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.
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This reminds me of the Kiki/Bouba effect with congenitally blind individuals (blind from birth).
Basically, sight is needed for people to associate the sharp shape with Kiki and the rounded shape with Bouba. People that are blind from birth don’t really make this association, but after they gain sight they do!
There is something in our brains that links sound, the feel of a shape, and the visuals of a shape the same way for almost everyone, but it needs to actually experience them first to make the connection.
Well that Kiki/Bouba link was a fascinating little rabbit hole you sent me down. I really enjoyed it. Thanks!
There’s no need to be snobbish about “apparantly Deep questions” like they were idiots. They genuinely didn’t know - that’s why it was an interesting question
… they really can’t connect spacial awareness from touch to sight? Really?
I mean, apparently. The brain is so weird, it’s really really difficult to even imagine what it’s like to experience certain things that other people do. For example, sometimes people have their corpus callosum (the membrane between the hemispheres that allows them to communicate with each other) severed to prevent certain types of seizures, and afterwards they lose the ability to see “green men” as faces.
For reference, this is what a “green man” is:
https://acc-cdn.azureedge.net/mrlnop420media/0005503_green-man-wall-plaque.jpegCan you, who easily sees the face, really even understand what it would feel like to look at that image and not see a face?
Skill issue
