Molyneux’s Question Within and Across the Senses

This chapter argues that the answer to Molyneux’s question turns on at least two issues—namely, the relationship between visual and haptic perceptions of shape, and the way that spatial properties are perceived within each sensory modality. One might object that the creature just imagined should not be described as representing the sameness and difference of shape at all, but only sameness and difference in a relevant dimension of sensory stimulation. There is something to this worry, as shape is an abstract property in the sense that objects can share the same shape despite differences in size, color, location and orientation. Molyneux’s original statement of the question points this way: he suggested using a sphere and a cube, rather than the more complex Lego shapes that R. Held et al. employed, as a way of testing the newly sighted man’s ability to match seen shape with felt.