05-26-2016, 12:27 AM
(05-24-2016, 10:25 PM)Penn Wrote: The spirit of Molineaux's question (I think that was his name) is "do we have an innate ability to correspond the sense of touch to the sense of vision or is it learned".
So, if we are talking the theoretical situation it would go something like this. A blind subject receives surgery to give them vision. During the post operative healing they are blind folded. They are placed in front of a table. An observer hands them a cube and tells them it is red. They then hand the subject a ball and tell the subject it is green. Now they tell the subject the green ball and red cube is going to be on a white table in front of them (but no reference to where on the table) and are instructed to pick up the green ball once the blindfold is removed.
So some would incorrectly theorize that a person that a person can translate tactile to visual without ever having being able to see. The reality is, once that blindfold is removed, not only will the subject not be able to tell the difference between the red cube and the green ball, they also won't be able to identify the white table. They have to learn everything. Color, shape, depth perception.
To my understanding the only part of the original question that is still debatable is weather or not the person has to learn to merge the two slightly different images from the two eyes of if that part is innate. My belief is they have to learn that too. Maybe the evidence for that one exists somewhere.
I thought proprioception would allow them to distinguish the shapes by sight. Because I thought proprioception would allow them to draw a mental map they could use to recognize the shapes.
