ABSTRACT
If the sight of cortically blind people were restored, could they visually recognize a cube or a sphere? This is Molyneux’s question. The author argue that the answer to this question depends on the specificities of the mental setup of these cortically blind people. Some cortically blind people have (sometimes quite vivid) visual imagery. The answer to Molyneux’s question depends on whether the blind subjects have had visual imagery before their sight was restored. If they did, the answer to Molyneux’s question is yes, if they didn’t, the answer is no. There is no generic answer to Molyneux’s question. The most important interpersonal variation from this point of view concerns the differences in visual imagery among blind subjects. Some blind subjects have visual imagery. Such visual imagery can be triggered not just voluntarily by visualizing, say, a triangle, but also crossmodally, by stimulating a different sense modality.
