seeing as wittgenstein

Wittgenstein discussed the case of the duck-rabbit figure, which we can see as a duck, or see as a rabbit, but not both at the same time.) When I'm looking at the photograph, I don't tell myself 'That could be seen as a human being'. Let's say that we can only see the duck, for we are entirely unfamiliar with rabbits. New York. How on earth does one make an interpretation without conscious thought? 1992. pp. This type of analysis is infused in Bertrand Russell's treatment of what we can be said to be doing when we 'see': In our environment it frequently happens that events occur together in bundles--such bundles as distinguish a cat from another kind of object. The data that the senses acquire and deliver to the brain via electrical impulses along the body's nervous system, as current psychological theories dictate, is manifested in the brain in the form of unorganized percepts (which can be considered another form of data). What science has discovered about the human body has led traditional philosophy, in its attempt to conform to the findings of science, to accept a number of presuppositions. If, on the other hand, pictorial perception involves It can account for both why we are sometimes mistaken in our perceptions as well as why it is that our perceptions seem to occur spontaneously and without conscious thought. In the case of seeing, however, the statement, "I see a cat," is a meaningful one since its truth or falsity can, according to the proponents of such schools of thought, be empirically verified. Or you can dismiss until our next donations drive (typically at the beginning of October). Our eyes are not simply tools used by the brain which do the 'seeing' for it. Therefore the brain is thought of as making interpretations on both the conscious and the unconscious level. Where is the interpretation in this case? Then physics allows us to infer that light of certain frequencies is proceeding from the object to our eyes. The case of seeing aspects seems that, at least for particular kinds of drawings, the aspects must somehow already be contained in the picture. --§ 38, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I, --§ 525, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II. That one sees the picture differently each time, if it is now a duck and now a rabbit--or, that what is the beak in the duck is the ears in the rabbit, etc.? 1958. pp. (10). We could say, as I understand Russell in his account of 'seeing' a cat, that these inferences are made out of habit, and therefore occur undetected by conscious thought. How can a brain by itself exhibit consciousness? "Wittgenstein on Understanding". Any more than I take letters to be this or that when I'm reading a book. Denonn, Lester E. Ed. So why call it 'interpreting'? He has been referred to as a behaviorist, a skeptic, a verificationist, and is even thought by some to be a practitioner of a sort of a priori anti-science. The various contexts and examples Wittgenstein introduces, it also becomes obvious that the seeing experience depends upon both the perceiving subject and the object perceived. Is this not the way that we have come to use and understand the concept of interpretation in our everyday language game, namely that an interpretation is at least to some degree a conscious and deliberate inference which may or may not turn out to be correct? This is simply unfathomable, because without the spontaneity of our alleged inferences, we would have been plagued by the constant awareness that we could be mistaken about everything that we see. Nor when looking at an F do I say: 'That could be seen as an F'. Some have made the claim, as mentioned in the introduction to this essay, that Wittgenstein is practicing a kind of philosophical anti-science, in that his arguments regarding mind and psychology are seen as an attack on neuroscience and psychology. I. If such were the case, we would all be born into a state of severe skeptical doubt. Simon & Schuster. 9. Hence, only through clarification of what the legitimate questions are can proper sense be made of the applicability of science. Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria, to awealthy industrial family, well-situated in intellectual and culturalViennese circles. You can dismiss the support request pop up for 4 weeks (28 days) if you want to be reminded again. Click here to navigate to parent product. Therefore, 'seeing', or 'seeing as' is simply an experience which neither has nor needs any kind of theoretical verification. (9). One would simply say, "I see an airplane." 