
Molyneux's problem - mike_esspe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molyneux%27s_problem
======
jere
>In 2003, Pawan Sinha, a professor at MIT in Boston, set up a program in India
as a part of which he treated 5 patients that almost instantly took them from
total congenital blindness to fully seeing.[8][9] This provided a unique
opportunity or answer the Molyneux's problem experimentally. Based on this
study, on April 10, 2011, he concluded that the answer, in short, to
Molyneux's problem was "no". Although after restoration of sight, the subjects
could distinguish between objects visually as effectively as they would do by
touch alone, they were unable to form the connection between object perceived
using the two different senses.

That is a really counterintuitive result for me. I always assumed that one
could construct a spatial model of something by touching it, without that
directly being related to vision.

~~~
shmageggy
You absolutely can, and there's even been recent research into the
computational mechanisms that are behind this kind of inference [1]. They
build a computational model that learns spatial/visual representation from
(simulated) haptic stimuli with performance similar to human subjects.

I think the reason Sinha's experiment had a negative result was, as other
commenters have mentioned, that this ability is a learned behavior. Those who
are blind from birth simply never developed the ability to form abstract
representations from visual stimuli, therefore haptic information cannot be
translated into these visual representations. The other commenters who are
saying there is no pathway between the two modalities are wrong, and it's easy
to set up an experiment to show it. Just blindfold someone and hand them an
unfamiliar object, then, without showing it to them, have them draw it. It's
clear that we can do this to some extent.

[1]
[http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/abstrac...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/abstracts.html#Yildirim13)

~~~
w1ntermute
Right, there is a physical difference between the brain of a person who has
been blind from birth and someone who has not. This also means that if you
restore sight to someone who once had it and then lost it, they should have no
trouble picking out an object they hadn't seen (only felt), even if it was an
object they had neither seen nor felt prior to losing their vision.

------
chm
The problem is fascinating in itself, but I don't see why it is classified as
an unsolved problem in _philosophy_.

From the article:

"The resolution of this problem is _in some sense_ provided by the study of
human subjects who gain vision after extended congenital blindness."

The solution is _purely_ empirical, not philosophical.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_philosoph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_philosophy)

~~~
arrrg
Philosophical problems tend to turn into empirical problems with time. That’s
completely normal. At some point in time you can’t actually investigate
something empirically, so it’s a philosophical problem. As soon as you can,
the philosophical problem turns into an empirical one.

~~~
Houshalter
I don't understand how it's a philosophical question. It's a question about
the state of reality. Even before anyone tried to actually test it, it was
still a question about the way things are. It's like asking what's inside a
room, and calling it a philosophical question. Then you open the door and
actually _look_ and suddenly it's not?

~~~
jleader
Aren't all (interesting) philosophical questions about reality, or at least
some extended or modified version of reality as we know it?

"What can be known?" "Do we have free will?" "Does God exist?"

(hint, any question that starts "Do we..." or references questions of
existence is asking about the state of reality)

~~~
Houshalter
Possibly, though questions about morality or free-will, or the nature of
knowledge or whatever, are not.

But what I meant was that almost any question can be considered philosophical
under that definition. Until you actually test it scientifically at least. And
if that's the case, then the meaning of "philosophical questions" becomes
worthless. A word that can describe anything is useless. The value of a word
is that it can be used to differentiate between things.

~~~
arrrg
No, that’s not all! Philosophical questions also have to be relevant. That’s a
squishy condition but I would really say it’s that simple. There is nothing
special about philosophical questions per se, it’s whatever humans find
intensely interesting and cannot (yet or ever) be investigated empirically.

(I’m pretty sure I agree with you that something like morality can, at its
core, not be empirically investigated, though empirical investigation can help
create clarity in arguments about morality, though I’m not sure whether that’s
an absolute truth that cannot ever be changed. Free will? Nature of knowledge?
Those obviously are ripe for empirical investigation. I don’t see why we
should never be able to answer those questions conclusively and empirically.)

~~~
Houshalter
I don't know about free will because it depends how you define it and it's not
something I've ever understood, though it doesn't seem like a concept that is
dependent on how the universe actually is in a physical sense.

The nature of knowledge is pretty vague too, but if you mean the concept of
how we can ever know things, that also doesn't depend on how the universe
physically is. In another universe with different laws of physics, it would
still apply.

The same is true of mathematics, for example.

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kcl
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>

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.

~~~
photon137
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.

~~~
kcl
Calculus in Chinese is still calculus. The sphere is smooth, the cube is non-
smooth. That's all it takes.

~~~
photon137
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.

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drblast
Wow, that's really cool.

Now I have an additional question. Assume at one point you were able to see
and touch things, then lost your sight, then regained it. I'd think that while
blind, you'd still try to form images of things you touched, and then be able
to recognize them after your sight was recovered.

If that's true, then the connection between the senses would not be
fundamentally impossible, but rather a learned behavior.

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EGreg
I expected to read about Peter Molyneux's problem of producing and selling
games he dreams up around strange concepts, which I thought became so well
known that it got an official name and put in Wikipedia.

But this was more interesting !

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refrigerator
I think that if the previously blind person analyses the shapes in the right
way, they'd be able to tell which one is the sphere and which one is the cube:

The only things the person would be able to gain from just touching the
objects is that the sphere is "the same all over" and the cube is "not the
same all over", to dumb it down considerably. If the newly unblind man looks
at the objects in a similar way and considers symmetry, I think he would be
able to tell that one is infinitely more symmetrical than the other and would
be able to deduce that the shape that looks the same all over would be the
sphere.

Does that make sense?

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fsckin
This reminded me of a feature of Esref Armagan, a blind Turkish painter, who
was never sighted.

Skip to 7 minutes to see him paint a building he's never been to before, with
100% correct perspective.

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ig6p_esref-armagan-
blind-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ig6p_esref-armagan-blind-
painter_creation#.UXxhv0BDuzA)

~~~
cantos
I wonder if he was given sight and at the same given two paintings of a scene,
one his and another by someone else if he would be able to tell the
difference.

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twelvechairs
Surely this is not a hypothetical anymore or one with merely one test case -
see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis> for example.

It seems obvious to me that it takes some time for people to get used to using
a new sense - particularly for higher-order abilities. Differentiating 'round'
from 'hard edged' is probably a fairly simplistic function which your brain
should be able to quickly figure out, but I don't see how it can just be
instant.

~~~
kenko
I think this is exactly right. Tactile visual substitution systems provide a
sensory modality that we may as well call sight, just not via the eyeballs,
and it takes time for the blind to become capable with them. Why wouldn't it
take time for them to become capable with a sensory modality that is causally
associated with the eyeballs? And in fact, it does take time.

------
kenko
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/>

------
Siecje
I say yes.

If you asked a blind person to draw a sphere they would draw a circle, if you
asked them to draw a cube they would draw a square.

