This question has been investigatedexperimentally, but the results do not provide a final answer toMolyneux’s question (see Jacomuzzi, Kobau and Bruno 2003 fordiscussion).About 1800 several developments occurred which justify the speaking ofa new period in the history of Molyneux’s problem. Does sensory experience individuate the senses? RESEARCHERS solve a question about human perception that has stumped philosophers as well … 3. Some philosophers alsobelieved that the results of the inquiry depended on the intelligenceof the patient.What is more, specialists also began to consider observationsconcerning the sight of newly born animals and babies when discussingMolyneux’s problem. Some philosophers thought that Cheselden’s observationswere unequivocal and that they confirmed the hypothesis that a blindman restored to sight would not be able to distinguish objects andwould have to learn to see. A fruitful tendency is taking Molyneux’s problem to be a cluster of subproblems or generating different versions of or variations on Molyneux’s problem (e.g.
They pointed out that Cheselden had,perhaps, asked the boy leading questions. 6.
It could not be concluded from this that Molyneux’s problemcould not be solved experimentally, however, for it could bemaintained that patients operated upon for cataracts are directlyrelevant to the solution of it.
Molyneux’s problem has also turned up frequently intextbooks and general histories of psychology, ophthalmology,neurophysiology, etcetera (and also in publications on diversedisciplines, like mathematics, architecture, literature, arts andsports).
Mérian, for example, noticed thatCheselden’s observations, like all observations of blind people whosecataracts have been extracted, present difficulties because cataractsdo not cause complete blindness and complete blindness cannot becured.
Riskin (2002)described Molyneux’s problem in the wider context of theEnlightenment.In his account, Cheselden noted that when the boy was first able tosee, he did not know the shape of a thing and could not recognize onething from another, regardless of how different in shape or magnitudethey were. They regardedMolyneux’s problem as a kind of thought-experiment, which was to bedealt with by ratiocination alone. Molyneux's problem is a thought experiment in philosophy concerning immediate recovery from blindness. It was first formulated by William Molyneux, and notably referred to in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 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...'the objects to which he had hitherto used to apply the terms up and down, high and low, were such as only affected or were in some way perceived by touch; but the proper objects of vision make a new set of ideas, perfectly distinct and different from the former, and which can in no sort make themselves perceived by touch
The fact that certain animals see objects at a distance as soonas they are born suggested that Molyneux’s question could be answeredaffirmatively. It was first formulated by William Molyneux, and notably referenced in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). Morerationalist philosophers such as Synge, Lee and Leibniz gave anaffirmative answer. Are sensory-specific concepts, if there are such, accessible to conscious reflection or perceptual learning as to make them immediately usable for recognition tasks by other senses?
A few authors have written brief and incomplete histories ofthe problem.
Theysuggested that this could have been due to the fact that his eyes hadnot been used for a long time, or to their not having had enough timeto recover from the operation. technology; science 'Molyneux's question' gets answered after 300 years. It's here [PDF]. It links these fields of study with a variety of questions: 1. 4. As one might have expected, an extended scale ofpossible solutions to the Molyneux problem was brought underconsideration.Others, however, such as La Mettrie and Diderot, regarded Cheselden’saccount as wholly ambiguous in its implications.