Molyneux’s Question Within and Across the Senses

Abstract

On a first pass it may seem that contemporary philosophers’ answers to this question should break down neatly according to their views of the metaphysics of perceptual experience, as follows. If perception is a presentation or representation of external objects and their properties, then since shape is a property that can be perceived through vision and touch alike, there should be no need for an associative process before a person can identify shapes that are presented or represented through sight as the same as those that are presented or represented through touch. By contrast, if perceptual experience consists in qualia or internal sensations, then since the qualitative character of visual experience is so different from that of the experience of the world through touch, we should not expect the identity of what is seen with what is touched to be transparent to a naïve perceiver.