crying tree), my actual question was 'does the tree fall if no one is around to see it fall?' But I can extrapolate from your reply about whether it makes a sound, to if it falls, so thank you for that.

It seems to be what most people believe: what is observable is what is 'real'. I still find it hard to believe that things might be that simplistic: it certainly isn't in my internal world, but then I seem to be an anomaly; an outlier that is best ignored so as not to skew the data for everyone else.

Also, in case it wasn't clear, whilst my OPs were about trees, they were also nothing to do with trees; just to add to the confusion.

The only thing that I didn't understand from your reply was your distinction of 'primary' qualities (e.g. lines and edges) from 'secondary' qualities (e.g. colour). As far as I'm concerned, they both seem subjective. [An extreme example would be the experiments that they did on kittens' ability to see horizontal or vertical lines - they put them in an environment that only had one and not the other, and the kittens' brains lost the ability to detect the line type that wasn't in their early environment.]

I believe that we view 'reality' as we are, and that 'reality' is the product of our (subjective) observations. Everything is 'translated' as you say.

I don't believe in God...unless the Moon is a god, but He remains tight-lipped about that...and many other things. Perhaps I should feel comforted by the fact that the Moon sees all. I mean, I definitely should feel grateful that at least I have Him with me in this... But whilst He sees all, he doesn't exactly explain all, or validate all, or even comment on many things, and so it is hard for me to make sense of myself. I don't know, I guess that I want more...

*Willow*