.....and able to distinguish by touch the difference between a cube and a globe, was cured of his blindness, could he now tell by sight which was the cube a which was the globe before he touched them?
If he has reasonable human cognitive abilities, after a few moments and his first experiences touching objects and differentiating them from their surroundings, yes. How could he is a pretty silly question. By using his cognition to abstract, duh. However, curing him so that he could see to any useful degree is unlikely, as the vision areas of his brain wouldn't have formed, and he wouldn't know how to see, literally. There might be hope with stem cells and things in the future, though.
You're assuming that he has had experiences using both senses together prior to determining which is the cube and which is the globe.
I would say yes "that has 6 even flat sides and 8 even corners" would make it pretty easy to tell it's a cube -- despite having no visual experience with them
Well yes, he must have something to abstract with. If he just sees, he won't be able to differentiate ANYTHING, or even focus his eyes. As long as he sees SOME things, even if he doesn't get to touch them, if he has a normal set of mental faculties, he'll be able to use his mind to abstract the appearance of the cube and globe. I'm sorry that your super deep philosophical "if a tree falls..." thread sucks.
I'll have to disagree with the consensus of everyone. I say no, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference simply by sight. That's just an opinion, as are the answers of everyone else. As far as I know there is no correct answer to the question.
^^^I agree with you. No. If he never felt and saw a corner for example at the same time I don't think he would be able to connect the two sense experiences.
It's really more of an 'interpretation' than an 'opinion'. An opinion would be preference. Like, which genre of music one prefers, it would be their opinion that that genre is superior. An interpretation would be ones conception of an idea or scenario presented to them. Like this scenario of the blind person. My interpretation would be, of course he'd be able to distinguish the difference between the two. If you closed your eyes and someone presented to you two objects you've never seen before, and had you feel them, you'd definitely be able to tell which one was which when you reopened your eyes. And obviously, if a blind person was presented with two of the SAME object but one was quite larger, he'd be able to tell which one was which if he'd gotten his vision back. In my interpretation, the same would apply with shape, even if the size is the same... The only thing he wouldn't be able to distinguish after regaining his vision, is the color differences between the two objects.