30990675 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG © 2020 Informa UK Limited, Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation. Wittgenstein does not have any quarrels with legitimate scientific inquiry or its findings. For such theoretical reductions regarding psychological concepts, traditional philosophy is indebted at least in part to the influence of the verificationist movement in the early twentieth century, out of which came programs such as logical positivism (or logical empiricism) and Russell's logical atomism. III. Is there really an external world? II. Goldfarb, Warren. Personally, I do not recall ever having had to develop the habit of 'seeing' things properly; of going through a process of hypothesizing about whether I see a cat or something else. When we tell someone to 'walk' to the store, is this just short for telling them to undergo the above process? . This is the way that we have come to use and understand the concept in our language game. ', I could answer him only that way. We simply alternate between passively seeing the ambiguous picture as a duck and seeing it as a rabbit. (The draft of water, the draft of a treaty.) etc.") Or is that just the way that science attempts to explain how we walk? From this passage, it is apparent that Russell, in light of this rather simple example, maintains that there must be some constituting or essential object being perceived, and whether it is perceived to be one thing or another is determined solely by the brain's interpretation, be it mistaken or not, of what that object is. When we look at the duck-rabbit, without any awareness that it can be seen two different ways, we only see either a duck or a rabbit. To this regard it is an action that is at least to some degree performed consciously and deliberately. It is known that he even repudiated the schools of thought which he himself had influenced, such as logical positivism and the "Oxford School" of linguistic philosophy. 4. Modern philosophers of the traditional vein, in their attempts to align the study of philosophy with the methodological commitments of science, have come under this aforementioned presupposition that the brain is really the "I" and the eyes do the seeing for it. .' In order to make an interpretation, we seem to have to imagine the figure as being embellished a little this way or a little that, and/or as existing in one context or another. As I understand Russell, to 'see' a cat, in a nutshell, is to infer that our eyes are being affected by a bundle of certain frequencies of light. A theoretical account of 'hearing' that is along the same lines as the account of 'seeing' would thus not seem appropriate, particularly in light of this phenomenon of perfect pitch. And unless we wish to say that the unconscious, mechanistic processing of sensory 'data' in the brain can sometimes be "mistaken" in the way that a hypothesis can, we seem to have to admit that this usage of the word does not account for mistakes or ambiguities in perception. What are we interpreting? ). Where Socrates says, “Virtue is knowledge,” Dr. Verdi’s Wittgenstein says, “Ethics is aspect-seeing,” an ingrained appreciation of alternate possibilities and the respect that goes with it. Philosophers of psychology, in their efforts to determine theoretically what it is to 'see', or to provide a theoretical account of what it means to speak of 'seeing' something, have become tied up in this empirical, scientific picture. Therefore, it can be said that one of the most important things to keep in mind when reading Wittgenstein's work is that he is concerned with freeing us from traditional, a priori philosophical presuppositions and is attempting to push us to look at philosophical issues in new and different ways. However, even though this use may have fewer ridiculous ramifications, his account still remains problematic. If someone says that he knows by introspection that it is a case of 'seeing', the answer is: 'And how do I know what you are calling introspection? New York. Wittgenstein’s seeing as book. What is it to maintain a 'Wittgensteinian' position on an issue? This is the trap into which traditional philosophy has fallen: to maintain that the eyes 'see' and the ears 'hear', and that we, as brains, consciously as well as unconsciously interpret the information that we receive from the sensory apparati that are positioned throughout the bodies in which we reside. --I couldn't answer: 'I take that to be a . Wittgenstein then goes … Again, we can rely on Russell to lend his support to this idea: There are in fact no illusions of the senses, but only mistakes in interpreting sensational data as signs of things other than themselves. It is a passive experience, just as it is a passive experience for a person with perfect pitch to 'hear' E flat. Goldfarb quotes Wittgenstein from the Philosophical Investigations, §131. Wittgenstein’s meditation on aspect-change, seeing-as and Kippbilderis imbued with an openness and radicality that goes beyond and questions classical philosophy and its metaphysical inspiration, while also showing a strong continuity with a certain philosophical tradition, the Kantian one. University of Chicago Press. We would never then say, or it would at least seem very peculiar of us to say, "I see it as a duck," just as it would seem utterly strange to hear someone who is looking up toward the sky at a distant airplane say, "I see it as an airplane!" Many authors have identified a link between later Wittgenstein and enactivism. A verificationist is committed to this type of theoretical conceptualization of 'seeing', because conceptualizing it in any other way would render such statements meaningless. He seems to be showing us, contrary to those who mistakenly take him to be a behaviorist, that there are internal, inexplicable things going on within us, that the things we do and experience cannot all be explained or accounted for by pointing to some physical origin or process. