Molyneux’s question asks whether someone born blind, who could distinguish cubes from spheres using his tactile sensation, could recognize those objects if he received his sight. Locke says no: the newly sighted person would fail to point to the cube and call it a cube. Locke never provided a complete explanation for his negative response, and there are concerns of inconsistency with other important aspects of his theory of ideas. These charges of inconsistency rest upon an unrecognized and unfounded assumption (...) that seeing entails recognition. Locke’s negative answer to Molyneux’s question is consistent with his other philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question asks whether someone born blind, who could distinguish cubes from spheres using his tactile sensation, could recognize those objects if he received his sight. Locke says no: the newly sighted person would fail to point to the cube and call it a cube. Locke never provided a complete explanation for his negative response, and there are concerns of inconsistency with other important aspects of his theory of ideas. These charges of inconsistency rest upon an unrecognized and unfounded assumption (...) that seeing entails recognition. Locke’s negative answer to Molyneux’s question is consistent with his other philosophical commitments. (shrink)

The reports of individuals who have had their vision restored after a long period of blindness suggest that, immediately after regaining their vision, such individuals are not able to recognize shapes by vision alone. It is often assumed that the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the relationship between visual and tactile representations of shape. However, I maintain that, immediately after having their sight restored, at least some newly sighted individuals undergo visual experiences that instantiate basic (...) shape phenomenology but which do not present (that is, neither represent nor involve acquaintance with) the corresponding shape properties. Consequently, the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the role that perceptual phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties—it tells us that the properties presented by perceptual experiences are not determined by or “built into” perceptual phenomenology. In addition, I maintain that the evidence concerning sight restoration suggests an alternative theory concerning the role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties. Specifically, it suggests that, while not inherently representational, sensory phenomenal properties can serve as vehicles for the representation of an object’s properties. (shrink)

A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience purports to have answered a question posed to Locke in 1688 by his friend William Molyneux, namely, whether ‘a man born blind and made to see’ would be able to identify, immediately and by vision alone, objects previously known only by touch. The answer, according to the researchers – and as predicted by Molyneux, as well as Locke, Berkeley, and others – is ‘likely negative. The newly sighted subjects did not exhibit an immediate (...) transfer of their tactile shape knowledge to the visual domain’. Since then, however, many commentators have argued that the answer is still not clear. Moreover, in the contemporary literature on Molyneux’s Question, and more generally on cross-modal perception and the individuation of the senses, it is sometimes hard to determine what question is being investigated. In this paper, I distinguish a number of different questions about the relation between visual and tactual perception that can arise when considering Molyneux’s... (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a new theory of the nature and individuation of perceptual capacities. I argue that we need a theory of perceptual capacities to explain modal facts about what sorts of perceptual phenomenal states one can be in. I defend my view by arguing for three adequacy constraints on a theory of perceptual capacities: perceptual capacities must be individuated at least partly in terms of their place in a hierarchy of capacities, where these capacities include the senses (...) themselves; an adequate account of perceptual capacities must be sensitive to empirical considerations; and an adequate account should accommodate the nature of the capacity to perceive. I arrive at these constraints by considering how Schellenberg’s view fails, before defending and developing my alternative in line with the constraints. I defend a view on which there are few, coarse-grained perceptual capacities which can fulfil complex explanatory roles because they are evaluatively gradable on many axes. Finally, on my view, perceptual capacities bear a particularly close relation to the sensory modalities themselves. (shrink)

We represent shape in both sight and touch, but how do these abilities relate to one another? This issue has been discussed in the context of Molyneux's question of whether someone born blind could, upon being granted sight, identify shapes visually. Some have suggested that we might look to real‐world cases of sight restoration to illuminate the relation between visual and tactual shape representations. Here, I argue that newly sighted perceivers should not be relied on in this way because they (...) are unlikely to form the kinds of shape representations responsible for cross‐modal recognition in normally sighted perceivers. I then argue that the available evidence makes a compelling case for the type identity view, on which the visual and tactual representations responsible for cross‐modal recognition are type‐identical. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question, whether the newly sighted might immediately recognize tactilely familiar shapes by sight alone, has produced an array of answers over three centuries of debate and discussion. I propose the first pluralist response: many different answers, both yes and no, are individually sufficient as an answer to the question as a whole. I argue that this is possible if we take the question to be cluster concept of sub-problems. This response opposes traditional answers that isolate specific perceptual features as (...) uniquely applicable to Molyneux’s question and grant viability to only one reply. Answering Molyneux’s question as a cluster concept may also serve as a methodology for resolving other philosophical problems. (shrink)

The Molyneux problem is one of the major questions addressed by early modern authors. Whereas Locke’s response to Molyneux’s question has been the subject of extensive scholarly discussion, Leibniz’s response has received comparatively little attention. This paper defends an interpretation of Leibniz’s nuanced response to the problem and criticizes a competing interpretation that has recently been proposed.