Cogency v2 n2

COGENCY Vol. 2, N0. 2, Spring 2010
ated by the aptness of an image, but unlike the puzzle piece, which we fit
into a context, seeing an aspect is like understanding how to fit the other
pieces around a piece that we have decided to use for an anchor. It is, as
Seligman puts it, “a kind of ‘knowing one’s way about’.” The important point
to take away from this notion of “seeing as,” is that to see a visual image as
having a particular aspect is not to pull out a hidden signification that lies
within it, the way that a creature’s DNA lies within its cells. It is to attach a
significance to the image through the positing of counterfactuals that frame
the image in such a way as to make it possible for us to explain to others the
aspect we ourselves see.
This completes the sketch of Wittgenstein’s notion of picturing. Though
undoubtedly there is a great deal more to say about such matters, the sketch
in its present form should suffice for purposes of application to the question
of whether or not there can be purely visual arguments.
4. Picturing, Visual Arguments, and Visual Argumentation
It shall be my contention in this portion of the paper to show that while no
one has yet satisfactorily shown that there are visual arguments, this does
not rule out the possibility that visual images can be elements of argumentation.
10 The account of picturing left to us by Wittgenstein, I shall content,
can shed some light as to why this is. Because visual argumentation theories
are so varied I cannot address them all, so I shall here confine myself to
two of the better-known accounts of recent years, the interesting and very
different theories put forward by the team of David Birdsell and Leo Groarke,
and that of Christina Slade.
4.1. Birdsell and Groarke
Perhaps the best known view of visual argument is that provided by Birdsell
and Groarke (1996, 2002). As is well known Birdsell and Groarke quite ex-
10
In this I am siding, I believe, with Blair (1996), though perhaps in a different way and
for different reasons.
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