I picked the answer everyone else has pretty much instantly. It doesn’t seem very philosophical though.
My crack at it, without looking it up or reading the replies:
His normal eyesight sees humans as tall and thin.
Our normal eyesight sees humans as accurately proportional.
normal = normal
The answer is philosophical in the sense that’s based on logic.
I reckon:
If his optical defect makes him see normal stuff as tall and thin, then actually the figures in his paintings would be normal, because as he painted them the painted figures would look tall and thin to him, which is as far as he can tell as things normally look in the world.
I went for the first half of rexnervous’s spoilered response.
It doesn’t matter how it is viewed by others, if he had a physical defect, why would it only affect the human figures?
I don’t think it’s a particularly useful intelligence sieve. But to the extent that it is to be used as one, I think the idea is that one should see the nonsensicality unprompted; i.e., simply being told of the ophthalmologist’s theory without being told that there is a mistake to be sought, one should realize “Wait, that theory has an obvious and serious flaw”.
This reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin is talking to his dad:
CALVIN: Hey, Dad, why are all those old pictures of Grandpa as a kid black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
DAD: Sure they did, Calvin. It’s just that the world was black and white in those days. It didn’t turn color until the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color there for a while.
CALVIN: Oh. (Pause.) But the what about all the old paintings? Doesn’t that mean the artists were seeing color?
DAD: Not necessarily. Many great artists were insane.
CALVIN: But then how come their paintings are in color?
DAD: Because they turned color in the 1930s along with the rest of the world.
CALVIN: But then how come the photos are still black and white?
DAD: Because they were already color film, remember? They were color pictures of a black and white world.
(last frame)
CALVIN, talking dejectedly to Hobbes: The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.
I reckon it’s because
El Greco thought really tall, thin people were hot
Ooh, it’s so rare that I get to say that I’m smart, but this time I got it right away! 
I’ve read the other responses, and I had the same answer.
First I realized the answer he was looking for, then I decided to out-smart him and decided that the first guy could be right: the fictional sight distortion can actually vary from distance, his model would bo more distorted as he was far away while the painting would be less distorted as it was in front of him.
Actually there was no such thing, he just painted like that for the same reason every other artist had their own idiosyncrasies. But this is a silly test anyway.
I win all of you, tho.
Or they’re not post whores like us.
While Medewar’s point is sort of correct, it’s phrased in a somewhat pompous way, and itself has some unspoken assumptions which may be wrong.
The doctor’s unstated logic (assumed by Medewar):
1 - El Greco paints figures in a distorted, elongated fashion.
2 - An irregularity in an optical lens can distort visual images in this way.
3 - The human eye (including El Greco’s) has a lens in it.
4 - El Greco is trying to paint things as he sees them.
Therefore, if El Greco had the irregularity from #2, he would see things distorted, resulting in him painting things distorted.
The “obvious” flaw is that El Greco, as a visual painter, would be looking at his own painting while executing it, and thus any distortion he saw of his models would be similarly distorting his perception of what his work looked like. If his goal really was #4, they would “cancel out”.
Of course, many painters in the past 125 years (after El Greco) would disagree with #4, that one “paints what one sees (in the real world)”, rendering the entire chain of inference moot.
However Medewar is assuming that the ophthalmologist is thinking of El Greco possessing a physically distorted eye lens in referring to a “defect of vision”, which would apply both to how El Greco sees his models and also how he sees his own paintings. That’s probably true, as an ophthalmologist typically works with lenses. BUT, it’s also possible that he was referring to a NEUROLOGICAL defect or disorder, where it’d be possible that it only affected how he perceived human figures, or those of living creatures, and not anything else; or else affects only what he sees in three dimensions (with his eyes), but not in two (on a flat canvas).
At least I think it’d be possible. I’m no neurologist, but I have seen and read pop science case study descriptions of some pretty crazy shit.
You guys are good. Just for completeness here is Medawar’s answer:
Suppose a painter’s defect of vision was, as it might easily have been, diplopia - in effect, seeing everything double. If the ophthalmologist’s explanation were right, then such a painter would paint his figures double; but if he did so, then when he came to inspect his handiwork, would he not see all the figures fourfold and maybe suspect that something was amiss?
It’s from an essay called *Advice to a young scientist *which talks about what it takes to be a scientist. His ‘intelligence test’ is actually not very reflective of the theme of the work - Medawar mainly writes about how more prosaic qualities like hard work, curiosity and tenacity are what gets the job done.
I guess a similar fallacy would be:
“Many people have noted artist Cecil Dopers paintings have green skys and blue lawns. It’s because he has a vision problem where he sees green as blue and blue as green.”
I don’t think it takes a genius to say “Oh real…ly… wait a second!”
I fugured out what was bothering me about the answer, sort of. The visual distortion the opthamologist hypothesized couldn’t have caused El Greco to paint the way he did, but some visual problems could cause the painter to paint differently. Somebody who can’t distinguish between red and green won’t paint those colors properly, for example. Somebody put together an experiment a few years back where they had color blind people use a computer to color a black and white photo to match a color photo; the photo they colored had obvious gaps and were a good example of how color blind people see the world. Another is the theory that Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and some of his other later works look the way they did because his habit of eating his lead based paint caused him to see light sources with a halo effect; that’s possible because his paint and canvas weren’t themselves light sources. Also possible, I think, is the theory that Monet’s blue period was due to the fact that his cataract surgery caused aphakia and the corresponding abilty ability to see into the near ultraviolet spectrum.
I got it, though it took a couple more read-throughs.
Actually, it isn’t nonsense. If El Greco is only seeing people elongated then why would he see the paintings of them elongated? The above explanation assumes that El Greco’s view of the real world and his representation of that world are equally distorted.
The explanation also assumes that El Greco is not aware of this defect, if he is he may be compensating for seeing any extra elongation in his paintings.
I got it, and thought it was rather ridiculously self-evident.
Apparently, I’m more than bright, I’m brilliant!
Because it’s a physical impossibility for things to work otherwise.
He could have a PSYCHOLOGICAL defect that leads to seeing people (and only people, not representations of people) distended (which would be strange*, but not impossible), but not physical.
Making the leap that he has such a psychological glitch, thinking that he’s stretching the people in his paintings, because he sees people, but not paintings of people, as elongated, assumes that either he’s never seen any other painting of a person, or else he thinks every other portrait and religious artist in Europe is painting their figures as stunted. Or else invariably use short, broad people as models.
If he’s seen other paintings, and realizes they’re mostly normally sized people, then he would either account for his own oddity, and adjust his figures as needed, or else actively decide to paint people how he sees them, meaning the answer is still ‘he paints people like that because he wants to.’
- This would cause some odd perceptions of non-persons as well, if any people were nearby, due to the contrast between the people and the non-people.
Wow, I got it immediately.
In fact, I got it so easily, that I began to look for a deeper meaning that only the most intelligent could discover. I was trying to see if the double means of “bright” and “dull” played a factor. Perhaps the perception of the painting depended on lighting.
On the verge of being dull; I still think the explanation could work.
Greco’s “defect of vision” could be an external physical defect (him painting through a warped/slightly-curved window or reflected by water (he lived in Venice)). Or he could view his subjects in good lighting outside, then go back to his dimly light room to paint, and have to use glasses that distort his sight, or vice versa with bad sunglasses outside and normal vision when painting.
It could be pychosematic (him being traumatized as a kid by a oddly tall person, and now he views all people that way in person, but not while they are images in a painting).
It could be a defect of his eyes that he sees blobs on his eyes (vitreous floaters) in high light (when looking at his subjects) that make people look elongated, and in low light, images return to normal.