Document Type
Article
Abstract
In this paper, I consider a Reidian answer to a question originally posed to John Locke by the Irish scientist William Molyneux in the year 1688. The issues that underlie this question are issues concerning the nature of visual and tactile perception and the concepts occasioned in these sensory modalities. | consider these issues according to Reid’s theory of perception and investigate how Reid’s answer to Molyneux’s Question anticipates contemporary empirical research. After a brief consideration of leading studies that attempt to address Molyneux’s Question empirically, | conclude that no adequate methods for empirically addressing the question currently exist. Returning to the notion of amodal and modality-specific concepts that was raised by the underlying issues of Molyneux’s Question, I considera theory that postulates the strictly temporal representation of the world in touch andthe strictly spatial representation in vision. I conclude that this account is badly flawed, and that vision and touch do indeed support a unified concept of three-dimensional figure. Finally, I clarify the statementthat vision and touchrepresent figure under different aspects using John Searle’s account of intentional perception.
Publication Date
2019
Recommended Citation
Lundberg, Kristen, "Thomas Reid and Molyneux;s Question: Visual and Tactile Perception" (2019). Bouwsma Paper Contest. 10.
https://digitalcommons.calvin.edu/philosophy_bouwsma/10