Kristof Nyiri

Postscript to the volume *Vision Fulfilled: The Victory of the Pictorial Turn*. The volume convincingly demonstrates that after the temporary dominance of excessively verbal thinking in the age of the printed word, during the past decades a pictorial turn has actually happened – in the real world, in the sciences, and in most of the humanities. Human thinking is primordially visual. In the course of human evolution it was the language of gestures, not verbal language, which introduced conceptual order into the episodic imagery of pre-linguistic thought. The idea of the primacy of the visual, beginning with Plato, is continuous through Aristotle to the British Empiricists in the 17th–18th centuries, and is today once more on the rise.

The entire volume can be accessed at

http://www.vll.bme.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf

or at

http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf.

Table of contents of the volume *Vision Fulfilled: The Victory of the Pictorial Turn*. The volume convincingly demonstrates that after the temporary dominance of excessively verbal thinking in the age of the printed word, during the past decades a pictorial turn has actually happened – in the real world, in the sciences, and in most of the humanities. Human thinking is primordially visual. In the course of human evolution it was the language of gestures, not verbal language, which introduced conceptual order into the episodic imagery of pre-linguistic thought. The idea of the primacy of the visual, beginning with Plato, is continuous through Aristotle to the British Empiricists in the 17th–18th centuries, and is today once more on the rise.

The entire volume can be accessed at

http://www.vll.bme.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf

or at

http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf.

Postscript to the volume *Vision Fulfilled: The Victory of the Pictorial Turn*. The volume convincingly demonstrates that after the temporary dominance of excessively verbal thinking in the age of the printed word, during the past decades a pictorial turn has actually happened – in the real world, in the sciences, and in most of the humanities. Human thinking is primordially visual. In the course of human evolution it was the language of gestures, not verbal language, which introduced conceptual order into the episodic imagery of pre-linguistic thought. The idea of the primacy of the visual, beginning with Plato, is continuous through Aristotle to the British Empiricists in the 17th–18th centuries, and is today once more on the rise.

The entire volume can be accessed at

http://www.vll.bme.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf

or at

http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/The_Victory_of_the_Pictorial_Turn.pdf.

Interview published (in Hungarian) on Oct. 11th, 2018, in the Hungarian weekly *Heti Világgazdaság*. The scholarly/scientific autonomy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has become seriously threatened by the present-day Hungarian government. The interview points out that since future discoveries, trivially, cannot be planned, creative scientific research cannot be centralized.

Retrospective collection of essays by the newly established Committee for Communication and Media Theory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Co-authors: Petra ACZÉL, Fruzsina ALBERT – Beáta DÁVID, Péter BAJOMI-LÁZÁR, József BAYER, Judit BAYER, Zsolt BODA, Balázs BORSOS, György FÁBRI, Tibor FRANK, Gábor GYÁNI, Péter GYÖRGY, Ferenc HAMMER, Özséb HORÁNYI, András Bálint KOVÁCS, Ernő KULCSÁR SZABÓ, Gábor POLYÁK, Anita SCHIRM, Mihály SZAJBÉLY, Zoltán SZEGEDY-MASZÁK, Péter SZIRÁK, Tibor TALLIÁN, Róbert TARDOS – Róbert ANGELUSZ, Tamás TERESTYÉNI

This is the earlier Hungarian version of a paper published in the 1976 von Wright Festschrift. It is the author's first attempt to suggest that Wittgenstein's philosophy is not devoid of political implications, and that those implications are politically conservative ones.

The thesis according to which computer networking is an epistemologically significant phenomenon – that, in other words, the technology of communicating on the net has implications not just for the form, but also for the content and indeed for the overall logic of what is being communicated – rests on a set of general philosophical  assumptions as regards the relation between thought and its medium. In my paper I wish to show that formulating these assumptions, and elaborating them, has been a characteristic concern of Austro-Hungarian
philosophy; that between the philosophers who played a role in the relevant endeavours there obtained significant, sometimes mutual, influences; and that Austro-Hungarian realities had a marked effect on their thought.

Abstract booklet of VLC8. The back cover of the booklet displays the mission statement of the Budapest Visual Learning Lab, formulated in October 2009. Since then, the VLL has held regular monthly research seminars and organized seven international conferences, publishing seven selected and edited collections of papers. The 2018 Budapest conference, VLC8, should contribute to the recognition that the pictorial turn in education is about to happen – indeed it should contribute decisively to making it happen.

This paper was originally published in 1997, see http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/1997/eden97/nyiri.html. I would set some emphases differently today, but basically I believe my approach was sound -- the traditional brick-and-mortar university on the one hand and online education on the other have to merge -- and the body of literature cited & exploited remains a valuable source.

