Opiniatrety

It also appears in Art and Illusion (from 1956, so after PI), and IIRC Gombrich doesn't refer to Wittgenstein when he introduces it.

Oddly last night I was thinking about the duck-rabbit w.r.t a sequence in some Mother Goose-themed Pogo collection in which most of the animals are more or less the Politburo of a Soviet-like nation (the theme wasn't hewed to closely) and one of them complains that the cigar he's smoking is terrible, is informed that it's actually a sausage, and comments that for a sausage it's not a bad cigar. I can't remember how the duck-rabbit entered into the picture but somehow it did.

That graphic has always bugged me, kinda, because it doesn't look like a duck or a rabbit, much. I don't understand why the beak/ears are pointy. Makes no sense, as both ducks' beaks and rabbits' ears are rounded.

The article about Jastrow I linked has Art and Illusion from 1960, citing Wittgenstein (as well as the original German mag). Witters did have rounded ears. Bug's ears are pretty pointy, though not in the way of the original duck-rabbit.

Huh. My memory deceived me, then (and clearly I didn't follow the link, people). I think the lectures on which A&I is based were in 56, then.

Ok, well, shows what I know about philosophy.

B, no worries, that's a perfectly valid point; the shape of the specific duck-rabbit that Wittgenstein drew isn't considered a critical point in philosophy :-). Also, when I said "Bug's ears" I meant "Bugs's ears," as a reflection on the shape of the ears of Bugs Bunny. We've already established that I'm not too good with rabbits (I am confident, however, that the animal in question is not a duck).

It can't look too much like either a duck, or a rabbit, else the perception won't be bistable; if it looks closer to one than the other, the reversal requires too much effort. So changing a piece, like the ears/beak, to be more accurate could ruin the trick. Sometimes, the inaccurate representation can be more suggestive than an attempt at literalness. This would be an old but interesting question in aesthetics if anyone studied aesthetics anymore.

It can't be close enough to look like a literal representation of both a duck and a rabbit, of course, because ducks don't look like rabbits. Can someone confirm for me that ducks don't look like rabbits? I've been locked in a basement at Stanford with my eyelids held open force-reading blogs as part of some kind of psychological study run by Alberto Gonzalez, and I haven't seen either a duck or a rabbit for a while now. (On the bright side, the words "Andrew Sullivan" now trigger my gag reflex. Oh wait, they already did that.)

-Alex

Nice fake e-mail address! Besides the rabbit fiasco mentioned above, I am also known for my insistence that geese are ducks, so don't ask me.

No one studies aesthetics anymore? Crap.

Not true, Ben, not true! I was done out of a job by an aesthetician just the other day.

Yay! I mean, I'm sorry to hear that.

Great minds think alike - but if minds think alike, does that mean they're great?

You certainly have dibs on this joke. As for your question, contemplate my most recent post and consider the consequent affirmed.

Five minutes after posting that comment, the post to which "most recent post" links ceased to be your most recent post. It had to happen eventually but don't you think that was a little egregious?

Psssh. The sequence of events can be retraced with exactitude--because I have timestamps.

(It is with some distress that I note that the running jokes from Unfogged are taking over this blog.)