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. He has been something of a cult figure but shunned publicity and even built an isolated hut in Norway to live in complete seclusion. Citadel Press. Up to a point, we can test this hypothesis by experiment: we can touch the cat, and pick it up by the tail to see if it mews. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. .' Based upon past experience with similar bundles and through force of habit, we infer or interpret that the resulting perception is in fact that of a cat (he even refers to 'seeing' the cat as a hypothesis, and further suggests a method by which to test it!). Introduction Brendan Harrington Wittgenstein, Seeing-As, and Novelty William Child Gombrich and the Duck-Rabbit Robert Briscoe Gestalt Perception and Seeing-As Komarine Romdenh-Romluc Aspect Perception and the History of Mathematics Akihiro Kanamori Seeing-As and Mathematical Creativity Michael Beaney and Bob Clark Prospective versus Retrospective Points of View in Theory of Inquiry: … But if I now wanted to offer reasons against this way of putting things--what would I have to say? 3e, 6. Even the person Wittgenstein calls 'aspect-blind' would be capable of seeing the similarity between two faces thus understood (see Wittgenstein 2009, Part II, 257), . On the other hand, the customary conceptualization of the word can account for why we might think we see an airplane in the sky and it turns out to be a bird, to use Russell's example--that our conscious inferences based on our perceptions can sometimes be mistaken. Philosophers who have allowed these elements in the philosophical tradition to influence them have thus created a sharp divide between what one sees and what one infers from what one sees, namely that what one sees is raw sensory data, and all else is interpretation. Difficulties with Wollheim's borrowing from Wittgenstein --pt. So if a verificationist cannot provide an account of 'seeing', what can he give an account of? A scientific explanation of 'seeing' will only be a physiological one, which in turn cannot explain, cannot penetrate into the brute fact of the experience of 'seeing' the figure as a duck and then as a rabbit, for example. 93e, 7. 1980. pp. According to this traditional picture, my seeing it one way and then another is due solely to whether I interpret it to be one way or the other, since my eyes have apparently done the 'seeing' for me beforehand. In more specific terms, we become passive observers to the different aspects that the object seems to take on as we view it. For an account of 'seeing' such as Russell's to hold water, there must be something which we can point to that constitutes both the duck and the rabbit as the proper object of perception. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein's later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy's attention to the actual conditions of our common life in … His aim is to prevent us from adopting a 'scientistic' view of things, a view that every linguistic concept we use to describe what we do, such as 'seeing', 'believing', and 'understanding', point to factual, physical things in the world or in ourselves, and can thus be scientifically investigated and expounded. William Day & Victor J. Krebs (Cambridge UP, 2010), a collection of essays on Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-seeing. The problem, of course, lies in using the word 'interpretation' to denote the unconscious processing of sensory data in the brain. For to say that we see an object as something holds the implication that it can be perceived in more than one way, but does this mean that we are making different interpretations of one essential object or image, or are we actually seeing different aspects? Thus, it is unacceptable to a positivist to allow that 'seeing' can be conceptualized as simply something which we do, as something which can stand on its own two feet, without need of verification by a further supporting account. References to sections in Part I will use a number sign (i.e., #). Wittgenstein wants to break us out of the scientistic habit of presupposing that mental and psychological attributions like beliefs, desires, understanding, and sensory experiences of every kind can be reduced to theoretical, physiological accounts. Wittgenstein wants to draw a fine line between 'seeing' and 'interpretation' by showing that there are cases in which we can see things as without making inferences. Registered in England & Wales No. An examination of the way in which we conceptualize 'interpretation' will do much to shed light on the way in which we conceptualize 'seeing'. Is that really what it means to walk? 17e, 