#enthymeme

Submission from: enthymeme

Liberty, Mr. Wizard, Mimi, and Missy!!!! Sending u lot of love from NC & GA

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i love gray cats.  i don’t think i’ve ever mentioned this before, but they are My Favorite of All Cats.  So you can imagine my delight when I opened this and found not just a gray cat but MORE BONUS CATS???? (PLUS A LIZARD???)

In the reading of The Naturalistic Enthymeme and Visual Argument: Photographic Representation in the “Skull Controversy” Dr. Finnegan discusses the implications of a photograph of a bleached skull of a bovine. The image was taken by Arthur Rothstein of the Resettlement Administration to represent what was going on in rural America in the early 20th century. The source of contention in the reading as discussed by Dr. Finnegan is how rural, Republican newspapers reacted to and interpreted the photo and its use by the Resettlement Administration and eastern newspapers.

The Republican newspapers argued that the photograph was false and did not accurately represent life in the west. Rather, the photograph was manipulated and was used to mischaracterize life in the west and rural America to promote socialism. In turn, the Resettlement Administration defends themselves and their widely circulated bovine skull photograph as legitimate and proper.

Dr. Finnegan analyzes the ordeal and discusses how the nature of the eye and in turn photography have been viewed and related to in Philosophy throughout history. From my understanding one does not need to have a broad philosophical understanding to understand Dr. Finnegan’s claim. The point of these references is to support the idea that the photograph represents an absolute visual truth. She uses her historical philosophical references as premises to support her claim of the Naturalistic Enthymeme.

Dr. Finnegan describes Naturalistic Enthymeme in the following excerpt from the passage.

“Because we perceive photographs as fundamentally “re- alistic,” we make assumptions about their argumentative potential. I call this process the “naturalistic enthymeme”: we assume photographs to be “true” or “real” until we are given reason to doubt them. My analysis of the skull controversy reveals that the naturalistic enthymeme served as a particularly potent, but ultimately vulnerable form of visual argument about the drought and the Depression.”

It seems like Dr. Finnegan is using Naturalistic Enthymeme as a sort of catch all to prevent those from critiquing the photograph from doing so. She argues that if they’re saying it’s manipulated then it’s going against enthymeme. Which means they would be not assuming that the photograph is an object of truth. This would in turn mean that those claiming manipulation are going against the philosophical premises that she used to support these claims.

I think within the context of the early 20th century Dr. Finnegan’s argument holds a little in the sense that people would be inconsistent logically to disagree with her if they agreed with her previous premises. She also argues that with new technology that allows for easier image editing doesn’t harm her claim but reinforces it. She doesn’t really seem to explain how though. Throughout the essay she does discuss how there are hesitations about the idea of a photograph representing the truth by discussing how some information if left out of the frame would manipulate the photographs meaning for example. This means the whole situation isn’t being represented in the image.

I think there has just been so much new technology introduced in the 21st century that can manipulate images and video that I don’t think that the theory of pictorial perspective from the 15th century is as representative of or relevant to the world of today as it was over 500 years ago. Images and video are so easily manipulated. The whole digitalization of photography, graphic design, audio engineering and so on would be absolutely unreal to thinkers like Descartes or others she references. I think the opposite is true with regards to enthymeme today, I think people would assume most images are false.

During the Great Depression, Arthur Rothstein was working in South Dakota to document drought conditions. Arthur Rothstein's most controversial photo was released to the media in August 1936.

The Fargo Forum and others argued that Rothstein had manipulated the scene to make the drought look worse than it was. The Forum added that the photographs did not live up to the editor's definition of truth, creating political propaganda.

If you glance at the Rothstein photographs, it shows an alkali flat, like ones that are found in the Midwest. The paper referred to the skull as "a movable prop." Rothstein was interviewed multiple times confirming that he moved the skull around and played with light, shadow, background. Rothstein insisted he only moved the skull about ten feet from where he found it. Rothstein argues that he was not the one to blame for the manipulation of the photo, but his editor was the one that took the image out of context.

The paper argues that skull photograph was placed before the public as a classic example of a political hoax. Snyder also states that there is nothing "realistic or " natural" about the camera vision, which means no matter how unedited the photographer could be, it’s still misleading. The reason behind this theory is human perception differs from camera vision. "The Forum did not argue that all Rothstein photos were false, but the naturalistic enthymeme itself was a fallacy."

Aune on enthymemes in New Testament scholarship

In a helpful 2003 essay, David Aune discusses “the use and abuse of the enthymeme in New Testament scholarship” (New Testament Studies 49, no. 3, 299–320). According to the article’s abstract, Though the enthymeme is usually defined as a truncated syllogism, that definition does not go back to Aristotle. By the first century CE there were four ways of understanding the enthymeme in both Greek and…

Commonplace + conclusion = ENTHYMEME.  It is DEDUCTIVE LOGIC.  Deductive logic starts with a proof (premise) then leads to a conclusion.

In deduction, the commonplace serves as your proof.

INDUCTIVE LOGIC

works the opposite way, taking specific cases and using them to prove a premise or conclusion.