In the late 17th century, a scientist named William Molyneux asked the famous philosopher John Locke a question relevant to modern studies of multisensory processing. The question was this: Imagine a person who has been blind since birth, and who is able, by virtue of the sense of touch, to identify three dimensional shapes such as spheres or pyramids.
Now imagine that this person suddenly receives the ability to see. Would the person, without using the sense of touch, be able to identify those same shapes visually?
1. Can modern research in multi-modal perception help answer this question? Why or why not?
2. How do the studies about crossmodal phenomena inform us about the answer to this question?