Two Types of Binary Reasoning

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Recently, I read an article critical of people who were "binary" thinkers, by which the author meant people who tend to classify information in one of two categories: true or false, black or white. He called this binary thinking. Though not the only definition of binary thinking, his is the most common and generally accepted definition.

If one does an internet search using the phrase "binary reasoning" this comes up on Goggle: 

Binary reasoning is a system of logic where information is categorized into only two, mutually exclusive states—typically TRUE (1) or FALSE (0). Used in computer logic and analytical reasoning, it simplifies complex problems by allowing only two, non-overlapping possibilities (e.g., truth-tellers vs. liars). 

According to this definition, binary reasoning has an either-or framework that does not allow for contradiction (only one can be true) or hierarchy (both are true but one has higher authority).

The Goggle definition reflects the Aristotelian logic that dominates Western philosophy. It does not recognize the much older and more complex binary reasoning of the early Hebrew (4000-2000 BCE). Were we to investigate the Hebrew binary reasoning we would discover that it breaks out of the either-or framework by recognizing hierarchy rather than non-contradiction. Binary reasoning is the way humans make sense of features in Nature that signal something beyond. The Semitic way of thinking allows for both-and. It opens an avenue for the exploration of the "and".

Western philosophy recognizes the logic of non-contradiction. However, the original arguments made by Aristotle are not that simple. Aristotle presented three versions of the principle of non-contradiction: an ontological, a doxastic (opinion), and a semantic version. The first version concerns things that exist in the world, the second is about what we believe, and the third relates to assertions about truth.

The binary reasoning that pertains to the ontological are the most significant. These are observations of binary sets in Nature. Here we find hierarchy, that is to say, things exist even when they exist as a trace, to borrow Derrida's term.

It is fascinating that both the Structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida began with binary reasoning.

Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) founded structural anthropology, proposing that universal mental structures or patterns shape human culture. He argued that human thought operates through binary oppositions (e.g., raw/cooked, nature/culture). On the basis of his anthropological research, he argued that the "primitive" mind has the same structures as the "civilized" mind. He believed that myths, kinship, and customs can be decoded to reveal these mental structures. He came to these conclusions based on his 1930s fieldwork among the Bororo and Nambikwara peoples of the Amazon and Matto Grosso. His experiences and structuralist theories were documented in his 1955 memoir, Tristes Tropiques.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in El-Biar, Algeria. He sought to uncover the underbelly of meaning in myths and texts. He enjoyed making fun of traditional interpretations, yet as he developed his "ontotheology" he concluded that there was something fixed at the metaphysical center. He developed this in his lectures at Villanova University.

Deconstruction reveals a “presence” that has been called by different names throughout history: logos, nous, arche, God, the metaphysical center, etc. However, for Derrida the fixed presence is not a being, but rather a necessary function by which we are able to discover meaning. 

Derrida’s deconstruction reveals great complexity of meaning in written texts, ideas, myths and human customs. He wanted to know what dominates and blocks what seems not to be present. He ascribes to subordinate objects a more substantial existence than the shadow they cast, or their “trace.” Derrida wrote: "Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes" (Metaphysics).

Derrida identified binary distinctions, such as dominance and subservience, central and marginalized, and reversals. Each component of the binary set means something, and the relationship of the oppositions means something, and the hierarchy exhibited by the set means something. The reversal of the oppositions also means something. The reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition is a significant aspect of Derrida's strategy. In examining a binary opposition and reversals, deconstruction brings to light traces of meaning that cannot be said to be present, but which have metaphysical presence.

Derrida explores the hidden presence. In so doing, deeper and/or unfamiliar meanings emerge. His method involves neutralizing the shouting voice in order to hear resonances of underlying voices. He looks for Plato behind Aristotle, for mystery behind logic, and for the metaphysical behind the physical. His reversals are a strategic intervention to free western philosophy from the constraints of materialism and the deductive and linear reasoning in ancient Greece. In a true sense, Derrida lifted up a Semitic way of reasoning. (See Jeff Benner on Greek Linear Logic vs. Hebrew Step Logic.)

