"A Picture is Not an Argument" by Leonard Peikoff
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
- Leonard Peikoff at the Ford Hall Forum - Lesson 13 of 14
Course playlist: • Leonard Peikoff at the...
This lecture was delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum in 1998.
Watch the rest of the lectures in this course: bit.ly/2OqM3ce
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In today’s culture, on behalf of causes ranging from abortion to war, people often rely on emotion-provoking images to attract others to their viewpoint. In this lecture, Leonard Peikoff examines the use of imagery to convey a position. Motivated by an invitation he received to participate in an abortion debate using pictures, Peikoff discusses why he would never enter in to such a debate, even with truth on his side.
Peikoff begins by discussing the common view of words and pictures in arguments. He discusses how people often equate pictures with the truth, whereas words are commonly seen as lies and distortion: “A picture, according to the received wisdom, is worth a thousand words. A picture does not lie, whereas people . . . notoriously can and do.”
Discussing the appeal to pictures as the standard of proof, he gives examples of the use of powerful imagery in issues such as abortion, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, land mines, police brutality, animal rights, legislation for the disabled, global warming and foreign policy. Although when used properly, images can convey information or help illustrate a point, Peikoff explains why philosophical issues cannot be understood or resolved on the perceptual level alone.
Explaining why these emotion-provoking images “seduce you” into bypassing rational thought when forming an opinion, Peikoff discusses how such manipulation is achieved. Stressing why this is the exact opposite approach needed to form a rational opinion, he discusses how pictures can misdirect rather than clarify one’s focus on an issue.
In explaining why he chose to be a radio talk show host (which he was at the time this lecture was given), Peikoff ends by discussing why radio is a superior medium to spread philosophical ideas and why he would never agree to host a TV show.
The Q&A that follows the lecture expands on its subject matter and also includes the following topics:
Paintings, movies and other visual arts
Violence and the impact of TV on our culture
Computer games
Political polls
President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinski
Analysis of the Ayn Rand quote: “Anyone who fights for the future lives in it today.”
Are radio listeners more intelligent than TV viewers?
Physical attractiveness in real people and fictional characters
Advertising using pictures
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This speech is so much more important today than it was even back there.
What an amazing speech
Fantastic. Please keep these reuploads coming
I can't believe that all Peikoff's FHF are available now for free!
When I first got into Objectivism in the late 90’s these lectures were like 40 dollars, and they’d mail them to you on cassette tapes! We’ve come a long way. 😆
Picturism evokes emotion to evade reason. The antidote to becoming emotional while or after viewing a picture is reason.
Worth another listen if you've been on Twitter after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.
1:23:10 - "Picturism acts to disintegrate, not integrate"
Internet meme culture kiddies need to hear this. Someone send this to Pewdiepie please?
Lol boomers
Incredible.
Not until the general educational level of the population has been dramatically increased, and their love for reading found, will we be able to have a reasonable debate on anything. Then and only then, having an alternate digital platform to read and discuss ideas will be fruitful. Maybe a Medium like publication without any pictures at all, no emotion-bait techniques, no social proof claps, just words.
But even a love for reading can only be reinstituted with arguments, perhaps of a more delimited and rudimentary level if we have indeed fallen that far, but arguments nonetheless.
Great lecture
rand is right about Emotions, Emotions could your mind unabaling our brain to think clearly.
This is beautiful. Does this video have a version in writing or in essay? I would love to read it. :)
As a Pro-life individual, I agree 1,000,000% with what he has to say about the flaws with this type of argument. It has always pissed me off when another pro-lifer uses these videos or pictures in place of an actual intelligent argument for what constitutes a life.
I’m not against showing pictures, I think they can be used to make a point, but if all you’re trying to do is getting emotional reaction from people then yeah I would say that’s not a good tactic.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 well yeah, my point is a lot of us pro-lifers try to manipulate feelings to get their way. It’s underhanded and doesn’t really give an actual argument. I believe that you can make the actual argument stand by itself without trying to shame anyone or make people feel guilty. That’s emotional manipulation not an actual argument. If I can’t articulate my point then I need to sit down, I expect the same from others.
It just so happens I can articulate my point on this issue, but my fellow pro-lifers don’t seem to be able to do that. They always go straight to argument from authority and emotional manipulation.
