tilthat: TIL a philosophy riddle from 1688 was recently solved. If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone? In 2003 five people had their sight restored though surgery, and, no they could not.
nentuaby: I love when apparently Deep questions turn out to have clear empirical answers.
How is that a "philosophy riddle"? It seems to be a very straightforward yes or no question.
That time was the begging of the scientific revolution; natural sciences were known as natural philosophy. And scientists were more like philosophers, eg Descartes, Bacon, etc.
In one of his biographies, Newton is described as the last magician, and the first scientist.
Newton did dabble quite a bit in alchemy, biblical studies, and the occult, possibly as much as in mathematics and natural philosophy.
Philosophy used to be more or less just that. Basically science without the actual testing, but just overthinking a problem.
What is now called science was once part of philosophy. So questions of philosophy were more broad in the past than now. But philosophy is also still very interested in the findings of science. These aren't exclusive areas of interest.
Physical science was referred to as "natural philosophy"
A PhD doesn't stand for Doctor of Philosophy for nothing.
You seem to think that a philosopher's job is to make stoned guys go woah
Is it not? Please explain!
It does seem straightforward
If you closed your eyes and felt a sphere and a cube you'd be easily able to feel and picture the shapes in your mind because you knew what a sphere and cube looked like before you closed your eyes.
Blind people "see" or experience the world completely different
They have no image in their mind what a sphere or cube would look like. They have only their idea of feeling it.
Seems like an easy conclusion to draw that the blind person would be able to tell the shapes. Sharp corners vs. round object.
But saying that they can't tell the difference, which they can't, seems like a stretch because it's almost unbelievable to someone who can see.
And there's no way to know if they could or couldn't tell the difference without a blind person actually doing the experiment. They couldn't test it, so all they would do was think and debate.
Philosophy is vast. Some branches of it work with thought experiments that seem impossible to be tested/confirmed/solved or, at least, cannot be tested/confirmed/solved yet.
The brain in a vat may be confirmed someday, for example, if we indeed are living in such a situation and it is later revealed. Still, the problem behind would probably persist so I'd defend the thought experiment is useful. The one the post is talking about was impossible to test so it could only be speculated upon, but now it has been tested. Others are more elusive, like Mary's room or the dozens of ethical ones.