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With respect to Molyneux and Locke, while I believe they get the general idea right, I believe they get the actual answer wrong. The answer to Molyneux's proble

by kcl 13y ago

With respect to Molyneux and Locke, while I believe they get the general idea right, I believe they get the actual answer wrong. The answer to Molyneux's problem should be "yes" --- the newly sighted can correctly associate the shapes. A sufficiently educated and intelligent person with congenital blindness would be able to correctly differentiate the shapes. Say, for instance, had Locke been born blind and still educated as rigorously. Of the many deductions that could be performed, the motion of the head with eyes fixed looking around the border of an object in space approximates the motion of the hand tracing the same object. Many other deductions are possible. All you need are reasonable assumptions about the acclimatization process, e.g., the patient can have a suitable amount of time to adjust to being sighted but cannot touch anything during the process. It is fascinating to think about the idea of disconnected senses, but as so commonly happens, fascination with an idea leads to sloppy thinking, especially among the educated. The reason why the empirical studies of the patients from India are wrong, despite being interpreted as giving a concurring answer, is that the blind have traditionally been given feeble educations, lacking in the type of rigorous thinking necessary to solve the problem. Historically it was challenging to teach abstract reasoning to the blind, and for this reason many were not taught. See Herzog's documentary "Handicapped Future" for tragic examples in relatively wealthy 1960s West Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapped_Future http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapped_Future The five patients in India who could not afford simple but life-altering surgery were sure to be poor in addition to being blind, and so surely must have received awful educations. Compounding this are their young ages. A sufficiently motivated, newly-sighted Locke would've gotten the answer correct.

xwowsersx 13y ago
I'm confused...Locke and Molyneux weren't saying the newly sighted person wouldn't be able to distinguish between the shapes, but that they wouldn't be able to synchronize that distinction with their touch sensations. In other words, they wouldn't be able to identify which was the one they identified, by touch, as spherical and which as square.
- ramchip 13y ago
  I do think that's what the poster is referring to: > the motion of the head with eyes fixed looking around the border of an object in space approximates the motion of the hand tracing the same object His argument is that this kind of abstract reasoning would be mostly developed by education, so people with very little education would not be able to associate the shapes they see with those they touched.
photon137 13y ago
Education here is not an overriding factor. The way a congenitally blind person "imagines" abstract representations of shapes is substantially different, primarily because the physical wiring of the visual cortex and indeed a lot of the brain would be very different when compared to a person who could see. The dimensionality of their world, despite being the same as that of the sighted ones, may not involve the same descriptive system - ie maybe "polar" (just an example) coordinates would be more "natural" to them than a Cartesian system. It's simply a problem of what gets mapped to what in the absence of mapping channels we take for granted. Education is probably not a significant variable here.
- justsee 13y ago
  I find it curious you would not consider education a significant variable. Education and intelligence mean there's a significant variation in people's abilities to infer, to the point that particularly talented people get write-ups in 'Guinness Book of World Records.' and human-angle stories at the end of nightly news bulletins. So the assumption that it's a binary answer to Molyneux's problem seems to be the first error. There would be certain individuals, who when adjusted to sight enough to work out the ratios of this color to that color could find enough data to make a choice that's better than a random guess. However the fascination with this question isn't around those individuals who'd pass the test. It's fascination with the idea that most of us wouldn't, because as you outline the absence of input through the visual cortex mean the brain would not be able to make simple mappings sighted people feel are inherently 'natural'.
- kcl 13y ago
  Calculus in Chinese is still calculus. The sphere is smooth, the cube is non-smooth. That's all it takes.
  - photon137 13y ago
    Yes, but what is a non-differentiable curve if you and I don't even have the same definition of a curve? What about a curve which is differentiable in one coordinate system but not so in another? EDIT: My point is - mathematics is axiomatic in its very basis - the axioms have to be agreed upon by people who agree upon a conclusion derived from those axioms.
kenko 13y ago
" The answer to Molyneux's problem should be "yes" --- the newly sighted can correctly associate the shapes." In actual fact, the newly sighted can't correctly associate the shapes right away. They need time to learn how to negotiate sight.
- flatline 13y ago
  There were two somewhat recent reports of this very thing[1], I remember reading about one where the man was perpetually overwhelmed and depressed after regaining his sight. It can be very difficult if not impossible to fully adjust, the theory is that the tactile areas of the brain simply overtake the visual processing centers, which are otherwise underused. It does take time for the brain to begin associating familiar but abstract concepts with their visual representations. [1] http://news.psu.edu/story/141360/2006/04/17/research/probing-question-if-blind-person-gained-sight-could-they-recognize http://news.psu.edu/story/141360/2006/04/17/research/probing...
rubinelli 13y ago
If you could solve the vision problem through deduction, then a good decision tree would be enough to implement artificial vision. The fact that it isn't suggests that the problem is much harder than it seems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
Houshalter 13y ago
Well it may be that the brain is hardwired biologically to represent sight to some extent. But otherwise, to a newly sighted person that had not learned to associate visual input with anything, it would just be completely random noise. Neurons are firing but they aren't connected to anything yet. It would be like asking a person if they could understand text written in a foreign language they don't know anything about. It might be possible, but you would first have to train their brain extensively to understand the format and map the different symbols and words to actual concepts. Otherwise it's all gibberish, random noise.
- biot 13y ago
  While I think you're correct that it may take some time for the newly sighted to be able to process the visual signal at all, the question as stated mentions: "... the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them..." The phrasing of "which was the globe, which the cube" presupposes that he is able to visually distinguish the two shapes sufficiently. If he can distinguish the shapes, this implies that he is able to process the visual input already enough to understand that there are two shapes. Given this, I can't understand how a sufficiently intelligent person would be unable to tell which is which through logical deduction. Besides which, it would be a pretty lame philosophical question if the man couldn't even process the visual input to know that there are any shapes at all.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    My misunderstanding.
kcl 13y ago
I need to update my citation: "Land of Silence and Darkness" is the better source, though both may cover the subject. The two films are closely related. I think I saw them together, hence the confusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Silence_and_Darkness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Silence_and_Darkness

