Molyneux's Problem in Action
Description
This book offers a novel action-based pluralist analysis of Molyneux's question, which asks whether a subject born blind yet able to discriminate specific shapes by touch alone can immediately recognize, if their vision is suddenly restored, the same shapes placed before their eyes by sight alone. This text engages with the 300+ year long history of this question, the hard problems that prevent a final and unique answer, as well as some strong attempts to succeed in answering, and how failure to do so is due to partial interpretations of the question, which is more complex than usually considered. The authors suggest that only a pluralistic approach - one that tackles Molyneux's problem from multiple disciplinary perspectives - will succeed. Thus, they defend a pluralist strategy, taking into account the role of embodiment and the many relations between perception and action, to face Molyneux's problem in all its complexity. The book will suggest a variety of answers, depending on how the question is approached.
This book taps into an interdisciplinary readership of students and scholars, particularly within the fields of philosophy, psychology and the cognitive sciences. It is especially appealing to those working on perception, action, and the body, three motifs punctuating the body of the book.
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Persons
Gabriele Ferretti is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bergamo, Italy. Previously, he was Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy II, Center for Mind and Cognition, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany and NOMIS Fellow at Eikones, Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel, Switzerland. His research is mainly focused on philosophy of cognitive science, of mind and of perception. His work investigates the nature of the relation between visual perception and motor action, with a careful look at the experimental evidence available from neuroscience. His results are published in many journals in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. He is also the author of monographs on philosophy of mind and neuroscience. He has co-edited, with Brian Glenney, a special issue on Molyneux's question for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, a volume with Routledge on Molyneux's question, and co-worked on the entry on Molyneux's question for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Brian Glenney is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Norwich University. He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. He works on sensory perception and is the co-editor of two volumes with Routledge: Molyneux's Question and the History of Philosophy and The Senses and the History of Philosophy. He has several peer-review articles on the history and contemporary study of the philosophy of perception. He has recently co-edited a special issue, with Gabriele Ferretti, on Molyneux's question for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences and co-worked with himon the entry on Molyneux's problem for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Content
Chapter 1 The Problem.- Chapter 2 A Multi-Layered Problem.- Chapter 3 Molyneux in Action Problems.- Chapter 4 A Pluralist Answer.- Chapter 5 Non-Visual Action-Based Analogues of Molyneux's problem.- Chapter 6 Open 'Active' Aspects and Perspectives.- Chapter 7 Conclusion.