Janette Dinishak

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which some of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common.

This paper investigates what it is to understand human differences in terms of deficits and examines criticisms of this approach. In the past few decades, across many fields of inquiry and outside the academy there has been a surge of interest in critiquing "the deficit view" of all manner of group differences and deviations from the norm. But what exactly is meant by "deficit view" and related terms when they figure in accounts of human differences? Do critics of the deficit view claim that they are never appropriate or that particular applications of the approach are inappropriate? The aim of this paper is twofold: to identify and articulate some of the conceptual issues at the heart of debates about deficit approaches and to examine how these issues matter. Autism is my focus case. As we will see, many critiques of the deficit view of autism tend to characterize what is problematic about taking a deficit view in terms of the personal and social harm that deficit views can or do effect. One important upshot of my discussion, I argue, is that there is another kind of drawback to deficit thinking that is independent of the deficit view's potential negative personal and social consequences, a drawback that deserves serious consideration and sustained critical attention: in some instances, at least, deficit views impede scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the phenomena themselves. Thus, articulating and assessing deficit approaches is of practical and theoretical importance.

In this paper I examine what autism can teach us about the role of like-mindedness in the achieving of interpersonal understanding. I explain how recent work on affective, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive atypicalities in people with autism underscores forms of like-mindedness that are largely neglected in contemporary discussions of interpersonal understanding. Autists and non-autists may have sensory, perceptual, and movement differences that make for pervasive differences in their perspectives on and ways of being in both the physical and social world. Central to the paper is the idea that the forms of unlike-mindedness among autists and non-autists revealed by this research present the very live possibility that individuals without autism are unable to understand some autistic subjects as acting for reasons, or that if such understanding is available, it is available only through means other than those standardly emphasized in dominant theories of interpersonal understanding. I argue that this idea has significance for the case of autism itself as well as wider theoretical and practical importance for the study of interpersonal understanding.

Seeing aspects is a dominant theme in Wittgenstein's 1940s writings on philosophy of psychology. Interpreters disagree about what Wittgenstein was trying to do in these discussions. I argue that interpreting Wittgenstein's observations about the interrelations between “noticing an aspect” and other psychological concepts as a systematic theory of aspect-seeing diminishes key lessons of Wittgenstein's explorations: these interrelations are enormously complicated and “noticing an aspect” resists neat classification. Further, Wittgenstein invites us to engage in his “placing activity,” and by doing so we are building a skill that is valuable for enabling us to help ourselves when we encounter conceptual difficulties

This paper examines the appeal, made by some philosophers, to Wittgenstein’s notion of aspect-blindness in order to better understand autistic perception and social cognition. I articulate and assess different ways of understanding what it means to say that autists are aspect-blind. While more attention to the perceptual dimensions of autism is a welcome development in philosophical explorations of the condition, I argue that there are significant problems with attributing aspect-blindness to autists. The empirical basis for the attribution of aspect-blindness to autists is questionable, but, even if it turns out that future empirical work on autistic perception and social cognition decisively supports the attribution of some forms of aspect-blindness to autists, the descriptive and explanatory fruitfulness of the notion of aspect-blindness is limited in important ways. To better capture autistic experience, we should broaden our framework to include conceptualizing autists as engaging in forms of aspect-perception.

This paper examines epistemic injustice in knowledge production concerning autism. Its aim is to further our understanding of the distinctive shapes of the kinds of epistemic injustices against autists. The paper shows how Ian Hacking’s work on autistic autobiography brings into view a form of hermeneutical injustice that autists endure with respect to their firsthand accounts of their experiences of autism. It explores how understanding the distinctive shape of this hermeneutical injustice can help us further appreciate dangers and harms of using interpretive frameworks for autistic experience that neglect autists’ own contributions to the formation of words and concepts for capturing their experiences. In particular, the paper argues that even when autists are included in knowledge production concerning autistic experience, they remain vulnerable to forms of hermeneutical marginalization that can stifle the coming into being of autistic experience.

Wolfgang Köhler made the following remark in Gestalt Psychology [1929]: “The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes” [351]. This paper argues that reflection on Köhler’s remark serves to illuminate how Wittgenstein thought about classification and concepts in his 1940s writings on philosophical psychology. In particular, it provides insight into what is at issue for Wittgenstein in how to characterize concepts connected to seeing and seeing aspects.

: This paper examines the following two ideas and their relations: aspect-perception is a perceptual experience; veridicality is the primary standard for evaluating the success of a perceptual experience. I argue that a valuable lesson to glean from Wittgenstein’s investigations of aspect-perception is that aspect-perception is “in-between” when it comes to whether and how veridicality is at issue in it. Yet it does not follow from this in-betweenness that there is no standard by which we evaluate aspect-perception, no notion of success at perceiving an aspect. Aspect-perception has normative dimensions that are not a matter of veridicality, or at least not in any straightforward way, some of which I explore here. These normative dimensions are brought to light, in part, by shifting evaluative focus to what the perceiver “brings” to aspect-perception experiences and attending the ways aspect-perception requires and involves mastery of a technique. The shift in focus also helps illuminate different ways of understanding aspect-blindness and the kinds of failure at play in different kinds of aspect-blindness. All in all, embracing aspect-perception’s in-betweenness regarding whether or not veridicality is at issue in it illumines aspect-perception’s distinctive character and richness.

