For a long time, philosophers have pondered the nature of what we hear and by association, the nature of the perception of silence. Do we only hear sounds? Some might argue that we hear sounds and their sources — a singer and her voice. However, experience leads us to believe that we also hear silence, the absence of sound, for example, when a dramatic piece of music comes to an end.
The view that we only hear sounds centers on the idea that perception is only ever of positive things and that we are incapable of perceiving negative phenomena or the lack of something. If this is the case, then silence is not something we hear — it is just the absence of sound. While this debate has largely remained theoretical, a new study has lent support to the intuition that silence is something we actively hear.
