Comparing the Uses of Pictures and Language

这个问题属于哲学中的语言哲学,最近开始作为一门学科。之前使用的语言和图片思考之间的差异和相似之处。我们没有考虑这一事实，关于传统学科的历史艺术。下面的essay代写范文将进行叙述。

Abstract
There has been a long tradition of characterizing man as the animal that talks. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings, after all we know empirically so far. Are there conceptual reasons for that coincidence? Such a question belongs to the philosophy of language just as well as to philosophical visualistics. Comparing the two abilities to use words or pictures yields several similarities as well as distinctions. A well-known conceptual disparity between pictures and words appears in their relation to perception: the difference can be further determined in an act-theoretic manner by four modes of use of the sign vehicles during the corresponding sign acts. 

Furthermore, the figure/ground dichotomy means something different for language uses and picture uses. In both cases, however, there is a close relation to the function of context building, by which humans are able to communicate not only with respect to the present situation of behavior but with respect to arbitrary contexts as well. Although the structural comparison does clarify the conceptual relations, it cannot explain that the conceptual structure ought to be like that. Therefore, the paper concludes with the programme of a “conceptgenetic” consideration of the two abilities (i.e., to use propositional language or to use pictures) that is able to give us such a foundation. 
Keywords: pictures, language, resemblance, logic, figure/ground, experiential contexts

Introduction
An old European tradition characterizes man as the animal that talks. We then have in mind essentially the use of predicative sentential structures like assertions. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings, after all we have experienced so far. Are there conceptual reasons for that empirical coincidence? Such a question belongs to the philosophy of language just as well as to philosophical visualistics, an endeavor beginning recently to form as a discipline apart from art history (cf. Sachs-Hombach 2003). Before thinking about the differences and similarities between the uses of language and pictures, some clarifications about the issues of philosophical visualistics particularly in contrast to history of art may be helpful. 1. Issues of Philosophical Visualistics Let us leave out of consideration the fact that the traditional discipline of history of art investigates pictures and other artifacts in an artistic framework (a rather particular framework, that is). 

Apart from that restriction it is important that specific properties of concrete pictorial works are analyzed – often with a merely implicit background determining the concept ‘being a picture’ in general. An indirect clarification of that general question by means of investigating the peculiar is still possible but essentially remains a side effect. We may very well characterize art historians as those researchers dedicated to the scientific consideration of single works of art and the relations between them mainly (but not only) in their historical development.1 

In contrast, we should speak of philosophical visualistics if the scientific interest turns to the question what it actually means to be able to cope with pictures as pictures. How should we, for example, imagine the way such a notable faculty came into existence – or more precisely: how can we conceive the development of beings with such a faculty? And what follows from the characteristics thus gained for the other image sciences (among them, of course, history of art)? Philosophical visualistics tries, 1 The mere extension of the interest from its original restriction to art to every visually designed creation does not change the determination given, since the “methods of material determination, historical classification, and semantic interpretation” of those particular creations (Bredekamp 2003: 56) remain in the focus of that research. To Show and To Say 37 therefore, to explain what ‘being a picture’ means in general. Examining particular cases is not irrelevant here; but they mainly serve to exemplify general properties. Above all: the immediate focus of interest is indeed not on single pictures at all, but on the faculty to use (i.e., produce and visually explore) pictures. 

Therefore, the research objects of philosophical visualists are the (human or eventually other) beings provided with that faculty. Even more precisely speaking, we are not interested in the particular being but what is common to all of them: the concept we can form in a meaningful and rationally controlled manner of creatures with the faculty mentioned. Let us now come back to the empirical coincidence that both faculties – to employ language and to use pictures – have not been mastered by any other living being. In his picture theory of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922) introduced a conception into language philosophy that distinguishes between what an assertion says (what can be asserted with it), and what it shows (what can be taken from its logical structure – as a “picture of the world”). 

Inspired by Wittgenstein, we turn in the following under the title ‘to show and to say’ to the question: What are the conceptual relations between those two faculties mentioned? Doing so, we are mainly concerned with presentational pictures of and assertive verbal utterances for spatio-temporal material scenes.2 In sections 2 to 5, several aspects of language uses are compared with picture uses. Section 6 shortly sketches the relation to structural pictures (logical pictures) and assertions for abstract affairs. The final section 7 starts with a summary. It furthermore indicates an extended research programme with conceptgenetic considerations. This programme is assumed to justify in a systematic way the conceptual similarities and differences discovered, and hence provides a sound foundation of philosophical visualistics.

The justification of conceptual clarifications by means of conceptgenetic considerations rests on two arguments: One can show (1) that some concepts relevant for us cannot be determined in any way in the elementary fields, and (2) that it is possible to define those concepts in the combined field of concepts. This opens an additional option for solving dissents about concepts and their properties – if only all parties involved accept the simpler fields of concepts as well as the schema of combination, and if they also have an interest at all in establishing the concepts debated as common habits of distinguishing phenomena. 

We are now interested in the relations between the fields of concepts for creatures with the abilities to use pictures or language. In the preceding sections, we have essentially collected some conceptual clarifications. With them we have tried to determine the internal structures of those two fields. However, we are not yet sure whether these relations belong to different fields of concepts by any means – the faculty of using language and the ability of employing pictures could instead depend on each other (belonging to the same field), or they may stand in a constituting relation in one way or the other. That question can only be decided by means of concept-genetic considerations, which also lead us to a justification of the internal determinations of the corresponding fields. 

The thoughts about the uses of pictures and language gathered above provide some starting points for such a concept-genetic consideration. Sign use can, as we have seen, serve as a common base for the two faculties. Therefore, we should study the fields of concepts for creatures able to use signs on various levels of complexity. On the other hand, the link between the deceptive and immersive modes together with the relation between medium and figure/ground can be used as a specific difference: we therefore have also to consider on successive levels of complexity the fields around the concept of something able to perceive in a more or less ambitious sense. The origin for the concept-genetic examination ought to be the fields of concepts for those beings we cannot yet ascribe in the most elementary sense perception, and sign use respectively. Corresponding leveled theories can actually be found in ethologic studies and in the philosophy of language (cf. also, e.g., Ros 2005).(论文代写)

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。(论文代写)
更多essay代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有essay代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X(论文代写)