Aspect Perception: A Duck or a Rabbit?

There is a difference between seeing (or “seeing that”) and “seeing as.” That difference is due to aspect perception according to the noted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He used the following image in explaining the meaning and importance of aspect perception. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein is said by some to be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, in spite of not being widely known (or understood). He was born in Austria in 1889, taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947, and died in England in 1951.

During his lifetime, only one book of his philosophy was published, but he left voluminous manuscripts. Some of those were published posthumously in the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations.

In Part II Section XI of that book, Wittgenstein used the above image, which first appeared in the October 23, 1892, issue of Blätter, a German humor magazine. He used that image to illustrate what he termed aspect perception.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is not easily grasped. He is one philosopher whom since my graduate school days I thought I ought to read more than I have. Reading and understanding his philosophical views are not easy. But my purpose here is not to explain Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

I am writing this piece in order to think with you about how we humans can “see” the same thing and understand it in completely opposite ways. Here is another illusion, one that was on a German postal card in 1888, four years before the rabbit-duck image was published.

There are newer versions of this image that I have seen many times, but I was surprised to learn just last week that it is sometimes called the “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” optical illusion.

Depending on which “aspect” you perceive, these images change decisively. The rabbit-duck image changes depending on whether you focus your eyes on the right side or the left side of the drawing. And in the latter, it depends on whether you look at the upper left or the lower right part of the image.

Wittgenstein’s emphasis on aspect perception has religious, as well as political, ramifications. I am indebted to Stephen Law of Oxford University for his thought-provoking essay referring to the duck-rabbit drawing.**

As Law indicates, belief in God may well be far more a way of perceiving things than recognizing “the cogency of certain arguments for the conclusion that God exists.”

Law goes on to say,

Just as some suffer from a kind of aesthetic blindness—they can’t see a particular painting by Pablo Picasso as a powerful expression of suffering—so, some suggest, atheists suffer from a kind of religious blindness that means they’re unable to see the world as it really is: as a manifestation of the divine.

Yes, we would not expect a severely visually impaired person to give an accurate description of a beautiful sunset or the fall splendor of the maple tree I see out my window.

Why should we expect a person who suffers from “religious blindness” to make statements about God as superior to those who have the sight, or insight, that comes from deep faith?

Or, why should those who have a paucity of experience of God think they are qualified to deny the richness of the experience of those who have had, and who continue to have, a deep and ongoing relationship with God?

Law adds a word of caution, though: “Seeing something as a so-and-so doesn’t guarantee that it is a so-and-so.” One can always be mistaken in what they think they “see.” But that is as true for those who “see” no evidence of God as well as for those who do.

So, I encourage those who see only the “old hag” (as she is sometimes called) in the lower image above to shift their eyes upward and you will likely see an attractive young woman.

I also encourage those who see mainly the ugliness of the present world of humans to (metaphorically) shift their eyes “upward.” A change in aspect perception might drastically change what you see—and also help you understand people who see things differently.

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**Law’s article “Do you see a duck or a rabbit: just what is aspect perception?” was posted by aeon.com on July 31, 2018. Aeon is a British digital “magazine of ideas, philosophy and culture” that has been published since 2012.

Note: My next blog post will be partly about the political ramifications of aspect perception.