An edited online collection of essays the author has published over the past two years. The essays argue for a common-sense realist view, and claim that common-sense realism implies, and is implied by, social conservatism. The author maintains that common-sense philosophy is not tenable without recognizing the essential cognitive role of visual thinking, and that the work of the later Wittgenstein can be felicitously exploited to create a synthesis of conservatism, common-sense realism, and a philosophy of the visual.

Social networking sites have in the past few years become extremely popular, and have turned the web into a markedly social medium. However, online social networking has led to concerns about privacy, as well as about possible counterproductive effects on making new realworld acquaintances. These effects are, in the short run, aggravated by permanent mobile connectivity. In the long run, however, mobile social networking might actually enhance real-world connections, with persons in your physical vicinity able to introduce themselves on the screen of your handheld. Privacy, anonymity, virtuality, friendship– the topic of mobile social networking clearly invites philosophical, and, in particular, ethical discussions. The volume contains papers by, among others, Charles Ess, Leopoldina Fortunati, Richard Harper, James E. Katz, Rich Ling, and Kurt Röttgers.

Around the year 2000, a new research topic emerged in the social sciences and the humanities: mobile telephony. Drawing on earlier scholarship on the classic phone, the internet, and the information society, and applying the conceptual tools of communication theory, sociology, psychology, political science, etc., mobile telephone research began as, and continues to be, an interdisciplinary enterprise. Nonetheless, over the years an impressive array of paradigmatic research results has crystallized into what can be termed as the new discipline of Mobile Studies. Summarizing these results, the volume also opens up new perspectives on mobile telephony in the age of telecommunications convergence.

While the triumphal march of mobile telephony continues – by 2008 more than half of the world's population had become mobile phone users – mobile communications are merging with fixedline telephony, the internet, and entertainment. Telecommunications convergence is a many-faceted process, creating radically novel and complex patterns of mediated culture, posing new challenges to the humanities. The various dimensions of convergence – digital, technological, socio-cultural, linguistic; of content, devices, businesses, markets, even of scientific theories – do not fuse seamlessly. The volume contains papers by, among others, Mark Turner, Gerard Goggin, Zoltán Kövecses, Dieter Mersch, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and Anthony Townsend.

The content and structure of knowledge are at all times fundamentally moulded by the media through which knowledge is communicated. Today, the internet and mobile telephony are essential parts of these media. Minds have become bound up with technological devices. Face-to-face communication on the one hand, and the solitary study of documents on the other, merge with a world of continuous digital networking, texts with a world of images. Education is confronted by radical challenges; a revolution in epistemology is underway. The volume contains papers by, among others, Ian Hacking, Andrew Brook, Richard Coyne, Maurizio Ferraris, James Katz, and Mike Sharples.

Ubiquitous mobile communication satisfies fundamental human needs. At the same time mobile telephony is an answer to challenges represented by the complexities of a decentralized global mass society – our postmodern society. With the mobile phone dissolving the boundaries between private and public, work and leisure, and increasingly even between rich and poor, basic patterns of life, labour, love, war, travel, business and politics are changing. This volume contains papers by, among others, Kenneth Gergen, Richard Harper, Joachim Höflich, James Katz, Joshua Meyrowitz, and Mark Poster.

The changing conditions for the accumulation and transmission of knowledge in the age of multimedia networks make it inevitable that old philosophical problems become formulated in a new light. Above all, the problem of the unity of knowledge is once again a topical issue. The situation-dependent acquisition of knowledge that is made possible by mobile learning transcends the boundaries of traditional disciplines, linking the domains of text, diagram, and picture. Database integration and multimedia search become central problems in the epistemology of the 21st century, while handheld devices are emerging as vital technologies for supporting collaborative learning.

Mobile telephony constitutes a new challenge to philosophy, and indeed to the humanities in general. For the mobile telephone is not just the most successful machine ever invented, spreading with unheard-of speed; it is also a machine which corresponds to deep, primordial human communicational urges. Indeed the term “mobile information society” needs to be reconsidered. Mobile communications point to a future which offers a wealth of knowledge, not just of information, and promises to re-establish, within the life of modern society, some of the features formerly enjoyed by genuine local communities.

We hope to organize a really momentous conference, with talks that make a difference, adding up to a recognizable scholarly step forward. Subsequent to the conference we plan to publish a high-quality collection of selected and edited papers. All perspectives, including historical, philosophical, sociological, etc. are welcome. The conference language -- the language of all submissions, talks, and ensuing publications -- is English. Submissions to be sent to Prof. Dr. Andras Benedek <benedek.a@eik.bme.hu> and Kristof Nyiri <nyirik@gmail.com>.