In summary, there are two distinct types of binary reasoning. The West is heir to both, but the earlier binary reasoning of the biblical Hebrew has been largely ignored and forgotten.

Binary Reasoning of the Biblical Hebrew

The binary reasoning of the early Hebrew involves binary sets of two closely related entities which, when observed empirically, reveal that one of the entities is greater than its partner. Genesis 1:16 speaks of the sun and the moon as a binary set and notes that the sun is the greater of the two. Likewise, in the male-female set, it is universally true that the human male is anatomically larger and stronger than the female.

Not all pairs of opposites are binary sets. Consider that talented-untalented does not represent a binary set because this involves subjective judgement. Tall-short is not a binary set because this is relative to the observer. For example, the tall-short contrast is relative to the observer. I am 5 feet 5 inches tall. Standing beside a Watusi warrior, I would appear to be short. However, were I to stand beside a Pygmy, I would appear to be tall.

The binary reasoning of the Bible is based on the early Hebrew priests' acute observation of patterns in Nature. It prevents the biblical worldview from slipping into dualism, a view in which the two entities of a set are equal in every way.

 

Related reading: Binary Sets in the Ancient World; "Binary" is a Bad Word These Days; Theories of Knowledge Among Archaic Humans; Theories of Knowledge - Bacon and Descartes; Theories of Knowledge - Locke and Hume; Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge by Albert Einstein; A Christian Anthropologist Considers Gender in the Bible; Orthodoxy Requires Binary Reasoning

Derrida's Hostility to Phonocentrism

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Phonocentrism is the belief that uttered sounds and speech are inherently superior to written language. Phonocentricists maintain that spoken language is the primary and most fundamental method of communication whereas writing is a derived method of capturing speech. 

Some writers have argued that philosophers such as Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Ferdinand de Saussure have promoted phonocentric views. Walter Ong (1912-2003) expressed support for the idea of phonocentrism. He drew on the work of Eric A. Havelock, who suggested a fundamental shift in the form of thought coinciding with the transition from orality to literacy in Ancient Greece. 

Ong viewed writing as a laboriously learned technology which effects the first transformation of human thought from sound to sight. This transition has implications for structuralism, deconstruction, religion, and anthropology. Ong argued that the general culture of the United States is particularly non-phonocentric.

In 1962, Jacques Derrida, a young French-speaking Algerian of Jewish parentage took interest in this subject, having read a set of lectures by the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin (1911-1960). Austin's "How to Do Things with Words" contained a theory of the different kinds of speech acts. Beginning in 1946, Austin made a distinction between constative speech and performative speech. Austin was not particularly interested in the distinction between what is spoken and what is written. The philosophical points he made apply to both forms of communication.

Derrida, however, found importance in the distinction and felt that in Western culture and Philosophy too much emphasis had been placed on the spoken word.

Jacques Derrida used the term "phonocentrism" to criticize what he saw as a disdain for written language. He argued that phonocentrism developed because speech, being more immediate than writing, has been regarded as closer to the presence of subjects. He believed that the binary opposition between speech and writing is a form of logocentrism, in which words and language are taken as a fundamental expression of an external reality.

This was problematic for Derrida whose deconstruction of narratives suggests that the notion of meaning is far more complex. Derrida's opposition to phonocentrism came from his attack on what he called "the metaphysics of presence". Derrida characterizes as the metaphysics of presence the tendency to conceive fundamental philosophical concepts such as truth, reality, and being in terms of ideas such as presence, essence, identity, and origin—and in the process to ignore the crucial role of absence and difference. For Derrida negative space is presence. Here we perhaps see some influence from his Hebrew background. The horned altar of the Hebrew was a negative (apophatic) solar image.

