Duck,
Rabbit or Both? Wittgenstein on Looking Twice at A Level! Duck, Rabbit or
Both? Wittgenstein on Looking Twice at A Level! Duck, Rabbit or
Both? Wittgenstein on Looking Twice at A Level!

Duck, Rabbit or Both? Wittgenstein on Looking Twice at A Level!

I thought this weekend I would lift the lid on an A Level class from earlier this week.  We looked at Ludwig Wittgenstein, the highly influential, 20th-century Austrian-British mathematician and philosopher, professor at Cambridge University who revolutionised analytic philosophy, logic and the philosophy of language.  The effects of his work are felt today in, inter alia, cognitive science and therapy, law (judicial discretion), public policy development, linguistic philosophy and theology.

Wittgenstein makes a distinction between 1) what we see and 2) the meaning of what we see.  He calls 1) what we see, “seeing” (fairly obvious, I know, but it does get deeper, I promise!) By this, he means “taking in with our eyes” the thing, the objective properties of the object that is there before us, the raw visual data before our eyes.  2) How we interpret what we see, the meaning of what we see, Wittgenstein calls “seeing as”. Here, Wittgenstein is saying that we always interpret our experience of “seeing” in a particular way. I might 1) “see” someone in the street, but I 2) “see her as” an old friend. So I call out, she turns round - but it is in fact a total stranger! The meaning of what I saw (I “saw her as” my friend) was actually incorrect (though it would have been correct if it had been her).  Using examples like the famous illusions above (duck-rabbit and young woman-old woman), Wittgenstein shows how the same thing before our eyes can be perceived differently: the lines, the ink and the areas of light and dark in the images above do not change, but my perception shifts from seeing a duck to seeing a rabbit, or from seeing a young woman with a bonnet on to seeing an old woman with a bonnet on. 

John Hick was a philosopher of religion who developed Wittgenstein’s idea into the notion of “experiencing-as”.  Hick says that everything we experience in the world can be experienced in different ways.  People can give different interpretations to the same experiences. Consider the experience of watching Ricky Gervais. I had a former colleague who loathed Ricky Gervais’ brand of humour, finding him smug and arrogant.  He was offended, possibly even a little insecure or threatened, by RG’s jokes about religion.  I have to admit, my own way of seeing/experiencing Gervais is very different. I appreciate why some people might see him as smug and I might not agree with every single thing he ever says, but I have to say I think his comedy (including his religious humour) is, by and large, hilarious.  As someone who has been around philosophy, ethics, religious studies and theology for most of my adult life, I find that many of Gervais’ jokes resonate with me, leaving me smiling and thinking to myself, “Yes!  I know religious people just like that!”  

Wittgenstein’s “seeing/seeing-as” (and Hick’s experiencing-as) are useful in several ways for students. Young (and not so young!) people often have pretty simple “pictures” of how the world works.  Wittgenstein’s work shows that while objects (duck-rabbit or young woman-old woman) and experiences do not change, our interpretations can and do.  In a Year 11 A Level Philosophy Taster Day in January, students discussed the need to develop sharp critical faculties if we are to grow in social (and other) media literacy and in our knowledge of how the world works. One student might read a post as funny, while another sees it as bullying. They need to learn that algorithms, influencers and even friends frame information in a certain way and that their own reactions will be shaped by what they already believe. Does that framework of beliefs need stretching? Do students understand that different news outlets interpret the same events differently?  Was the 2003 Iraq War a liberation of oppression, an illegal land grab, a geopolitical catastrophe, etc?  It depends on which news channel we watch!  Do students realise that when people see the world differently from them, these people are not necessarily mad or bad - they may just be looking at the world through different lenses.  This can be a very useful lesson to learn for the workplace and for life in general - i.e. Wittgenstein can help us grow in emotional intelligence!  He may also help students reinterpret what they saw as personal disaster (e.g. failing a test, losing a match) as a step in the right direction (growth in resilience or a lesson for life).  Wittgenstein can teach students about science and religion. As someone deeply interested in science, philosophy, ethics and theology, I have never quite understood why people feel forced to choose between a scientific or religious worldview.  The world is ambiguous from a religious or secular point of view, and so I have every sympathy with both the atheistic and theistic perspectives  (even if the latter makes more sense to me personally).  I totally understand why some people think a beautiful sunset is a beautiful sunset and nothing more - I get why some people see it as a merely physical event (the Earth’s rotation on its axis causes the sun to no longer be visible from their location on that planet).  I also understand why some people agree that a sunset is indeed a physical description, but then add another quality, which they call “beauty.” I also get why a third group of people may see a sunset as a physical event, an instance of beauty and a third thing: the intimation of a spiritual realm, a whisper or echo from another dimension of existence mediated through the first two (a spiritual or religious moment).  Finally, Wittgenstein also teaches students about analysis and critical evaluation. He shows them that being able to think, write and present critically for academic or professional purposes will entail looking at things from many angles, so that they see things in all their complexity.

Wittgenstein shows us that a complex and pluralistic world requires that we be open to interpretations of life different to our own.  With that, of course, comes a real danger of letting the world collapse into a relativistic “anything goes” approach to life - a world in which complex and dangerous issues are left to people’s individual whims will always make people nervous (think of the controversies in identity politics at the moment). Nevertheless, any school worthy of the name, let alone one inspired by the gospel of love, also has to help its members avoid fanaticism and fundamentalism of any kind. Education requires the integration of new information and broader horizons into our existing worldview, while also respecting other people’s right to differ with us.  A good school respects us and them, refuses to exclude either us or them from the conversation, and then helps us live with the tension that follows on from that.  That’s what we call living together.

Have a nice weekend, Beaulieu!