A Picture is Not an Argument
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 37 minutes
After he was invited to engage in an argument using pictures, Dr. Leonard Peikoff examined the shift in American culture to using visual appeals to emotion in the place of reasoned debate. He examines why appealing to visual imagery is not a substitute for evidence and reasoning. Peikoff focuses in particular on how pictures can be used properly to convey information, but why philosophic debate cannot take place on the perceptual level.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download a printable PDF version below.
| What is the conventional view of what a picture represents? |
| What do the “picture mongers” think pictures can do? |
| How does a picture work on the brain and cognition in a political or moral dispute? |
| What is the epistemological manipulation behind “picture-ism”? |
| What is the difference between pictures in philosophy and politics and how they are used in criminal trials? |
| Why would the winning side of an argument not be improved by visuals? |
| What is the epistemological principle that is violated in arguing with pictures? |
| Why is the conceptual level absolutely required for political or philosophical argument? |
| What is the proper use of a picture to a conceptual consciousness? |
| How does the use of pictures as arguments arise from the philosophic background? |
| Why is emotionalism behind every attempt to make a picture into a conclusion? |
| How does “picture-ism” rely on previous bad philosophy to win arguments? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:08:58 | As a person who has given up on television news, I can certainly understand the comment about the philosophical content of pictures being -10. But what about the philosophical content of all art, like painting or sculpture, which is visual. Does that have a philosophical content of -10? |
| 1:11:16 | Given what you’ve said about the use of pictures on TV, what do you think the impact of TV has been on our culture? |
| 1:15:19 | I wanted you to compare the concept of pictures with the concept of polls because, through the Clinton-Lewinsky thing, one constantly hears polls saying that the public is in favor of what the President is doing. Since you’re part of the media, maybe you can explain what it is he’s doing that the public is in favor of. All they ever say is that the public is in favor of what he does, and it seems ineffective, like a picture would be. |
| 1:19:22 | There’s a quote by Ayn Rand that “anyone who fights for the future lives in it today.” I’ve never quite understood it. You mentioned at the end of the talk about wistful dreaming of the future and I sometimes engage in some of that and that doesn’t sound like that’s following the quote, but I’m not exactly sure how it works. |
| 1:20:40 | My question pertains to your concluding remarks regarding the conceptual nature of radio. I wonder whether this means that your callers as a whole are much more conceptually oriented and much more intelligent than the American population at large? |
| 1:22:45 | To some extent I agree with you that pictures are overused in our society. However, at the beginning of your talk, you made a comment that pictures do not go to our mind. Where do they go to? Our feet, nose, stomach? |
| 1:23:47 | My question actually relates specifically to Atlas Shrugged, but since you spoke of images tonight, I thought it was relevant. I read that novel recently and I noticed that Ayn Rand spent quite a lot of time describing her characters’ visual appearance. Specifically, Rearden was very attractive and certainly someone you might admire physically and Dagny Taggart was beautiful, whereas Rearden’s wife was less than attractive. My question is: I’m trying to understand the relationship between physical attractiveness and intellectual superiority. |
| 1:27:44 | From my point of view, advertising is really the sine qua non of picture-mongering in many respects. I was wondering whether you would comment. |
| 1:30:32 | I read somewhere—I believe it was The Romantic Manifesto—that Ayn Rand didn’t consider a photograph to be a piece of art, not an esthetic one. I was wondering what you thought about movies—successions of, basically, photographs—what kind of esthetic role they played, and also as far as making a philosophic statement. I understand that Ayn Rand was working on a screenplay of Atlas Shrugged at the time of her death and I was wondering if you could comment on what kind of philosophical statement you could make through moving pictures. |
| 1:32:40 | First off, I’d like to call myself an Objectivist and I appreciate everything you said tonight. However, the vast majority of people think pragmatically. Given that fact, how can they interpret your remarks tonight when there are Objectivists in nature, but they’re interpreting it through their own pragmatic definitions? I was just wondering if there was any way of cutting through the flotsam given that there’s so much information out there through the Internet or television. I’m just trying to figure out how it is that you’re so successful in cutting through all of the flotsam of the pragmatism that you have out there? |
| 1:34:59 | Concerning the abortion debate that you mentioned at the beginning that spawned the lecture that you declined, it seems to me that it would have been a great opportunity to pit words against pictures and to present in that form what you presented tonight. It seems like you would have jumped at the change. |