Anthony Kenny explains, "Derrida 'deconstructs' the opposition between speech and writing and gives the privileged position to the written text, the one furthest from the control of the author, the one most capable of diverse and superseding interpretations. Some have seen Derrida's attacks on the metaphysics of presence as an enterprise, in a very different key, parallel to Wittgenstein's demolition of the notion of private language." (A. Kenny, Philosophy in the Modern World, Vol. 4, p. 92)

For Derrida, presence and absence are a binary opposition worth exploring. This applied even to his personal preferences. On his reluctance to be photographed and his insistence that no image of himself would appear on his book covers, Derrida said, "For me, writing means to withdraw myself, even if one appears when one writes because publishing means appearing in a certain way. But I didn’t want my appearance to be framed by the contemporary uses of photography where they show the author writing or in a head shot. So I thought it was very important to exclude all forms of photography and all public images of myself." 

Peter Salmon notes, "Jewish, French, Algerian, Derrida’s identity was complicated, and he strove to apply this complexity to all he touched. Part of thinking like Derrida involves taking those things we take most for granted – such as our identity, such as our language – and looking for unexplored assumptions, contradictions and absences."

Derrida’s deconstruction reveals great complexities of meaning in written texts, ideas, myths and human customs. He wanted to know what dominates and blocks what seems not to be present. He ascribes to subordinate objects a more substantial existence than the shadow they cast, or their “trace.” He wrote: "Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes" (Metaphysics).

Derrida explores the hidden presence. In so doing, deeper and/or unfamiliar meanings emerge. His method involves neutralizing the shouting voice in order to hear resonances of underlying voices. He looks for Plato behind Aristotle, for mystery behind logic, and for the metaphysical behind the physical. His reversals are a strategic intervention to free western philosophy from the constraints of empiricism, materialism, and linear logic. 

This project necessarily drives one toward the written word which stands still long enough to be deconstructed.

Related: Walter Ong: Oral Cultures and Early Writing; Derrida's Style of Writing; Something Older; Thoughts on the Logos; Peter Salmon, Divide Opinion as Derrida Did

Derrida's Style of Writing

 

Paul Austin Murphy looks at Derrida's intentionally obscure writing style. Murphy observes:

How much does a reader need to know about Derrida’s writing style (as well as his philosophy) in order to recognise his (to use Critchley’s words) “wordplay”, “intertextual references”, “allusions”, “neologisms” and “paleonomy”?

Clearly — a hell of a lot.

Of course one can easily argue that one needs to be tuned in — at least to some extent - to any philosopher in order to understand what he or she says. Yet added to that fact — again — is Derrida’s use of language to make it say things it hasn’t previously said. That compounds the difficulties for the reader. And, of course, it’s very clear that Derrida was very happy with making things difficult. Indeed one could easily argue that making things difficult for the reader was at least part of Derrida’s (philosophical) point!

 Read the whole article here.

Divide Opinion as Derrida Did

 

By Peter Salmon

There have been few thinkers in the history of philosophy who have divided opinion as completely as Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). For some, he is one of the great philosophers of the 20th century, whose brilliant analyses of the text of philosophy and literature overturned many of the fundamental assumptions of each. To others, he is a charlatan: his honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1992 was opposed in a letter to The Times that accused him of not meeting accepted standards of clarity and rigour. His work, the signatories argued, consisted in no small part of elaborate jokes and puns, making French philosophy ‘an object of ridicule’.

Handsome, charismatic, pipe-smoking, Derrida looked like everything a French philosopher should. Pop songs were written about him, films were made in which he played himself, while his aphorisms appeared on T-shirts and coffee mugs: ‘There is nothing outside the text’; ‘To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend’; and ‘I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.’

He was born in Algeria on 15 July 1930, and his real name was, in fact, Jackie – named after Jackie Coogan, star of the film The Kid (1921), by his Charlie Chaplin-loving parents. Jewish, French, Algerian, Derrida’s identity was complicated, and he strove to apply this complexity to all he touched. Part of thinking like Derrida involves taking those things we take most for granted – such as our identity, such as our language – and looking for unexplored assumptions, contradictions and absences. Thinking like Derrida is a form of close reading, not just of texts, such as those of philosophy and literature, but of everything – art, religion, politics, even ourselves.

Read it all here.

Related reading: A Thumbnail Sketch of Jacques Derrida; New Leading Thinkers Course on Derrida; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions