Touching on Science
Touching on Science
While the Hypothetical Blind man is a useful prop for philosophical theories of mind, he also influences the research of many contemporary neuroscientists. This chapter will survey cases of “restored sight” from the eighteenth century to the present. These cases follow such a predictable script that they have supplied the plots of such literary texts as Wilke Collins’s Poor Miss Finch and Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney. The chapter will go on to describe research on brain plasticity that employs blind subjects to investigate various aspects of tactile perception and mental imaging, without any direct applications for blind people themselves.
Keywords: blindness, restored sight, Molyneux problem, brain plasticity, tactile perception
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