Seeing aspects is a dominant theme in Wittgenstein's 1940s writings on philosophy of psychology. Interpreters disagree about what Wittgenstein was trying to do in these discussions. I argue that interpreting Wittgenstein's observations about the interrelations between “noticing an aspect” and other psychological concepts as a systematic theory of aspect‐seeing diminishes key lessons of Wittgenstein's explorations: these interrelations are enormously complicated and “noticing an aspect” resists neat classification. Further, Wittgenstein invites us to engage in his “placing activity,” and by doing so we are building a skill that is valuable for enabling us to help ourselves when we encounter conceptual difficulties.

Metaphor—describing one thing in terms of another—is a common tool used to grasp what is unknown. Perhaps because we do not understand a lot about autism, many metaphors appear in both scientific and nonscientific descriptions of autism. The metaphor of mindblindness is especially pervasive in the scientific literature. We discuss three limitations of this metaphor: It obscures the fact that both autistic and non autistic individuals contribute to the social and communicative difficulties between them, it carries strong negative connotations, and it may impede the recognition that some autistic behaviors are meaningful and adaptive. Researchers should be mindful of the potential consequences of metaphors.

Autistic children do not consistently show conventional signs of social engagement, which some have interpreted to mean that they are not interested in connecting with other people. If someone does not act like they are interested in connecting with you, it may make it difficult to feel connected to them. And yet, some parents report feeling strongly connected to their autistic children. We conducted phenomenological interviews with 13 mothers to understand how they experienced connection with their 5- to 14-year-old nonspeaking autistic children. Mothers of nonspeaking autistic children represent a unique group in which to study connection because their children both may not seem interested in connecting with them and have limited ability to communicate effectively using speech, a common way people connect with each other. The mothers in this study interpreted a range of child behaviors—some unconventional, but many conventional—as signs that their children were interested in connecting with them, (re)framed child behaviors that could undermine connection as caused by factors unrelated to the relationship, and expressed several convictions that may help build and sustain connection in the face of uncertainty about the meaning of their children’s behavior. Even though their autistic children may not consistently act in conventional socially oriented ways, these mothers reported perceiving their children’s behavior as embedded within an emotionally reciprocal relationship.

Wolfgang Köhler made the following remark in Gestalt Psychology [1929]: “The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes” [351]. This paper argues that reflection on Köhler’s remark serves to illuminate how Wittgenstein thought about classification and concepts in his 1940s writings on philosophical psychology. In particular, it provides insight into what is at issue for Wittgenstein in how to characterize concepts connected to seeing and seeing aspects.

This thesis examines the relation between philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1940s writings on seeing and seeing aspects and Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of perception as set out in his Gestalt Psychology (1929). I argue that much of the existing literature on the Wittgenstein-Köhler relation distorts Köhler’s ideas and thus also Wittgenstein’s engagement with Köhler’s ideas. This double distortion underrates Köhler’s insights, misconstrues Wittgenstein’s complaints against Köhler, and masks points of contact between the two concerning the nature and description of human perceptual experience. In my view, Wittgenstein sympathizes with Köhler’s call to reflect on basic psychological categories such as “experience”, his respect for the “naïve” experience of the layperson, his method of “rediscovering” pervasive features of experience that escape our notice, and his efforts to identify intellectual prejudices that stymie inquiry. But a warning emerges from Wittgenstein’s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects: It is especially difficult to command a clear view of 'seeing' and its interrelations with other everyday, psychological concepts. I argue that Wittgenstein’s far-reaching criticism of Köhler is that the latter's account of visual “organization” overextends an analogy between seeing and seeing aspects and pushes aside other justifiable comparisons, for example between seeing and thinking and seeing and imagining. A consequence of Wittgenstein's criticism is that Kohler falls short of his aim to depict faithfully naïve visual experience. Moreover, despite Kohler's commitment to battling prejudices, the latter's emphasis on similarities between seeing and seeing aspects to the exclusion of their differences is a form of intellectual prejudice. For Wittgenstein various comparisons are justifiable by appeal to the interrelations between ‘seeing’ and other psychological concepts. A perspicuous view of the concept 'seeing' involves steady appreciation of the multitude of justifiable, criss-crossing comparisons. So although Wittgenstein does not deny Köhler’s claim that organization is a feature of visual experience rather than thinking, he does not unqualifiedly endorse it either. We have conceptual grounds for various ways of speaking about our experiences of aspects.