In Chapter 6, George Dickie critiques the aesthetic-attitude theory of Virgil Aldrich. In the opening he discusses why he chose Aldrich's theory: It's the most recent version, it's related to Wittgenstein's philosophy, and most importantly, "...it is more concerned with the notion of aesthetic object as the proper object of appreciation and criticism than earlier attitude theories are" (136). Aldrich begs the question of which forms of art are "proper parts" of an aesthetic object. By doing so, Dickie maintains that Aldrich must state which aspects of a work of art or "nature" are aesthetic and which are not.
With us today is Mr. George Dickie.When the work of art is looked at in a certain way, one becomes aware of the aspects that dawn in the aesthetic space of composition. These are proper parts of the work of art as an aesthetic object, and blindness to these is the sort of aspect-blindness that disqualifies one both for aesthetic perception and the assessment of the merits of the work as an aesthetic object in that view of it (137). -Virgil Aldrich
A very interesting point that Aldrich makes is that "aesthetic characteristics are objectively there to be experienced, one just has to look at them in a certain way (137)". But he didn't come up with this theory on his own, apparently his theory on aesthetic perspective was "suggested" to him by E. H. Gombrich and Wittgenstein. To further explain the changing aspects of ambiguous objects, Dickie uses an analogy of the "duck-rabbit drawing." The figure is composed of a square within a square which could be, a square suspended in a frame, a lampshade seen from above or below, looking into a tunnel, and an aerial view of a truncated pyramid (183). The figure can be a representation of the way in which one is seeing it. Or in the words of Aldrich, "... what is seen (the representation) is conditioned by what one has in mind, but that what is seen... (137).
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