Cheng Tony
Department of Philosophy, University College London, UK.
Iperception. 2015 Aug 31;6(4):2041669515599330. doi: 10.1177/2041669515599330. eCollection 2015 Aug.
There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux's question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is "to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them" (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is "to use geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux's original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids" (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux's question empirically.
最近有各种实证尝试来回答莫利纽克斯问题，例如，赫尔德团队进行的实验。这些研究虽然复杂，但也遇到了一些反对意见，比如来自施温克勒的反对，他提出了两种改进实验的方法。一种是“重新进行实验，使刺激物体移动，和/或让受试者相对于它们移动或被允许移动”（第94页），这将促进三维或其他视角不变的表征。另一种是“使用几何形状更简单的物体，比如莫利纽克斯最初提议中的立方体和球体，或者用平面图形代替三维立体”（第188页）。康诺利反对第一种改进，但同意第二种。在本文中，我认为第二种改进也存在问题（尽管仍然可以克服），而且施温克勒和康诺利对通过实证解决莫利纽克斯问题的前景都过于乐观。
