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THIS IS HOW LOCKE, in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694), introduces a question that had been suggested to him in a letter from William Molyneux:1
... I shall here insert a Problem of that very Ingenious and Studious promoter of Knowledge, the Learned and Worthy iWr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a Letter some Months since; and it is this: Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nightly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and Cother, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Quaere, Whether by his Sight, before he touch 'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube.2
In the standard interpretation of the Molyneux problem as presented in Locke, the question is always linked to the general issue of differences in the ideas of figure received by the various senses. This interpretation-put forward by Berkeley3 -says that for Locke, the ideas of figure produced by sight are specifically different from those produced by the sense of touch. This interpretation is partially justified by the response suggested by Molyneux to his own question, a response approved of by Locke:
To which the acute and judicious Proposer answers: Not. For though he has obtain'd the experience of, how a Globe, how a Cube affects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the Experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; Or that a protuberant angle in the Cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye, as it does in the Cube. I agree with this thinking Gent. whom I am proud to call my Friend, in his answer to this his Problem . . .4
The specific distinction Locke supposedly refers to is sometimes thought to relate to a difference among the number of perceivable dimensions. The idea is that in Locke, only the sense of touch can receive ideas of three-dimensional figures,...