The case of “seeing
as a swastika”
is of special interest because this expression might mean being,
somehow, under the optical delusion that the square is not quite closed,
that there are the gaps which distinguish the swastika from our
drawing.
On the other hand it is quite clear that this was not what we meant by
“seeing our drawing as a swastika”.
We saw it in a way which suggested the description, “I see it
as a swastika.”
One might suggest that we ought to have said, “I see it as a
closed swastika”; – – but then, what is the difference
between a closed swastika and a square with diagonals?
I think that in this case it is easy to recognize “what
happens when we see our figure as a swastika.”
I believe it is that we retrace the figure with our eyes in a
particular way, viz., by starting at the centre, looking
along a radius, and along a side adjacent to it, starting at the centre
again, taking the next radius and the next side, say in a right handed
sense of rotation, etc.
But th
is
explanation of the phenomenon of seeing the
figure as a swastika is of no fundamental interest to us.
It is of interest to us only in so far as it helps one to see that
the expression, “seeing the figure as a swastika”
did not mean seeing
this as
that, seeing one thing as
something else, when, essentially,
two visual objects
entered the process of doing so. ‒ ‒
Thus also seeing
s the first figure as a cube
did not mean “taking it to be a cube.”
(For we might never have seen a cube and still have this experience
of “seeing it as a cube”).