@@candidchristian1465 yes but so do a lot of pro-choice people.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 that doesn’t make it right if we as pro-lifers say we take the moral stance we need be remain moral and allow pro-choicers to see and choose for themselves what they want to believe.
Our arguments must by absolute necessity be logically consistent and morally sound. Manipulation is not moral, even if it’s manipulating someone away from what we see as immoral beliefs.
Plato tried to argue for what is now known as the white lie. He called it the noble lie but he believed that lies can be moral if they served a greater moral truth. He was a fool. This is just about the same. If pro-lifers manipulate their way across this debate we are not in the right, even though some would say that this is the noble or white manipulation.
There is no moral manipulation.
@@candidchristian1465 I don’t think that’s always the goal of showing pictures, but yeah that’s certainly the goal of some people just emotional persuasion and nothing else.
1:08:00 Q&A
eerie.... wow.... before social media - images as policy making...
On the note of abortion I would say many people who are against it, and most who are for it, don't have the stomach for pictures given what gruesome act abortion is, especially as the fetus becomes more developed. So here is a rational argument against abortion that relies on no pictures:
Most who hold that abortion (the killing of a human fetus, embryo, zygote, etc. thus terminating a pregnancy) is murder (the unjustified, deliberate killing of one or more humans by one or more other humans) cite biology. Biologically, human life begins at conception - the moment when you have DNA that is not the mother or the father's but it's own distinct DNA, a human zygote, which grows through the various stages of a human life from zygote to (typically) adulthood and ends with death. This, of course, rules out a woman's eggs or a man's sperm on it's own as, although they are alive, these are not biologically distinct from the mother or father and thus not a distinct human. A sperm or an egg, on it's own, will never be a human.
So, if a human life biologically begins at conception then any act of killing it is the depriving of a human of life. The fact that the human in question is at his or her earliest stage of development, or any stage of development, is irrelevant i.e. killing a human fetus several weeks old, for example, is still killing a biological human just as much as killing a human child several years old.
Since biology clearly establishes that the life in question is human what can logically justify killing a human? That is what the whole issue of abortion hinges upon.
Logically, the only justified reason for one human killing another is if one human has deliberately and imminently threatened the life of another - in other words, is initiating deadly imminent threat to another. This constitutes an act of self-defense where only as much force is used to neutralize the threat, including lethal force if necessary.
Does a human zygote, embryo, fetus, etc do this to the mother or to anyone else? No. Logically, obviously, he/she can't. A zygote, embryo, fetus, etc is not yet even conscious of the world and people around him or her and had no choice but to be placed in the mother's womb usually as a direct result of the mother's choices and actions (baring rape) and thus is completely innocent, has committed no threat or immoral act.
Therefore, abortion is the unjustified, deliberate killing of one human by another. Abortion is murder.
DNA is sufficient to determine something is apart of the human species AND it's sufficient to determine that the developing organism is unique but you seem to take it as obvious given the context of pregnancy that this then implies it's living in the same sense an infant or young child live.
It does not as I can see another explanation that is more rational given other biological facts from other branches of biology that you seem to blatantly ignore.
I will start with a counter example, a dead human has a DNA. Obviously it is not a live.
So then your counter would be well it's obvious the fetus is not dead dummy it's growing, it's developing...etc.
But the crucial question is it living like an infant or child or adult do? All of which are obvious examples of actual human beings.
I would come to the answer of no. I don't think this is growing and developing in say the same way an infant grows and develops. There is a difference in kind that can be observed here (rather than a difference in degree). All along the continuum from infant to child to adulthood and old age we can observe from the biological branch of anatomy that the overall structure is the same. Skeletal system, cardiovascular system, nervous system, etc are all present yet get more mature.
In the case of a zygote to an embryo to a fetus, there are drastic transitions in its structure. It aquires new systems over time making it drastically different than stages prior. Given enough nutrients and time it will become a human being but all along this continuum it is not yet. It's like an automobile down the assembly line. Surely you would not accept cars being sold without an engine.
Likewise, the embryo and the fetus are not actual human beings but potential human beings.
One may argue about the last stage of pregnancy as that is where we finally reach completion but to equate the zygote, embryo or earlier fetus with the fully formed infant baby is absurd.
If actual human beings are to have there right to life protected we must protect the only actual human being in this situation... the mothers. To sacrifice her life in the name of a potential is more than illogical it's evil.