11. It is then the job of the brain to somehow organize this perceptual data, (there is still no scientific consensus as to how the brain is said to perform this function) into a recognizable perception. Philosophical Investigations is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgenstein calls, in the preface, Bemerkungen, translated by Anscombe as "remarks". Since Wittgenstein's ideas seem to elude classification so thoroughly, it is difficult to refer to them as anything but 'Wittgensteinian'. or 'Probably that is a . WITTGENSTEIN ON SEEING AND SEEING AS WITTGENSTEIN ON SEEING AND SEEING AS HUNTER, J.F.M. It is possible to jump from one such pattern to another and for the two to alternate. Let us put it another way. I find it to be much more plausible that by the word "habit," Russell is referring to a natural disposition or inclination of the human brain which works at the unconscious level. In 1908 he began his studies in aeronauticalengineering at Manchester University where his interest in thephilosophy of pure mathematics led him to Frege. IV. ', or 'I can't see it as . 'Seeing-in' is an imaginative act of the kind employed by Leonardo’s pupils when he told them to see what they could - for example, battle scenes - in a wall of cracked plaster. For example, Wittgenstein is well known for his discussion of seeing-as, most famously through his use of Jastrow’s ambiguous duck-rabbit picture. Furthermore, to try to give a theoretical account of what it is to 'see'--to put it in terms, as discussed earlier in this essay, which describe the physical processes undergone by the respective areas in the body--is akin to giving a theoretical account of what it is to walk. The meaning of the concept lies in this experience. . 1992. pp. When we normally speak of seeing in our everyday language-game, we are not inclined to say, "I see the picture as a duck," but rather we simply say, "I see a duck.". Wittgenstein's aim is to steer us off of this crooked path of theorizing based on such a priori presuppositions. If Russell means this by "habit," he is then treating 'seeing' as if it were a conscious process which we have developed to the point of needing to think little or nothing of while doing and have come to take for granted, like walking, riding a bicycle, or driving a five-speed clutch. His response to this is not the latter, as our traditional philosophical inclinations would have us expect, but rather it is the former, namely that to see the figure one way and then another is to really see something different in each instance. And if they were to be deemed meaningless, then how could any form of empirical verification be meaningful when empirical verification in itself is in fact wholly dependent upon statements which declare sensory observations (i.e., "I see where the optic nerve attaches to the brain")? (my italics) (2). The traditional stance on this issue would, of course, be of the former persuasion. Let me indulge in a final cavil, then, one which I’ve already intimated. What seems disturbing about this account to me, and I'm inclined to think Wittgenstein would agree, is that there are an awful lot of "inferences" or "hypotheses" being made for a process which is described as an entirely "spontaneous" one. In the preface, Wittgenstein describes his failure to synthesize his points into a unified work. Wittgenstein's dictum that "we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and powerful” (PI 109) is pertinent here: much, if not all, of what we ordinarily call seeing involves chronic aspect-seeing.23 Let us return to a person who lacks the capacity to see aspects. Philosophers have always wrestled with the problems of sense and perception. A scientistic viewpoint ignores this need for clarification. In the case of the aforementioned figure 'F', therefore, this traditional analysis has instilled in many modern philosophers the conviction that there must be some common, essential object of perception between the 'F' and the mirror-image of the 'F', which is interpreted differently in each instance. All rights reserved. However, as already mentioned in the context of 'permanent aspect seeing', this does not mean that every seeing is to be understood as a seeing as, which Wittgenstein points out in various passages. Due to this failure, he says that the book's structure "compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction." Breadcrumbs Section. The basic evil of Russell's logic, as also of mine in the Tractatus, is that what a proposition is is illustrated by a few commonplace examples, and then pre-supposed as understood in full generality. Science can tell us how the eyes and nerves work, what kind of chemicals are released in the brain, how much electrical activity is occurring in what part of the brain under what stimuli, and so on. Directed by Derek Jarman. The scientistic inclination to search for a physical account of mental and psychological notions is an expression of the mental discomfort we feel at the thought of being unable to provide reasons for why we are the way we are and why we