Preliminary version of a paper to be published in the 2017 volume of the Visual Learning series edited by András Benedek and Ágnes Veszelszki. In the paper I side with the view that the metaphors used in everyday thinking and in science express essential aspects of reality – they are literally true. However, I stress that understanding a metaphor essentially involves experiencing mental images, and I conclude by emphasizing that not only is it possible to convey truths via images, but also that in a fundamental sense it is *only* via images that truths can be conveyed at all, and indeed that in a sense images cannot be but veridical.

Tanulmányom végefelé írom: „A tradicionalizmus -- fölélesztési kísérlete kihunyt hagyományoknak, melyektől azt remélik, hogy általuk újra megtalálja valódi történelmét, visszanyeri kapcsolatát a múlttal az úgymond gyökértelenné és elkorcsosulttá lett nép -- tévutas és veszélyes beállítottság, mivel irracionális gondolkodást erősít olyan korban, melyben a tekintélytiszteletnek immár nincsen funkcionális megismerésbeli szerepe. Az áthagyományozás valójában a tudásmegőrzés sajátos intézménye olyan körülmények között, midőn a kollektív emlékezet nem találhat támaszt írásos dokumentumokban, s ezáltal arra kényszerül, hogy a nélkülözhetetlen szövegeket újra meg újra hangosan ismételgesse, s persze arra, hogy e szövegeket kétségbevonhatatlan igazságúnak fogja föl. Az átadott szöveg kétségbevonhatatlanságát ama fikció legitimálja, mely szerint áthagyományozása nemzedékről nemzedékre változatlanul történt. Az írásbeliség kialakulásával ez a fikció fölöslegessé, sőt tarthatatlanná válik. A nemzeti hagyományok fogalma kiváltképpen félrevezető, amennyiben a modern nemzet csak az írásbeliség terjedésével, a könyvnyomtatás korában jött létre. Az úgynevezett nemzeti hagyományok ideologikus eszközök, melyek a modernizáció, a munkaerő megnövekedett horizontális mobilitásának körülményei közepette a versenyhelyzet monopolisztikus szűkítésére szolgálnak. A nemzeti hagyományok fabrikálásához a néprajz szolgáltat anyagot.”

"Tradition and Bureaucratic Lore: Lessons from Hungary", in Barry Smith, ed., Philosophy and Political Change in Eastern Europe, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1993, pp. 3-12. -- This is how the paper ends: The politically dominant Hungarian ideology today is a romantic nationalism. This ideology is a reflection of political pressures, rather than of philosophical influences. And as far as there is room for oppositional politics at all, it too is moved by entirely pragmatic considerations. Philosophy does not play a part in contemporary Hungarian politics. But politics is becoming, once more, a *topic* for Hungarian philosophy. For this politics, caught between modernization and backwardness, is burdened with antinomies; embodies paradoxes; gives rise to conceptual tensions. Our latest, non-existent, revolution now seems to turn into a creeping counter-revolution. Obvious answers have become, once more, doubtful; unequivocal words have become, once more, deeply ambiguous. In Hungary, there seems to be a foretaste of philosophy in the air.

There is a straightforward contradiction between Wittgenstein's claim of the primordial literalness of everyday language, and his stress on the multiplicity and flexibility of language-games. Wittgenstein was not insensitive to the problem of metaphor. Especially MS 150 (1935–36), MS 152 (1936) and the later parts of MS 115 (1936) offer rich material on "literal meaning" (eigentliche Bedeutung) and "transposed meaning" (übertragene Bedeutung). However, he did not succeed in making his ideas on metaphor, and indeed his ideas on metaphor and images, converge with the main drift of TS 227 (the so-called "Part I" of the so-called "Philosophical Investigations"). It was this divergence, I believe, that prevented him from rounding out his later philosophy.

Whether understood as an adherence to the given, as an appeal to observe traditions, or as the wish to return to some bygone age, conservatism is bedevilled by paradoxes. The present essay attempts to overcome these paradoxes by putting forward a new conception of conservatism, identifying it as a world-view bent on the preservation of the totality of human knowledge with the aim of enhancing the survival chances of future generations. Conservatism thus understood targets the achievement of real knowledge. Hence by necessity it must associate itself with a realist epistemology and ontology. I argue that any realism worthy of the name is common-sense realism, and that common-sense realism takes into account not merely the verbal level of cognition but also its visual and motor dimensions. The paper devotes special attention to Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work has been intensively discussed in recent decades in the context both of conservatism and realism.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy of pictures is commonly regarded as comprising two contrasting positions. The Tractatus is taken to argue for a picture theory of meaning, summed up by Wittgenstein’s dictum: “The proposition is a picture of reality.” The later Wittgenstein is interpreted as holding a use theory of pictures, according to which pictures by themselves do not carry any meaning; they acquire meaning by being put to specific uses and by being applied in specific contexts. Those uses and contexts are defined by language; pictures are subservient to words, and indeed not even mental images mean by virtue of their resemblance to some external reality. In this paper, based on a talk I gave at a conference in Bergen in 2001, I argue that the received wisdom is false; the common view as summarized above needs revision.