@@gabrielduran291 "...you seem to take it as obvious given the context of pregnancy that this then implies it's living in the same sense an infant or young child live."
These are all various stages of a human life. Life is a continuation from beginning to end. To try to deny, downplay, hide this, etc on the basis of an arbitrary point in time as "fetus", "infant" or "young child" is a case of the "special pleading" fallacy, which is the basis of your argument and many pro-abortion claims, where you are trying to create an exception to the concept "human" (because a living thing's status as human implies things like rights and ethics, in this case to not be murdered) which you fail to logically justify.
And since your entire premise is based on this fallacy your entire argument fails and there is no need for me to address it further but I will for the sake of explanation.
"I will start with a counter example, a dead human has a DNA. Obviously it is not a live.
So then your counter would be well it's obvious the fetus is not dead dummy it's growing, it's developing...etc."
I'm trying to decide if you had so little confidence with this observation because you knew that it was irrelevant the moment you typed it that you felt the need to refute it yourself or if this was just you trying to draw this out to appear to have more legitimacy then you do. It's rare someone deliberately shoots down his own counter example.
My point concerned being alive, unique (distinct from mother and father), and human. OBVIOUSLY a dead human does not meet all those criteria were a human in the womb does and so it was a total pointless waste of time for you to set it up and then immediately knock over your own irrelevant observation.
I sometimes get criticized for being verbose, and maybe rightly so, but at least when I am it's usually in the interest of detail or covering all my bases, not speaking or writing for the sake of it.
"But the crucial question is it living like an infant or child or adult do? All of which are obvious examples of actual human beings."
No, that's not the crucial question, that's an arbitrary question concerning time or stages - aging from conception to death these are all stages or a continuation of a HUMAN LIFE. The fundamental question to be answered before killing something is, "is it alive, human, and distinct from the mother and father"? From conception to death the answer is "Yes".
"I don't think this is growing and developing in say the same way an infant grows and develops."
Completely irrelevant. A teenager doesn't gown and develop in the same way as a 75 year old. It does not follow from that that it's not murder to kill one of them the moment they become an inconvenience to a woman.
Here is the fundamental problem with your argument, given is based on the "special pleading" fallacy. If you are going to (arbitrarily) imply that at some point between conception and birth something happens that magically conveys ethics and rights to the human in question you need to have a god damned good explanation for what that is and why and there isn't one in your entire argument - and this is something pro-abortion people have been struggling with since the idea was first entertained that a woman somehow has "the right" to deny life to a human she carries. A human who had no choice but to be carried by her, btw.
So what is it, exactly, that conveys the status "human" to a living thing and all the rights and ethics that apply? Is is simply passing through a vagina? Are you being that arbitrary here? Do you even know?
"ll along the continuum from infant to child to adulthood and old age we can observe from the biological branch of anatomy that the overall structure is the same. Skeletal system, cardiovascular system, nervous system, etc are all present yet get more mature.
In the case of a zygote to an embryo to a fetus, there are drastic transitions in its structure."
Irrelevant. There are significant differences between men and women, White and Black, tall and short, deformities and normal and these are still all human. Again, we don't get to murder someone on the basis that they're different from our idea of "an adult". That is, again, a purely arbitrary position.
"Surely you would not accept cars being sold without an engine."
I've bought and sold many cars without engines. People do it all the time. This is a really bad analogy, especially since a car, on it's own doesn't grow an engine. It's not a living thing. Living things are not assembled as a car by someone, they grow on their own accord. Also, a car is still a car without an engine.
"Likewise, the embryo and the fetus are not actual human beings but potential human beings."
The same thing was once said and thought of slaves - they're not really human or "full humans" but "potential humans" so we can do whatever we want to them.
See, this is what you have to do to try to rationalize things like slavery or murder - you have to convince yourself that that target isn't really human or is sub-human. Denying a human the status of "human" has been the prelude to almost every atrocity committed by Man across history on an incomprehensible scale, along with often being used as propaganda against the other side in war. It's what started the Nazi's slaughter of the Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities prior and during WWII, the idea that they're not actual human beings, they're "sub-human and dangerous."
And abortion is no different besides the fact that far more people have been deprived of life then were in the Concentration Camps and Gulags.
"If actual human beings are to have there right to life protected we must protect the only actual human being in this situation... the mothers"
And here we arrive at the root cause of your bloody-minded irrationality - gynocentrism, appealing to the needs and wants of women, even at the expense of human life, in this case, by relieving them of any personal accountability or responsibility - any consequences - for their sexual choices and actions mostly to preserve their sexual market value (single moms or women with children are not sought after by men, by and large).
That's what this is really all about. Everything else is just a poorly thought out rationalization feeding female desires and vanity the blood of the innocent.
@@177SCmaro You seem not to take notice of differences in degree and differences in kind. Which is why you mangled up woman, men, black, tall, short, disabled human beings, etc. These are all differences on degree not in kind. All of these members have skeletons all of theses members have a nervous system, all the members have cardiovascular systems, etc etc. The same basic structure is in place and matures accordingly. The difference between how a teenager grows and how an old person grows again is difference in degree not in kind.
The basis of my argument is not special pleading it's that to judge whether things should be treated similarly would have to be judged by whether they are members of the same class or category of human being.
A zygote, embryo, fetus fails to be put in this category because it doesn't have a human body yet. That structure that allows all said discussed human beings to live as they do.
Furthermore, your whole set of paragraphs is a confused mess with baseless assumptions on my own argument. Your arguing with a straw man saying things I said which I don't.
@@gabrielduran291
"You seem not to take notice of differences in degree and differences in kind."
Incorrect. I pointed out that none of these differences justify killing someone. That a fetus and a newborn are different does not justify killing one of them the moment they become inconvenient to a woman any more than differences between teenager and adult, man or woman, Black or White, etc. would.
"Which is why you mangled up woman, men, black, tall, short, disabled human beings, etc. These are all differences on degree not in kind."
Incorrect. Sex, race, disability are differences in kind, within the context human, not degree. A man is not a "degree" of a woman. A Black person is not a "degree" of a White person. These are different kinds of humans.
"All of these members have skeletons all of theses members have a nervous system, all the members have cardiovascular systems, etc etc. The same basic structure is in place and matures accordingly..."
None of which is relevant when it comes to murder. They could be brains kept alive in jars and it would still be murder to kill them.
"The difference between how a teenager grows and how an old person grows again is difference in degree not in kind."
It's actually both - a teenager grows in degree and in different kinds of ways relative to an old person.
"The basis of my argument is not special pleading it's that to judge whether things should be treated similarly would have to be judged by whether they are members of the same class or category of human being."
Which is a type of special pleading. Treating some humans differently than others in the context of rights and ethics based on class or category IS a form of special pleading. Some would describe it as literally the definition of discrimination. Rights and ethics apply to all types, all classes, categories, or kinds of humans, not just the ones you arbitrary decide it should. Again, that is the fundamental flaw of your argument and why I keep using the word "arbitrary" to describe it.
You have abitiarly decided/created an exception that a human who is still in the womb does not have rights, or ethics do not apply to them, based solely on superficial, arbitrary criteria - on what they look like at present, and have failed completely to define what exactly DOES convey rights and ethics to the human in question and when, and why?
And you go on to just as abirtiarly dismiss and downplay my arguments without addressing them, much less refuting them. So what more needs to be said? Once again abortion has been failed to be justified rationally.
@@177SCmaro You keep saying superficial, arbitrary criteria but I am using the same exact criteria you are. I am just interpreting differently and albeit I would argue more rationally.
The class of members with the right to life are.
1. Alive
2. Human
3. Unique
The part that we are interpreting differently is 1. Alive. Living things are alive in different ways cancer vs animal vs humans vs human being vs insects vs bacteria etc.
I would maintain that the smallest unit that we could logically speak about when it comes to rights is the human being. The ones I look around me are disabled, young, old, white, black, male, female, etc are obvious individuated human beings that are living in a particular way. When I talk about things that are in common that allow these things to live like having fully formed bodies that grow and develop you call this arbitrary. I disagree I think it's highly relevant.
To summarize, a picture is not even worth minus one thousand words. It's not even false, it's non-cognitive, which is worse than false.
Only on the conceptual level. A picture has worth on the perceptual level.
🤔 Leonard Peikof sounds just like the comedian Norm McDonald!!
Would Derek Chauvin have been convicted of murder in the case of George Floyd without the video? I say he would not have. I also say that he was wrongly convicted. The video played on people's emotions
I agree with wrongfully convicted, but I understand why he was, it’s not as much of a clear-cut case at some other ones.
These titles are not handy for these videos to be found..
If he could have had an idea of picturism of today.
TikTok is not an argument
Should students be shown Auschwitz victims when learning about the Holocaust?
Should vegans be allowed to show chicks being shredded when advocating for veganism?
On their own property, they can show it.
I like this presentation... BUT... if he slurps and swallows one more time I'm going to go postal!!!!
Hey moron it was recorded in 1998, you have no choice what happens later in the recording.
The problem is in how the audio was mastered. Compression, an effect which is meant to make the overall volume of the speech more consistent (raising the quiet parts and lowering the loud parts) has drastically amplified body noises which should be less audible. (Perhaps Dr. Peikoff’s microphone techniques have also played a role, but it would not take a competent audio engineer long to fix this in post production).
Abortion is murder. Murder is not a decision.
@Skip White if their argument comes from a religious emotional foundation and they are consistent in their principles, then I believe they would say, yes even the inadvertent or advertent loss of sperm is murder.
@Skip White Most who hold that abortion (the killing of a human fetus, embryo, zygote, etc. thus terminating a pregnancy) is murder (the unjustified, deliberate killing of one or more humans by one or more other humans) cite biology. Biologically, human life begins at conception - the moment when you have DNA that is not the mother or the father's but it's own distinct DNA, a human zygote, which grows through the various stages of a human life from zygote to (typically) adulthood and ends with death. This, of course, rules out a woman's eggs or a man's sperm on it's own as, although they are alive, these are not biologically distinct from the mother or father and thus not a distinct human. A sperm or an egg, on it's own, will never be a human.
So, if a human life biologically begins at conception then any act of killing it is the depriving of a human of life. The fact that the human in question is at his or her earliest stage of development, or any stage of development, is irrelevant i.e. killing a human fetus several weeks old, for example, is still killing a biological human just as much as killing a human child several years old.
Since biology clearly establishes that the life in question is human what can logically justify killing a human? That is what the whole issue of abortion hinges upon.
Logically, the only justified reason for one human killing another is if one human has deliberately and imminently threatened the life of another - in other words, is initiating deadly imminent threat to another. This constitutes an act of self-defense where only as much force is used to neutralize the threat, including lethal force if necessary.
Does a human zygote, embryo, fetus, etc do this to the mother or to anyone else? No. Logically, obviously, he/she can't. A zygote, embryo, fetus, etc is not yet even conscious of the world and people around him or her and had no choice but to be placed in the mother's womb usually as a direct result of the mother's choices and actions (baring rape) and thus is completely innocent, has committed no threat or immoral act.
Therefore, abortion is the unjustified, deliberate killing of one human by another. Abortion is murder.
@Skip White
The point isn't about what abortion is or if I, personally, could befriend someone who deliberately killed her unborn child. The point was, given what abortion is, is it murder and therefore wrong?
And, the lack of specifics or context to your question not withstanding, I don't think I would pursue a friendship with such a woman, no. That she would do that, generally, says something about her character that I would wish to avoid associating with.
@Skip White
Evidently I have to be blunt with you: I don't associate with people who murder regardless of the age, sex, race, ect. of the victim(s) or the method of the murder. And who I associate with is an insignificant issue next to that of abortion and it's ethics. Why are you focusing on such a relativly trivial matter as my personal choices?
@Skip White
1. You assumed incorrectly. I essentially stated the same thing twice - I don't associate with murderers. I even pointed out that my second response was a more blunt version of how I already answered.
2. Even if my personal response or prefences was different that dosn't prove there is a difference in principle between murdering an unborn child and a born child several years old, only that my preferences are inconsistent. That is not a proof or disproof of anything.
Do you imagine that if you asked me if I prefer vanilla ice cream and I said "no, I don't think I do." And then you asked a second time worded slightly differently if I preferred vanilla ice cream that was a few days old and I replied "no. I would avoid it." that you've proven any fundamental difference between fresh ice cream and ice cream a couple days old based soley on the fact that I anwswed fundamentally the same but worded slightly differently?
You are engaging in a very weak non-sequitur, sir. You've completely failed to explain, much less demonstrate, any fundamental difference between an unborn human and a born human - people's attitudes or preferences have no bearing on reality, as I'm sure Rand, herself, would have told you.