Glossar-English:Modality

Sub-Item to: Sign theories: Overview

Original: Modalität

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The spatiotemporal situatedness of sign acts and their propositional angles In addition to other subject areas irrelevant here, the expression ‘modality’ is also encountered in the border area of logic and sign theory: When speaking of the modality of a sign action, one first thinks of the qualification of a proposition as necessary or possible (alethic modality). In a more general sense, the expression also refers to the situational (especially spatiotemporal) classification of a sign act as a whole. The situation of utterance is of great importance for any sign acts, with and without propositional angle: For sign acts without propositional angle, this behavioral environment plays the only role. In the case of sign acts with propositional angle, however, additional contexts to which the proposition refers are taken into account. If these additional situations cannot be implicitly derived from the utterance situation, they must be explicitly stated (⊳ Context-building acts). In a broad sense, therefore, ‘modality of a sign action’ means the specification of these additional, usually absent contexts. Aspects of the contextual reference of propositions Of course, statements, like, by the way, any use of images, are necessarily situational: The corresponding sign acts always take place in a particular spatiotemporal context, to which they may also refer directly. However, this embedding is not meant when we speak of ‘modality’. Rather, what is meant is that statements as such are necessarily associated with a (usually different) situation of reference, which is more or less freely chosen and explicitly or implicitly communicated. This situation provides the framework for the interplay of nomination and predication. The division of the pragmatic partial functions of a proposition, which today we call predication and nomination, essentially goes back to the philosophy of ancient Greece and especially to Aristotle. In addition to those basic aspects, [Aristoteles 1949a]Aristoteles (1949): De interpretatione. In: Minio-Paluello, L. (Hg.), Aristotelis categoriae et liber de interpretatione. Oxford University Press, Oxford (12 squ.) also points out that a proposition is often supplemented by further indications of place and time or of necessity and possibility. These modal aspects were long regarded in formal logic as merely optional additions to the core of a statement (proposition). Over time, a shortening of modality to the aspect pair necessity and possibility occurred. However, the analyses of the modern philosophy of language lead us to conceive of modality in a broad sense as an essential component of propositions, without which the functions of nomination and predication cannot even be meaningfully introduced (see, for example, [Tugendhat 1976a]Tugendhat, Ernst (1976): Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. ). Apart from the fact that statements in natural language are usually already grammatically positioned at least temporally with respect to the utterance situation (via tense markers), it would also be logically impossible to perform the nominations with descriptions or deictic particles independently of at least implicitly given contextual reference: Whether the king of France is indeed bald, as is asserted with an often-used example sentence, depends, of course, on the point in time or, more generally, on the situational context that is referred to. Obviously, proper names do not help either because whether Mathilde is French or not depends again on which context of someone named Mathilde is referred to by the corresponding combination of nomination (‘Mathilde’) and predication (‘is French’); in short: on the modality of the statement (understood in a broad sense). Evidently, the truth of a proposition can only be stated relative to the intended context. In the case of a singular concrete proposition, truth (and falsity) results from the relation between the asserted states of affairs and the facts in the meant context. A distinction must be made whether it is possible to empirically verify the validity of the asserted states of affairs in the context or whether direct access to the context is not possible and, therefore, only a logical comparison with prior knowledge succeeds. The connection between the necessity and possibility of a proposition, on the one hand, and the contextual reference of the proposition, on the other hand, becomes particularly obvious in the interpretation of Leibniz ([Leibniz 1710a]Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1710): Essais de théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Troyel, Amsterdam ): A proposition is necessary if it holds in all possible contexts. It is possible if there is at least one situation in which it holds. Modality in the narrower sense is, thus, to be made intelligible as quantification over the contexts in which a state of affairs is asserted with the proposition. Modality of image use Images as sign acts without context-building Closely related to the problem of whether image uses as sign uses generally have propositional angles is the question of whether modal aspects occur in image uses as in statements. In other words, does every image use presuppose an act of context-building by which the context is communicated to which a pictorial propositional angle should be directed? Figure 1: A mug shot While this is evidently possible – think, for example, of a picture with a title consisting of a place and time indication – it is not necessarily the case: A mug shot, for instance, is generally not about non-pictorial means to refer to a specific context, in which it should then be valid that the person being searched for posed and looked like this. The fact that the photo was taken on a specific occasion is largely irrelevant to its use as a mug shot (Fig. 1). Rather, the use of the image itself seems to open up the appropriate context. The modal theory of image use Obviously, the non-reflective use of a figurative image as such provides an additional situational context that can and usually does serve as a starting point for nominations and predications ([Schirra 1995a]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (1995): Understanding Radio Broadcasts On Soccer. The Concept »Mental Image« and Its Use in Spatial Reasoning. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bilder im Geiste: Zur kognitiven und erkenntnistheoretischen Funktion piktorialer Repräsentationen. Rodopi, Amsterdam. Webadresse: www.jrjs.de/Work/Papers/P95/index.html ). In any case, using the image provides the communication partners with precisely the context needed for the statements about the image content (i.e., what is depicted). Context building would thus be the primary function of those image uses ([Schirra 2001a]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2001): Bilder   ——   Kontextbilder. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bildhandeln. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Pragmatik bildhafter Darstellungsformen. Skriptum, Magdeburg. Webadresse: www.jrjs.de/Work/Papers/P01/P01-5/index.html ). Similar to the way the mentioning of a novel opens up to the interlocutors a very specific (fictional) context for the subsequent nominations and predications about the novel plot and its protagonists, by presenting a picture, someone tries to direct the attention of the counterpart (or he in the role of an imagined counterpart) to a real or fictional perceptual situation, which in most cases does not correspond to the actual situation of the sign act. In this context, context building with the help of pictures offers, at least within certain limits (such as the sensory modality), quite the possibility to anchor, based on perception, the corresponding nominations and their interaction with the mentioned predication directly – that is, as in the actual utterance context. It is suggestive that every other use of an object as an image is based on the use for context building. Since it is always initially the apparent sensual visualization of a situation, usually not present at the same time, that makes more specific image uses possible in the first place. The primacy of context building in image acts, according to modal image theory, also applies to structural images if it is assumed that a metaphorical transfer of spatial, visually representable entities to the inherently not visually perceivable aspects of the represented objects is additionally at play: Again, the spatial-visual substitutes are presented in a context – the image space – that is opened initially up by the image use and thus, among other things, made available for further sign acts with a corresponding propositional angle, which can in part be empirically verified. For, the modal theory, the fundamental task of an image use is to open up the image space as a further common situation of perception and action that occurs alongside the utterance situation. Only when the predications focused on by the predication theory are related to this separated context are they included in using an object as a picture. For the characteristic of the image use is not so much that something is thereby given to be seen, but rather that something is thereby given to be seen that is supposed to be seen in a completely different place or time. Accordingly, when using a mugshot with the words ‘Have you seen a person who looks like that person there?’, one can well imagine that a concrete pointing gesture supports the deictic expressions used (‘that ... there’). But which person should be pointed at, as at the place ›there‹ in the current behavioral context of the communication partner, there is just a piece of printed paper? The person is, of course, “in” the image, i.e., to be seen in the situational context visualized with the help of the picture. Even when used as a passport photo, the presentation of the image carrier initially evokes a different context. In this case, this context allows (in principle) the use of another, spatiotemporally usually distant appearance of the person present and to be identified as a reference for a visual identity check. Propositional angles of image uses From the modal theory of image use, however, it follows that an image action as such cannot have a propositional angle in the same sense as an assertion. For, the propositional angle of an assertion is always directed to the facts in a (pre-)given context. With pictures, on the other hand, according to the modal theory, a context is opened in the first place, to which the propositional angle of further sign actions can refer. Therefore, we can only speak of the propositional angle of image usage in a derived sense: Insofar as the same set of true propositions can be formed over the context given by the image and a context given elsewhere (for instance, by a text or by direct perception). However, since the power of this set is necessarily infinite – any context can be described by an unlimited number of propositions (⊳ [[Ekphrasis|Ecphrasis) – this derived propositional angle, unlike the propositional angle of the assertions, cannot be verified in a finite way. Accordingly, in the case of images, truth should not be spoken of without further ado. Reference and situatedness in media The concept of reference of a sign depends directly on the reference situation meant in each case. The situational reference of communication acts can also be used to form typologies of media. See also: Absence and presence Context Context-building acts Ecphrasis Image in reflective use Interactional, expressive, and propositional angles Meaning and reference Nomination Pragmatics Predication Proposition Semantics of non-figurative images Showing Sign, sign carrier, sign system Structural image Theories of image space Typologies of media Verbal metaphors and general metaphorology

