Janet & Brian have been discussing Molyneux's Problem for nearly 20 years, since Brian's PhD at USC. In this episode they help us understand why questions about perception matter so much right now.
I'm glad you brought up the Molyneux thought experiment. When I read about the Prakash Project experiments years ago, I found them to be quite convincing evidence in favor of a negative answer. The fact that the subjects learned to recognize shapes visually within three days is not surprising. In my view, there is no reason to believe that a mental representation acquired through one sensory modality must coincide with a mental representation acquired through another. There are electric fish that "see" not only the shape, size and distance of objects but also their conductivity through electric fields detected by receptors in their skin. I doubt that they possess any notion of "squareness" or "roundness" as we experience these qualities through touch or vision, and that we could ever understand like they perceive the world.
Thank you for listening. I wonder how you define mental representations. Tricky word, I know. In some papers and in my mongograph (not the Holding Paradox book but a more philosophical academic book) I discuss representatation as always communicative, so this means the body in relation to all it encounters. Representations are always active, dynamic and ‘conversational’ so the context has to be taken into consideration. This is another way of considering Molyneux which we sort of get into at the end a bit
That's right, I used the concept very loosely. But I don't think it's necessary to converge on a precise definition. The "representation," "idea," "understanding," "image," or whatever we choose to call it, associated with a sensory experience differs completely depending on the sensory modality. The taste of a piece of chocolate and the visual perception of its shape are two entirely different ways of cognizing the same object. It would therefore be surprising if touch and vision elicited the same mental experience or representation. If we tend to regard them as equivalent, it is because the brain has correlated them from birth into a unified conceptual space.
I'm not claiming to have solved Molyneux's problem; I'm simply suggesting that a positive answer would be the more surprising one.
mmm In cognitive neuroscience it matters a whole lot how we ‘hear’ and discuss the word representation and a shift in its common assumption can be quite clarifying…I also think I disagree with what you are saying about how every pattern we notice and communicate about as a representation 'differs completely' across modalities… There are plenty of crosss-modal correspondences whereby for example people pair high pitches (of sound) with bright objects…also there is the bouba/kiki effect…and lots of synesthesia, chromesthesia…but even less rare there are thinkgs like flavors or spatial orientation itself which can not be divided into any one of thes categories like ‘vison’ or ‘proprioception’ because they do not stay in those lines
I'm glad you brought up the Molyneux thought experiment. When I read about the Prakash Project experiments years ago, I found them to be quite convincing evidence in favor of a negative answer. The fact that the subjects learned to recognize shapes visually within three days is not surprising. In my view, there is no reason to believe that a mental representation acquired through one sensory modality must coincide with a mental representation acquired through another. There are electric fish that "see" not only the shape, size and distance of objects but also their conductivity through electric fields detected by receptors in their skin. I doubt that they possess any notion of "squareness" or "roundness" as we experience these qualities through touch or vision, and that we could ever understand like they perceive the world.
Thank you for listening. I wonder how you define mental representations. Tricky word, I know. In some papers and in my mongograph (not the Holding Paradox book but a more philosophical academic book) I discuss representatation as always communicative, so this means the body in relation to all it encounters. Representations are always active, dynamic and ‘conversational’ so the context has to be taken into consideration. This is another way of considering Molyneux which we sort of get into at the end a bit
That's right, I used the concept very loosely. But I don't think it's necessary to converge on a precise definition. The "representation," "idea," "understanding," "image," or whatever we choose to call it, associated with a sensory experience differs completely depending on the sensory modality. The taste of a piece of chocolate and the visual perception of its shape are two entirely different ways of cognizing the same object. It would therefore be surprising if touch and vision elicited the same mental experience or representation. If we tend to regard them as equivalent, it is because the brain has correlated them from birth into a unified conceptual space.
I'm not claiming to have solved Molyneux's problem; I'm simply suggesting that a positive answer would be the more surprising one.
mmm In cognitive neuroscience it matters a whole lot how we ‘hear’ and discuss the word representation and a shift in its common assumption can be quite clarifying…I also think I disagree with what you are saying about how every pattern we notice and communicate about as a representation 'differs completely' across modalities… There are plenty of crosss-modal correspondences whereby for example people pair high pitches (of sound) with bright objects…also there is the bouba/kiki effect…and lots of synesthesia, chromesthesia…but even less rare there are thinkgs like flavors or spatial orientation itself which can not be divided into any one of thes categories like ‘vison’ or ‘proprioception’ because they do not stay in those lines