Meaning and Motoricity

The whole human body, the entire motor system including facial expressions and bodily gestures, is subject not just to emotions, but also abstract thought. Meaning, both emotional and cognitive, is grounded within the motor dimension. By implication, no meaningful philosophy of time can neglect the aspect of motor imagery.

There is an intrinsic connection between the notions of image and time. Visual images can strike us as incomplete, as ambiguous, unless they are moving ones, happening in time. However, time cannot be conceptualized except by metaphors, and so ultimately by images, of movement in space. The philosophy of images and the philosophy of time are interdependent. This book argues for the reality of time and for visual images as natural carriers of meaning. The experience of the passage of time, of the reality of time, is embodied and made visible in the bodily gestures of time, and indeed in all our gestures. Meaning, both emotional and cognitive, is grounded in the motor dimension. By implication, no meaningful philosophy of time can neglect the aspect of motor imagery.

Autorentext

Kristóf Nyíri is Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Technical Education, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. His main fields of research are Wittgenstein, the theory of conservatism, the philosophy of images and the philosophy of time.

Inhalt
Contents: Visualization and the horizons of scientific realism How McTaggart became a thing of the past Gombrich on image and time Image and metaphor in the philosophy of Wittgenstein Time as a figure of thought and as reality Images in conservative education Time and image in the theory of gestures.