by kcl 13y ago

xwowsersx 13y ago

I'm confused...Locke and Molyneux weren't saying the newly sighted person wouldn't be able to distinguish between the shapes, but that they wouldn't be able to synchronize that distinction with their touch sensations. In other words, they wouldn't be able to identify which was the one they identified, by touch, as spherical and which as square.

ramchip 13y ago
I do think that's what the poster is referring to: > the motion of the head with eyes fixed looking around the border of an object in space approximates the motion of the hand tracing the same object His argument is that this kind of abstract reasoning would be mostly developed by education, so people with very little education would not be able to associate the shapes they see with those they touched.

photon137 13y ago

Education here is not an overriding factor. The way a congenitally blind person "imagines" abstract representations of shapes is substantially different, primarily because the physical wiring of the visual cortex and indeed a lot of the brain would be very different when compared to a person who could see. The dimensionality of their world, despite being the same as that of the sighted ones, may not involve the same descriptive system - ie maybe "polar" (just an example) coordinates would be more "natural" to them than a Cartesian system. It's simply a problem of what gets mapped to what in the absence of mapping channels we take for granted. Education is probably not a significant variable here.

justsee 13y ago
I find it curious you would not consider education a significant variable. Education and intelligence mean there's a significant variation in people's abilities to infer, to the point that particularly talented people get write-ups in 'Guinness Book of World Records.' and human-angle stories at the end of nightly news bulletins. So the assumption that it's a binary answer to Molyneux's problem seems to be the first error. There would be certain individuals, who when adjusted to sight enough to work out the ratios of this color to that color could find enough data to make a choice that's better than a random guess. However the fascination with this question isn't around those individuals who'd pass the test. It's fascination with the idea that most of us wouldn't, because as you outline the absence of input through the visual cortex mean the brain would not be able to make simple mappings sighted people feel are inherently 'natural'.
kcl 13y ago
Calculus in Chinese is still calculus. The sphere is smooth, the cube is non-smooth. That's all it takes.
- photon137 13y ago
  Yes, but what is a non-differentiable curve if you and I don't even have the same definition of a curve? What about a curve which is differentiable in one coordinate system but not so in another? EDIT: My point is - mathematics is axiomatic in its very basis - the axioms have to be agreed upon by people who agree upon a conclusion derived from those axioms.

kenko 13y ago

" The answer to Molyneux's problem should be "yes" --- the newly sighted can correctly associate the shapes." In actual fact, the newly sighted can't correctly associate the shapes right away. They need time to learn how to negotiate sight.

flatline 13y ago
There were two somewhat recent reports of this very thing[1], I remember reading about one where the man was perpetually overwhelmed and depressed after regaining his sight. It can be very difficult if not impossible to fully adjust, the theory is that the tactile areas of the brain simply overtake the visual processing centers, which are otherwise underused. It does take time for the brain to begin associating familiar but abstract concepts with their visual representations. [1] http://news.psu.edu/story/141360/2006/04/17/research/probing-question-if-blind-person-gained-sight-could-they-recognize http://news.psu.edu/story/141360/2006/04/17/research/probing...

rubinelli 13y ago

If you could solve the vision problem through deduction, then a good decision tree would be enough to implement artificial vision. The fact that it isn't suggests that the problem is much harder than it seems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

Houshalter 13y ago

Well it may be that the brain is hardwired biologically to represent sight to some extent. But otherwise, to a newly sighted person that had not learned to associate visual input with anything, it would just be completely random noise. Neurons are firing but they aren't connected to anything yet. It would be like asking a person if they could understand text written in a foreign language they don't know anything about. It might be possible, but you would first have to train their brain extensively to understand the format and map the different symbols and words to actual concepts. Otherwise it's all gibberish, random noise.

biot 13y ago
While I think you're correct that it may take some time for the newly sighted to be able to process the visual signal at all, the question as stated mentions: "... the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them..." The phrasing of "which was the globe, which the cube" presupposes that he is able to visually distinguish the two shapes sufficiently. If he can distinguish the shapes, this implies that he is able to process the visual input already enough to understand that there are two shapes. Given this, I can't understand how a sufficiently intelligent person would be unable to tell which is which through logical deduction. Besides which, it would be a pretty lame philosophical question if the man couldn't even process the visual input to know that there are any shapes at all.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  My misunderstanding.

kcl 13y ago

I need to update my citation: "Land of Silence and Darkness" is the better source, though both may cover the subject. The two films are closely related. I think I saw them together, hence the confusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Silence_and_Darkness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Silence_and_Darkness