Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (1):47-63 (2020)
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Abstract |
Molyneux's Question (MQ) concerns whether a newly sighted man would recognize/distinguish a sphere and a cube by vision, assuming he could previously do this by touch.
We argue that (MQ) splits into questions about (a) shared representations of space in different perceptual systems, and about (b) shared ways of constructing higher dimensional spatiotemporal features from information about lower dimensional ones, most of the technical difficulty centring on (b). So understood, MQ resists any monolithic answer: everything depends on the constraints faced by particular perceptual systems in extracting features of higher dimensionality from those of lower. Each individual question of this type is empirical and must be investigated separately.
We present several variations on MQ based on different levels of dimensional integration—some of these are familiar, some novel adaptations of problems known elsewhere, and some completely novel. Organizing these cases in this way is useful because it unifies a set of disparate questions about intermodal transfer that have held philosophical and psychological interest, suggests a new range of questions of the same type, sheds light on similarities and differences between members of the family, and allows us to formulate a much-augmented set of principles and questions concerning the intermodal transfer of spatiotemporal organization.
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Keywords | Molyneux's Question crossmodal identification associationism Locke Gareth Evans space perception time perception |
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Reprint years | 2019, 2020 |
DOI | 10.1080/00048402.2019.1603246 |
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References found in this work BETA
Consciousness Explained.Daniel C. Dennett - 1993 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4):905-910.
Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain.Daniel C. Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne - 1992 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (2):183-201.
Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience.Barry Dainton - 2000 - Routledge.
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Citations of this work BETA
Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy.Brian Glenney & Gabriele Ferretti (eds.) - 2020 - New York, USA: Routledge.
Material Perception for Philosophers.J. Brendan Ritchie, Vivian C. Paulun, Katherine R. Storrs & Roland W. Fleming - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12777.
Perceptual Capacities, Discrimination, and the Senses.William Hornett - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14063-14085.
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