do the things we do. Upon Frege’sadvice, in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study with BertrandRussell. In the first part, the remarks are rarely more than a paragraph long and are numbered sequentially by paragraph. And since the eyes are the only things doing the actual 'seeing', all that is left for us to do is to infer or interpret what the eyes 'see', and where this interpretation occurs, of course, is in the brain. It would seem that a person with perfect pitch experiences a genuine 'hearing' of one pitch or another. Wittgenstein pointed to the epistemological significance of puzzle pictures, such as the ambiguous “duck-rabbit” that can be seen either as a duck’s head facing one way or a rabbit’s head facing another way. Are we 'seeing' one essential object of perception, and merely interpreting it differently, or are we genuinely 'seeing' a duck and then 'seeing' a rabbit? New Jersey. In Part II of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein elaborates: Imagine a physiological explanation of the experience. An interpretation, as we have already established, is a conscious, deliberate act. pt. University of Chicago Press. ." In ordinary everyday life, however, there are many things for which only one interpretation is correct or the most plausible, such as when a person infers that there is a UFO hovering in the night sky and it turns out that it is only the planet Venus. In §7-8 of Volume I of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Wittgenstein writes: 7. To what extent we do this becomes obvious when we make a mistake--for example, when what we thought was an airplane turns out to be a bird. 110. Is it so that we at some time in our early lives found it necessary to make conscious inferences regarding everything in our environment? Sharing the same physical location in space does not make it so that the word to denote the objects can be used to mean both concepts at once. What do we see when we observe the above figure? The customary usage of the word cannot account for this consideration, because it would seem obvious to us that seeing does not always require conscious inferences. Seeing and Seeing‐as in Wittgenstein's Tractatus TILGHMAN, B. R. 1983-04-01 00:00:00 B . . . To see the above image as a duck, and then to see it as a rabbit, is to see two different aspects of the image, just as it is to see the F-figure as an 'F' or a mirror-image of an 'F' (though these can be considered to be two different kinds of aspect perception). Wittgenstein came to see that language is not one monolithic system of representations for picturing reality. With Karl Johnson, Michael Gough, Tilda Swinton, John Quentin. One such presupposition is that the brain in itself is the seat of consciousness, and the rest of the body is a sort of mechanistic, organic vehicle in which the brain resides and by which it maneuvers through the world. Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is a collection which examines Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing, showing that it was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein's later writings but rather a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy's attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. To interpret it as a wire frame, we imagine that the sides of the figure are not solid, and that the lines are made out of thin metal wire. There is a distinction to be made here concerning this issue. Although this passage (like PI 258) is often interpreted as a comment It might also be apt of us to say in this case, depending on the level of our skeptical sensibilities, that such a person's imagination has run wild, so to speak. My doubt, in particular, is that Russell would actually mean such silliness by his use of the word "habit." In Russell's account of what it is to 'see' a cat, he claims that through induction, we "infer" that the light patterns before us proceed from a cat. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. This is the kind of similarity that we must look for, in order to justify the use of the word 'see' in that context. Before you dismiss, please consider making a donation. I want to revisit the topic in the hope of gaining some clarity on the matter. Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. At the same time, and as McGinn herself has insisted in previous work (1997), the Wittgensteinian aspect is not 'inner' or metaphysically 'private'. (3). And since the meaning of this statement, according to proponents of this movement in philosophy, is the mode of empirically verifying its truth or falsity, such meaning must be put in terms of the method in which statement's truth or falsity is determined. Russell, Bertrand. We thus end up with an application of the word 'interpretation' which seems to go against its customary usage, namely that we take a word which is used to denote a conscious activity and use it to denote an unconscious one. What if we say, "He is going to go walking," that is to say, to go on a 'walk'?

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