Philosophy and the Duck-Rabbit

Abstract

Abstract This chapter expounds the puzzle of “seeing as” and summarizes the philosophical state of play so long as aspect perception is considered only for the case of vision. Though ambiguous figures are the focus in popular literature, several different types of seeing-as are distinguished. Wittgenstein’s puzzle is stated: aspect-seeing is often a voluntary and thoughtful matter of interpretation; yet it is also a kind of seeing, a specifically perceptual phenomenon that is fundamental to visual phenomenology. The chapter lists 11 of Wittgenstein’s further observations that have had the status of truisms. Then it states two explanatory claims that have been made as to what underlies seeing-as: Gombrich’s idea of perceptual expectations and the projecting of possibilities, and the more recent suggestion that seeing-as is a matter of attentional focus. The chapter concludes by extending the expectation-plus-attending model to smelling-as, tasting-as, and tactual feeling-as; the model continues to work reasonably well. But we shall see in the following chapter that hearing-as simply blocks the attention idea.