With respect to Molyneux and Locke, while I believe they get the general idea right, I believe they get the actual answer wrong. The answer to Molyneux's problem should be "yes" --- the newly sighted can correctly associate the shapes.<p>A sufficiently educated and intelligent person with congenital blindness would be able to correctly differentiate the shapes. Say, for instance, had Locke been born blind and still educated as rigorously. Of the many deductions that could be performed, the motion of the head with eyes fixed looking around the border of an object in space approximates the motion of the hand tracing the same object. Many other deductions are possible. All you need are reasonable assumptions about the acclimatization process, e.g., the patient can have a suitable amount of time to adjust to being sighted but cannot touch anything during the process.<p>It is fascinating to think about the idea of disconnected senses, but as so commonly happens, fascination with an idea leads to sloppy thinking, especially among the educated.<p>The reason why the empirical studies of the patients from India are wrong, despite being interpreted as giving a concurring answer, is that the blind have traditionally been given feeble educations, lacking in the type of rigorous thinking necessary to solve the problem. Historically it was challenging to teach abstract reasoning to the blind, and for this reason many were not taught. See Herzog's documentary "Handicapped Future" for tragic examples in relatively wealthy 1960s West Germany. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapped_Future" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapped_Future</a><p>The five patients in India who could not afford simple but life-altering surgery were sure to be poor in addition to being blind, and so surely must have received awful educations. Compounding this are their young ages.<p>A sufficiently motivated, newly-sighted Locke would've gotten the answer correct.