CFP: Molyneux's Question Today: Special issue for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (PHIMISCI)

Few topics in the philosophy of perception have received more diverse scholarly attention than Molyneux’s question: would a person with blindness, able to identify cubes and spheres by touch, immediately identify these shapes by sight alone if suddenly able to see? While many studies on Molyneux’s question attempt to resolve the puzzle, this special issue also asks for contributions that utilize Molyneux’s question to both clarify and criticize accounts of sensory perception, epistemology, mind, and metaphysics. 

Themes Include:

• How might reinterpreting past answers, such as those by Locke or Berkeley, result in novel ways of understanding Molyneux’s question today and the relation between the senses?
• How do recent accounts of olfaction, touch, etc. relate to Molyneux’s question? Can the question illuminate these debates today?
• How does Molyneux’s question relate to the claim that perception has a multisensory character, producing experiences unique to those from single modalities?
• How do different theories of consciousness constrain an answer to Molyneux’s question?
• Can a predictive processing approach suggest an answer to the question, or a novel way of addressing it?
• Can 4E approaches to cognition explain the problem of Molyneux under a new light?
• Can Molyneux’s question be retold with non-human robotic devices and their embodied grasping models?

Deadlines And Dates of Publication

• Abstract Submission Deadline (500 Words + Bibliography): 15 November 2023
• Notification of Abstract Acceptance (Editors review): 15 December 2023
• Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 May 2024
• Reviews (2 blind reviews + Editors review) of Article Deadline: 15 August 2024
• Revised Manuscript Submission including Guest Editors’ Introduction: 1 October 2024
• Publication Date: 4th Quarter of 2024

Please, send your abstract by 15 November 2023 to: [email protected]

-Gabriele Ferretti & Brian Glenney (eds.)

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