Are difference and hierarchy opposites?

Read Derrida !

Thanks for the reference. What do you think about the link between the two?

According to Derrida, any focus ('privileging') of attention only has meaning in contrast to what is not in focus. Thus a 'thing' and what it is contrasted with are co-extensive (like up and down, higher and lower, tree and background etc).

By co-extensive, what is meant is that any focused on can be the reverse meaning? So a river can be the grass and vice versa.

No. 'Is ness' depends on 'is not ness'.

Right. Presence depends on absence. But if absence doesn't need presence, is that evidence of equality or inequality?

Equality is surely defined in terms of functionality. 'Absence' is predicated on 'presence'. Without presence there can be no functionality. (No knife, no cutting function). Absence is the antithesis of functionality. No equivalence.

Absence is no function. Presence is function.
Equality only applies to action.

What about destruction? Differing actions can be about each other's annihilation, so how does one then know when to apply equality?

The key issue is 'thinghood', which is in the eye of the observer. We can argue that 'thing-ing' is an action, so 'destruction' is merely the eventual failure to 'thing' by an observer. Equality is always about 'functionality' which requires the presence of two things. Destruction is never 'equal to' thing-ing'.

Scientifically, we are wandering around entropy(2nd law of thermodynamics,) i.e. disorder which always increases. Mathematically, we are wandering around 'vectors' which can be equal in magnitude but different in direction. Philosophically we are wandering around 'being' (of the observer) which for Heidegger is predicated on a 'time dimension', whose direction is determined by increase in entropy.

You cannot simply play with words that may appear to be logical opposites, because the meaning of words is always embedded in the context of 'being' as experienced by an observer. In short, the view of 'words' as representational of 'reality' has been philosophically superceded by words as constructive of reality.

The ability of words means equality in of itself.
Everything is self-informative. Person G knows of something X and Y, and understands that X is anti-Y (literally, in such case that X is a train and Y is a place - the train can potentially destroy the place); person G is the observer, and yet the outcome states of X and Y can be dependent on person G.

The issue I'm trying to address is the conflicting knowledge of difference and hierarchy: difference is literal, and hierarchy may or may not be real (hierarchy can mean social hierarchy, and the seeming hierarchy of means and ends).

Assume that the highest end is the colonization of another planet, and everything prior to the colonization is pre-colonization in value; the means to the end in question are "able" to be post-colonization, and therefore the assumed hierarchy is false, yet the difference is still real (despite the idea that hierarchy is meant to be dependent on difference).


This is my point: hierarchy can always be false, but needs difference, and difference is always real.
The false needs the real, and the real causes the false.

Can intelligence be used such as to negate that whole paradigm, and end up with just the following paradigm:
The real causing the real, and the real needing the real.

I think you may be confusing abstract (representational) semantics with dynamic (constructive) semantics which are embedded in context.
Consider observer A in state 1. He interacts with what he 'things' as the world 1 which moves him to state 2. He is now essentially a different observer B thinging world 2....etc. On this view there is no 'literal difference', as you put it,
only shifting differential modes of coexistence of observer-world. And what we 'know' boils down to what we expect the world to be like ...in short, habitual states of observation. The only 'reality' of hierarchy is our expectancy/observational state which constructs it. (Ref: Nietzsche on 'will')

I understand. Reality is all so often defined by expectancy (which allows a mass uniformity to exist); would you mind just explaining that process of observer A again please? I tried to follow it but couldn't.

(ref: Piaget) The 'state' of the observer determines the 'state' of the world..i.e allows some inputs but not others. Observer states assimilate the world and accommodate to the world. Thus there is a constant shifting of 'reality' which is the interactional interface .
Think of a game of monopoly. The state of the board (= 'observer state'), at any time detemines the 'meaning' of the dice roll (='world state'). The meaning of " six" varies according the context. The signal 'six' at one stage is not equivalent to a 'six' at another stage, and the 'six' can alter the board from one state to another, i.e there are mutual state transitions, observer 1/world 1....>.observer 2/world 2...> etc.
'Reality' is essentially fluid although for some species, the state transitions are more limited than others. (A hungry frog will starve to death surrounded by what we call 'dead flies' because their perceptual systems only respond to 'moving prey'. This is equivalent to saying 'dead flies DONT EXIST for frogs.... and are we not merely more complex frogs ? ).

Thank you very much. The monopoly example made sense.

Vera Farmiga might consider her role as Lorraine Warren better than all of her other roles. She is a context of hierarchy. The type of hierarchical context she represents can apply to any homo sapien, but to have this type of hierarchy that's innocent and fun means the need of difference; the person Vera Farmiga needs to not be me, or other people who use this forum (and yet she will be me, and other people who use this forum).

This is what I'm addressing,: the conundrum of reflection and difference needing one another.

In my mind, hierarchy is to serve the purpose of fulfilling needs (which pertain to anyone), and difference is the means to this end; the clash is when the means itself is interchangeable with the ends (sort of what you alluded to, when you spoke of the interactional interface).


Because of the interchangeability, the result is the inability to cancel either the hierarchy or the difference.

Needs are relative to 'self states', but whenever you speak of a particular 'person' you may be making the lay assumption that 'self" is a unified entity. The esoteric and existential literature on the subject suggests this is not the case. (References: Buddhism, Gurdjieff, Heidegger). You might want consider this next time you have 'an internal conversation with yourself', or you ask yourself, 'now why did I do that ?'.

I recognise that possibility: no self is identical. But it's reconciling that possibility with the truth that reality is pattern and formula.