Molyneux's Question - Can It Be Solved?

Molyneux's question is often considered as one of Philosophy's unsolved problems. But with modern science able to cure some cases of congenital blindness, do we now have a definitive answer?

Sources and additional reading:

Music:
"Danse of Questionable Tuning", "Universal"
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

[smartcow]

I was laughing so hard when they said “there were other potential factors, such as the patients intelligence” this boy really got cured from blindness only to have his IQ roasted by philosophers hahaha... it really do be like that sometimes

[stanleyyelnezevans]

I always wondered what a blind person would see if they took acid

[victorrolston]

Get a group of highly gifted blind mathematicians to do it and they will figure it out.

[BetterCallThall]

I've often assumed color would be overwhelming to a newly sighted person.

[mjudec]

It makes sense to assume people will know that a corner/sharp edge will be recognisable but I suppose if you've never seen *anything* before you really have no frame of reference. I'm not surprised at how quickly people adapted once they could see though.

[Jayloke]

Wait a minute.
I read some comments and I’m a bit confused.
Everyone is talking about the fact that the cube has edges, flat faces, and that the sphere is round.
None of these things, however, take into consideration that we don’t know if a blind person can distinguish these properties from a visual standpoint.
But how about the fact that a sphere appears the same shape no matter the angle and place at which you watch it?
A cube doesn’t look the same if you move around, *because* it is not round, it does not appear equal from every point of view.
Following this logic, knowledge of this fact *could* be used to discern these two objects by one who has never seen before.

If you have a different opinion, please let me know, I’d appreciate that!

[HonkeyKongLive]

I feel like complexity is the key. Like I refuse to believe they couldn't tell a cube from a sphere, but a toy of a dog versus a giraffe would be impossible unless they had incredible deductive skills.

[bonk]

rationalists - overestimate humans
empiricists - underestimate humans

[flyingleaves]

Can't they just have a blind person draw a sphere?

[nickbridgeforth]

At the beginning of the video I thought rationalism made sense, but I think it comes from a bias of having correlation of sharpness to visual edges in my day to day life. Suppose I were to experience a new sense tomorrow, that no one else had, that also expressed 3 dimensional shape. Since I have no previous correlations with the new sense to compare to other senses, I’d be learning all over again how to determine shape with that sense.

[ChronoXShadow]

I'd like to add one more factor into this. Size. Put different sized cubes and spheres in front of the specific patients. Tell them to sort the items based on shape. Then have them do it again only by vision, with a third party moving the items to where the patients want them. Compare the data, to see if the patient got it correct in the beginning when blindfolded and once again when not, and only after they are done sorting should you ask which is a cube and which is a sphere. This should give the patients more time to discern touch from vision, and how they correlate.

[mellinghedd]

I mean the answer isn’t really “yes” or “no, ” it’s that some people can but most people won’t.

[shans]

Initially I assumed they would be able to... I mean when we touch something we know if it is curved or plain. The same when we see something.

But now I am unsure. Like do we know something is round by seeing only because we have had enough experience of touch AND see to link the two

[ghuegel]

Instantaneous eyesight recovery would involve re-wiring neuronal connections... the answer to Molyxneau's Question depends on whether or not the image recognition package is included.

[xtentasticx]

I have a good argument:
It depends on the object, but you should be able to rationalize. Let's say you see the wave form of something before hearing it. You might notice the the waveform from before have a beat. You find the same beat in the music, so then you match the two.
The more complex the harder it would be to figure out.

However a blind erson might feel six faces of the cube, and when they can see realize the cube has 6 distinct faces and the sphere only one.

They'd be able to figure it out.

[carazy_]

Rationalist. I agree that you should be able to discern the concept of roundness and edges in visual form provided prior tactile knowledge due to our innate understanding of geometry and spatial reasoning. This standpoint, however, assumes instantaneous recovery to sight and ignores the shock of an individual acquiring sight for the first time, which would interfere with human reasoning (due to bewilderment, etc.). Problematically, given a reasonable healing period, it is likely that any subject will have acquired empirical knowledge of spatial understanding and translated their tactile knowledge of the world into visual understanding, thereby eliminating the possibility of a “fresh” test, resulting in skewed data. Without the previous stipulations, it isn’t feasible to have a conclusive experiment, especially given a small sample size like the one listed in the video.

[lukostello]

how skilled they are at deductive reasoning should have been a control. Obviously the sphere is uniform and the cube has edges. One can reason prior to touching the sphere that it would feel the same no matter what angle you touch it so it would be easy to distinguish. If the test was a cube or a pyramid it would be much more difficult although I think possible they would only have to count how many points it has.

[kbarrett]

after sight recovery, boy should still be able to close his eyes and identify the object.

[aktk]

This much quality presentation and it takes *YTRecommendation* to get viewers after an year???

Also thnx YouTube for recommending video..I never asked for any paradox tho.

[redlander]

I did not expect this. When talking about a sphere and a cube, I thought it would be easy to recognize them.