How do we recognize identities between seen shapes and felt ones? Is this due to associative learning, or to intrinsic connections these sensory modalities? We can address this question by testing the capacities of newly sighted subjects to match seen and felt shapes, but only if it is shown that the subjects can see the objects well enough to form adequate visual representations of their shapes. In light of this, a recent study by R. Held and colleagues fails to demonstrate (...) that their newly sighted subjects’ inability to match seen and felt shape was due to a lack of intermodal connections rather than a purely visual deficit, as they may not have been able visually to represent 3D shape in the perspective-invariant way required for intermodal matching. However, the study could be modified in any of several ways to help avoid this problem. (shrink)

Schwenkler (2012) criticizes a 2011 experiment by R. Held and colleagues purporting to answer Molyneux’s question. Schwenkler proposes two ways to re-run the original experiment: either by allowing subjects to move around the stimuli, or by simplifying the stimuli to planar objects rather than three-dimensional ones. In Schwenkler (2013) he expands on and defends the former. I argue that this way of re-running the experiment is flawed, since it relies on a questionable assumption that newly sighted subjects will be able (...) to appreciate depth cues. I then argue that the second way of re-running the experiment is successful both in avoiding the flaw of original Held experiment, and in avoiding the problem with the first way of re-running the experiment. (shrink)