Notes Literature [Aristoteles 1949a]Aristoteles (1949): De interpretatione. In: Minio-Paluello, L. (Hg.), Aristotelis categoriae et liber de interpretatione. Oxford University Press, Oxford [Kripke 1972a]Kripke, Saul A. (1972): Naming and Necessity. In: Davidson, D. & Harman, G. (Hg.), Semantics of Natural Language. Reidel, Dordrecht.[Leibniz 1710a]Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1710): Essais de théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Troyel, Amsterdam [Schirra 1995a]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (1995): Understanding Radio Broadcasts On Soccer. The Concept »Mental Image« and Its Use in Spatial Reasoning. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bilder im Geiste: Zur kognitiven und erkenntnistheoretischen Funktion piktorialer Repräsentationen. Rodopi, Amsterdam.[Schirra 2001a]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2001): Bilder   ——   Kontextbilder. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bildhandeln. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Pragmatik bildhafter Darstellungsformen. Skriptum, Magdeburg.[Tugendhat 1976a]Tugendhat, Ernst (1976): Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. Version 1: 2013 Responsible: Schirra, Jörg R.J. Editing: Sachs-Hombach, Klaus Contributions by: Joerg R.J. Schirra und Marcel Lemmes — (Note) Quote as: Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2013). Modality. (Ausg. 1). In: Schirra, J.R.J.; Halawa, M. & Liebsch, D. (Hg.), Glossar der Bildphilosophie. (2012-2026). [bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Glossar-English:Modality].