So, sure, Locke guess right based on a flawed (seriously: the basic science was 200 years in the future!) premise. That doesn't say much interesting about the subject.
They didn't have an experiment that could test this hypothesis. When we were able to perform an experiment, their hypothesis turned out to be correct.
This isn't "dumb luck" any more than Einstein's theory of general relativity being confirmed by the precession of mercury.
And it doesn't have anything to do with neurology - it's about the structure of the mind and perception, rather than the anatomy of the brain, eye, and hands (software, rather than hardware).
And it's fine as philosophy, because you're allowed to do that. But it's not science, shouldn't be called science, and you shouldn't be using a scientific result based on proper hypothesis testing and two centuries of theory work to argue about who was the "better philosopher".
Not. Science. That's my only point.
That's a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis, and turns out to be testable and correct.
Science, from Google: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
They hardly need a theory for how you gain those experiences - you gain those experiences by seeing objects and by handling them, obviously.
Granted, they didn't understand Maxwell's equations and photoelectric effects and some complete model of the light-retina-nerves-brain-mind system, but they didn't need that in order to make scientific hypotheses about whether we learn to correlate sensory stimuli with the world around us or if it just automatic.
We know more now (but hopefully not as much as people 200 years from now will know), but that doesn't mean they weren't doing science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment
They did have a theory for how one obtains experience, a basic one (the senses collect info about the outside world and...thats it, experience gained!)
It really sounds like you're claiming philosophy is not a science, which doesn't really make sense. Philosophy is certainly a unique kind of science, one where hypotheses must be made on nebulous difficult to define concepts, and lots of things are difficult or impossible to test. However that doesn't automatically make it not scientific. Just because theories are untestable doesn't mean science cannot be done with them. Because they aren't truly untestable, they just aren't entirely testable. You may not be able to prove/disprove a given theory, but you can test a group of theories, limit it to "okay, we can't tell which theory is true, but it absolutely IS one of these theories, not any others" And quite possibly as other science advances, previously untestable aspects may become testable and the list can be shortened.
To claim that philosophy isn't science is to claim it cannot make any objective progress, which is something I definitely disagree with.
Dumb luck doesn't seem to be the right phrase. Their reasoning seems solid, given their assumptions about the basics of how the human being works.
I mean: "Einstein was right" in the context of the Michelson-Morley experiment means that he came up with a predictive theory that was later confirmed by practical scientists. Locke didn't. By scientific standards, he just guessed without any grounding. That distinction is really important!
Edit to expand my point: the bottom line is that our current understanding of neurology has no bearing on who was "right" in a 200-year-old discussion, even though they are "technically" about the same subject. It just doesn't matter. If you want philosophy to be a separate domain from science (and we do, for obvious reasons), you need to keep it separate and not use science to argue about who was the better philosopher.
While it was entirely possible that Locke's prediction would prove to be incorrect. It was not 'dumb luck' it was an 'educated guess'. 'dumb luck' literally is pretty much exactly the opposite of what occurred here.
But I guess someone actually gaining sight just wants to be done ASAP with those silly experiments and go to the theater ;-)
It should be possible, if the subject is given enough time and approaches the task from a rigorous angle, to deduce that the object must be a cube. through a path like...
eyes -> visual processing of the brain -> logical facts about -> mental model of the object in question -> categorizing the mental model -> determining what the object is.
However, I think, the fundamental issue is that in sight, touch etc, typically the concious/logical part of the brain is not involved in determining objects. probably because this is much to slow. There is dedicated hardware/software that does this as far as i am aware.
There are people with the condition where they cannot name, or identify objects from touch but can from sight, even more interesting some people can identify things from touch with their right hand, but not with their left.
Rigorous logical reasoning requires some axioms, and someone who has just gained his or her sight has no reasonable axioms to apply (or, rather, no way to decide, even on the basis of experience, which axioms are reasonable to impose). Suppose that I felt an object and discovered that it felt the same from all angles. Could I conclude that it tasted or smelled the same from all angles? I don't think that is a reasonable conclusion. Why then should I conclude, with no prior evidence to guide me, that it would look the same from all angles?
You can't 100% assume it.
But if there's no reason to think it's a trick question, and one object does smell and taste evenly, while the other object has multiple distinct smells/tastes...
You can get a pretty good idea.
Empiricism is a philosophy.