Some philosophers, known as ‘representationalists’ argue that the phenomenal character of experience can be accounted for fully in terms of the representational content of experience. what it is like for a conscious subject to undergo that experience-and its representational content-i.e. Some philosophers and cognitive scientists distinguish between the phenomenal character of an experience-i.e. Further, there is some evidence from neuroscience that, for at least some ambiguous figures, there are significant changes in early-stage visual processing in the brain when the Gestalt switch is taking place, which might support the hypothesis that Gestalt switches in general are changes in the experience itself rather than in downstream mental processes like beliefs about that experience (see Kornmeier & Bach 2006, 2012).įinally, ambiguous figures have been cited in debates about whether the nature of experience can be fully accounted for by appealing only to its representational content. Macpherson discusses this phenomenon and its implications in her 2012 paper. One way in which ambiguous figures might support the claim that visual processing is impenetrable to a significant degree is that the Gestalt switch is hard to control-often one will see a figure one way or another even if one is trying to see it the other way. It is still an open question regarding the extent to which perceptual modules are cognitively impenetrable, and ambiguous figures belong in a large class of illusions which are employed in debates to try and answer that question.
their inner workings and outputs cannot be influenced by conscious awareness. So, in the case of visual illusions, for example, a standard way of explaining why the illusion persists even though one knows that one is experiencing an illusion is that the module, or modules, which constitute the visual system are ‘cognitively impenetrable’ to some degree-i.e. To explain: on the hypothesis that the mind is modular, a mental module is a kind of semi-independent department of the mind which deals with particular types of inputs, and gives particular types of outputs, and whose inner workings are not accessible to the conscious awareness of the person – all one can get access to are the relevant outputs. This issue is intertwined with more general questions about the modularity of mind and cognitive penetration. The Duck-Rabbit, among other ambiguous figures, has been cited in debates over this issue (Silins 2015: §2.4). It is generally agreed that the retinal image is constant when experiencing the figure, but what is not agreed is whether the visual experience of the figure changes when the perspectival switch takes place between seeing the duck versus the rabbit, or whether the experience itself does not change, and it is some post-experiential belief, judgment, or other mental process which changes. There is some controversy over how the Duck-Rabbit Ambiguous Figure works. There are many example of ambiguous figures which you can search for in this illusions index. The Duck-Rabbit Ambiguous Figure belongs in a large class of illusions where a two-dimensional figure, or three-dimensional object can be seen in two or more sharply distinct ways. It was subsequently published and popularised by Jospeh Jastrow (1900).
The Duck-Rabbit Ambiguous Figure was created by an anonymous illustrator in late 19 th Century Germany, and first published in 1892 in the humour magazine Fliegende Blätter.