EXISTENTIALISM
Perceptual Interpretation: The Duck-Rabbit Figure
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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A perceptually ambiguous figure
originally introduced by the Gestalt psychologist J. Jastrow, and
published in his book Fact and Fable in Psychology (1900). It can be
perceived either as a duck or as a rabbit. However, it cannot be perceived
as both simultaneously. The duck-rabbit figure is best known in
philosophical circles as an illustration of aspect perception or
interpretive “seeing as” and is utilized by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
in his influential Philosophical Investigations (1953). For many
philosophers and experimental psychologists, the perceptual experience
elicited and exemplified by the duck-rabbit figure indicates that human
perception is fundamentally interpretive, i.e., an aspect-seeing that is
theory-laden. The interpretive or theory-laden nature of perception means
that our observations are organized by background theories and concepts,
experience, language, and, in general, our entire past. We always see
something as something. For example, if someone has never seen
a rabbit he or she will never identify the duck-rabbit figure as a rabbit.
Conversely, lack of any background experience of ducks will likewise
preclude that identification option. As such, Wittgenstein rejects a naïve
physical account of perception that sharply separates physical vision
from the interpretation of what is seen. This physicalist perceptual model
renders individual interpretation, based upon one’s background framework of
meaning, a secondary act irrelevant to visual perception itself. For
Wittgenstein and many others this model is abstract insofar as it
illegitimately separates out the formative interpretive component
inherent in the concrete act of human perception. Rather, perception
is an interpretive act itself. Wittgenstein’s position on perception
invites careful comparison with Edmund Husserl’s pure phenomenology, Martin
Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s existential
phenomenology, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and
others. In particular, Heidegger’s articulation of the as-structure of
interpretation and its inherent role in contributing to one’s referential
network of meaning in Being and Time (1927) deserves special
mention. Wittgenstein’s concept of perceptual interpretation also bears
directly upon the general nature of interpretive meaning, linguistic
signification, and theoretical conceptuality.
A brief excerpt from Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Investigations:
I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I
see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this
experience “noticing an aspect...” And I must distinguish between the
‘continuous seeing’ of an aspect and the ‘dawning’ of an aspect.... I see
two pictures, with the duck-rabbit surrounded by rabbits in one, by ducks in
the other. I do not notice that they are the same. Does it follow
from this that I see something different in the two cases? It gives
us a reason for using this expression here. “ I saw it quite differently, I
should never have recognized it!” Now, that is an exclamation. And there is
also a justification for it. I should never have thought of superimposing
the heads like that, of making this comparison between them.... I
describe the alteration (change of aspect) like a perception; quite as
if the object had altered before my eyes.... The expression of a change of
aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of
the perception’s being unchanged. I suddenly see the solution of a
puzzle-picture.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 193-196.
Example: The comic
strip below expresses an interpretative seeing-as that is dependent upon a
background concept of a liberal. Of course, its interpretive
warrantability or appropriateness remains an open question. |
