Rationalism vs

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Valencia College, Osceola *

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2010

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Philosophy

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Dec 6, 2023

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docx

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Sebastian Barajas Professor Hernández Philosophy PHI-2010 21 November 2023 Rationalism vs. Empiricism Molyneux's problem suggests blind individuals could identify familiar shapes by touch if made to see, first presented to John Locke in 1688 and later included in his essay. Molyneux’s question soon became a fulcrum for early research in the epistemology of concepts , challenging common nativist intuitions about concept acquisition; asking whether sensory features distinguish concepts and how concepts may be applied in novel experiences (Molyneux’s Question para 3). The question has undergone multiple stages of development, generating both positive and negative responses over three centuries of debate and discussion. Recent empirical work on recently healed cataract patients has sparked renewed interest in the ability to identify shapes at first sight, leading to successful re-tests. Early experiments on surgically removed cataract patients confirm Molyneux's supposition, as newly sighted individuals do not immediately recognize shapes they know by touch. Recent experimental studies on cataract surgery subjects, newborns, and sensory substitution devices support a 'yes' answer to the question of how newly sighted individuals recognize three-dimensional spatial features (Molyneux problem para 3).

Molyneux's question is not whether a blind person can see immediately after opening their eyes, but whether their intact visual percepts share spatial content with touch perceptions once their sight is restored. This is why it is studied of the subjects' ability to differentiate between stimuli, but noted that visual figure perception, particularly of complex three- dimensional shapes, requires more than just vision (Has Molyneux’s Question Been Answered? Para 6). 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. Molyneux posed a slightly different version of the question in response to a French abstract of the Essay in 1688, but Locke did not respond. There is no evidence that Locke ever saw this earlier version of the question. Locke's use of the term 'common sensibles' in discussing ideas from diverse senses is influenced by Aristotle's distinction between common and special sensibles (Is Locke’s answer to Molyneux question inconsistent? para 3). Both Locke’s empiricism and his requirement that any idea is such as the subject perceives it to be rule out the possibility of the sort of innately guided, unconscious reasoning postulated by Descartes. The perception of distance is an acquired ability, and the answer to Molyneux's question is negative. This reply may seem inconsistent with Locke’s doctrine that ideas of primary qualities, such as shape or motion, resemble their causes: visual and tactual ideas of such qualities have common causes, which implies that they resemble each other (molyneux Problem para 1).

It’s philosophical importance would be that the "Molyneux question" explores if a blind person could distinguish objects by sight without touch, aiming to explore whether our perception of objects is modality-specific or if new vision modality informs touch (Molyneux Problem Language para 1). More to what can be the “philosophical importance behind it would be Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which is the sphere. Suppose then the cube and the sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see: query, Whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the sphere, which the cube? To which the acute and judicious proposer answers: 'Not. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, and how a cube, affects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so (Molyneux’s Problem para 1).

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