A brief but comprehensive paper summarizing (in Hungarian), from a philosophical point of view, the ways in which pictorial meaning relates to verbal meaning. Particular attention is given to the contributions of recent German scholarship; to the specific issue of the moving image; to gesture languages; to the Gombrich–Goodman controversy; to Paivio’s dual coding approach; to the question why theories dealing with the comics genre might be so significant; to the problem of mental images; and, finally, to pointing out why the rise of the computer matters quite essentially to the philosophy of images.

A brief but comprehensive paper summarizing, from a philosophical point of view, the ways in which pictorial meaning relates to verbal meaning. Particular attention is given to the contributions of recent German scholarship; to the specific issue of the moving image; to gesture languages; to the Gombrich–Goodman controversy; to Paivio’s dual coding approach; to the question why theories dealing with the comics genre might be so significant; to the problem of mental images; and, finally, to pointing out why the rise of the computer matters quite essentially to the philosophy of images.

This paper has been published in the April 2016 issue of the Hungarian-language journal KORUNK. The English abstract of the paper:

The adjective “conservative” in the subtitle of this paper is intended to carry a double meaning. First, it indicates that my approach within the philosophy of language is entirely old-fashioned: I do not take language to be as it were a boundless game, and certainly not to be formative of reality, but rather to be a depiction of the latter. Secondly I believe that my views on how language relates to reality have implications, also, in social philosophy: they imply the soundness of some kind of a conservative world-view. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first one, “Wittgenstein as a philosopher of common sense”, I argue that while the later Wittgenstein is widely held to be a relativist, indeed a constructivist, he was, all appearances to the contrary, a realist, a fact becoming almost conspicuous in his late-1940s manuscripts. His realism was a common-sense one, the only kind of realism worthy of the name. Wittgenstein’s common-sense realism is characterized, first, by an uncompromising stress on seeing deviations from ordinary language as giving rise to philosophy, and secondly, by an awareness of the significance of the pictorial & the motor. The second section of my paper, “The visual origins of language”, takes up a theory that originated with Plato’s Cratylus and has since again and again surfaced. The section is divided into three subsections: “Facial expressions”, “Gestures”, and “The word as an image”. I exploit Darwin’s argument according to which facial expressions and gestures have an evolutionary basis, they originate in concrete bodily reactions to events in the surrounding environment, to danger, threat, and so on. Our facial expressions and gestures are seen by others and felt by ourselves, giving rise to motor images and archetypical inner visual images. I draw special attention to the archetypical images of smile, mother, and the female/male distinction. The section ends with a reference to the so-called mouth-gesture theory: words are, primordially, a mimicking by the movements of our speech organs of the movements of our limbs. The verbal derives from, and is invariably based on, the visual. In the third section of the paper, “Depiction and reality”, I argue that our knowledge of the external world, based on what our senses, in particular our eyes, tell us, is reliable knowledge. Our eyes mostly do not err; and we do mostly agree with each other on what we see. The world our eyes and brains build up tends to be the very world in fact surrounding us. The concluding section of the paper, “Language use and the conservation of knowledge”, puts forward a new explication of conservatism. I suggest that what conservatism in any historical age primarily strives to conserve is the knowledge required to preserve the survival chances of future generations. Such knowledge relies on an inherited stock of words, and to a great extent consists of mental and physical images, themselves resistant to change.

Extended abstract written for the 27–28 October 2016 Cagliari conference Normative Drawings and Deontic Artifacts. --- The ongoing task of common-sense philosophy, as I understand it, is to integrate the established results of science and scholarship into everyday thinking, that is, into common sense as historically evolving. Though changing over time, common sense is invariably realist, with common-sense philosophy, too, necessarily tending towards realism. Now contemporary common sense faces a problem when it comes to children's drawings. In drawings, common sense today expects the rules of naturalism and linear perspective to obtain. Children's drawings of course do not conform to those rules. Hence common sense, as also most of the earlier literature on the subject, regards children's drawings as deficient. By contrast, more recent literature, mainly under the influence of Rudolf Arnheim, emphasizes the creativity of children's drawings.