Molyneux’s Puzzle: Philosophical, Biological and Experimental Aspects of an Open Problem

Can a subject born blind, who learnt to discriminate specific shapes by using touch immediately recognize, in the case in which her/his vision is suddenly restored, the same shapes placed before her/his eyes by using vision? This is the famous Molyneux’s puzzle. This paper explains why such a question still represents a significant open problem for both philosophers and vision scientists. The paper will focus on the following crucial aspects concerning the investigation of the problem: (i) the interpretation of the question; (ii) the possibility of sight restoration from blindness, in relation to (ii a) the biological issues we must face when trying to restore sight successfully and (ii b) the experimental issues we must face when trying to test whether sight has been successfully restored. The analysis of these three important aspects of the problem at stake here will lead us to understand what we can (and what we cannot) do at the moment, when trying to answer to this question. This will be possible by tackling the problem from an interdisciplinary perspective, in the light of what we know about vision from ophthalmology, visual neuroscience, biology, phenomenology and analytic philosophy of vision.