Page 306 - Lazar, Irena, Aleksander Panjek in Jonatan Vinkler. Ur. 2020. Mikro in makro. Pristopi in prispevki k humanističnim vedam ob dvajsetletnici UP Fakultete za humanistične študije, 2. knjiga. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
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mikro in makro: pr istopi in pr ispevki k humanističnim vedam ob dvajsetletnici up fhš

not be inferred at all), obviously depends on their historical, social, cultu-
ral and/or individual background, on the specifics of their education and/
or their values.

But the smoking fish example dates back to the 1996. As I explained in
the beginning of the paper, in the last ten years or so, there is a tendency
to interpret visuals as directly and unambiguously offering arguments by
themselves, without any intervention or help from the verbal (or any other
code), and not being conditioned or in any other way dependent on the ver-
bal at all. Such an approach could be epitomized as “reasoning is seeing” or/
and “seeing is reasoning”.

As a case in point - exposing possible caveats as well as cul-de-sacs of
visual argumentation in general - I will be, for the rest of the paper, con-
centrating on one of VA’s main proponent’s (Leo Groarke) radical proposal
(“reasoning is seeing”) of how to reconstruct and interpret possible visual
arguments. This radical proposal was presented and conceptualized in his
2013 programmatic paper “The Elements of Argument: Six Steps to a Thick
Theory” (Kišiček and Žagar 2013, chapter 1).

2. The Reasoning is the Seeing. Is it?

Here is the photo Groarke is taking as a starting point of his reasoning:

Figure 2.1 Fruit found on the Detroit river I (photo by Leo Groarke, Groarke 2013)

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