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Cybernetics, AI, and the Persistence of Metaphysics: A Grammatological Challenge

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Introduction Does artificial intelligence truly break with metaphysics, or does it simply relocate the metaphysics of presence into computational form? This question finds resonance in Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology , particularly in two key passages. In The Program , Derrida remarks: “If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust metaphysical concepts—including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory—which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, gramme [written mark], or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed.” Meanwhile, in The Signifier and Truth , he warns: “This would perhaps mean that one does not leave the epoch whose closure one can outline. The movements of belonging or not belonging to the epoch are too subtle, the illusions in that regard are too easy, for us to make a definite judgment.” These observations remain highly relevant today as cont...
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The End of the Book and the Writing of the Future: Rereading Derrida’s 'Program'

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Introduction For centuries, the book has been the emblem of knowledge, a repository of meaning, a space where thought is preserved. Yet, Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology opens with a striking provocation: "the end of the book." This declaration does not announce the disappearance of writing but rather signals a deeper shift—the challenging of a philosophical tradition that has privileged speech as the primary site of meaning. In "The Program," the first section of Of Grammatology , he lays the groundwork for his critique of logocentrism, exposing how writing has always been at the heart of signification, even when it was cast as a secondary system. At the time of his writing in the 1960s, cybernetics and information theory were emerging as transformative forces. Their implications, though only beginning to be understood, pointed toward the primacy of inscription over the metaphysics of presence —a development that has become even more evident in today's...
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Rewriting "The Program:" Derrida’s Of Grammatology in the Age of AI

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  Introduction When Jacques Derrida wrote Of Grammatology in the late 1960s, cybernetics was still in its formative stages. The digital revolution had yet to materialize, and artificial intelligence, as we now understand it, remained largely a theoretical possibility. In The Program , Derrida engaged with the cybernetics of his time to argue that writing—conceived not merely as script but as archi-écriture —precedes and exceeds human speech, cognition, and presence. His intervention challenged the phonocentric bias of Western thought, asserting that meaning is never immediate but always mediated through differential relations. While he acknowledges cybernetics as expanding the field of writing, he also warns that it remains entangled in metaphysical presuppositions that must themselves be interrogated. The technological limitations of his era inevitably shaped the scope of his analysis. Cybernetics at the time remained largely mechanistic, centered on pre-programmed systems a...
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From “The Program” to AI: Derrida, Cybernetics, and the Authority of the Ink

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Introduction For centuries, writing has been relegated to a secondary position in the hierarchy of signification, often viewed as a mere supplement to speech. Western metaphysics, particularly in its logocentric tradition, privileged the voice as the medium of presence and self-identity, while writing was deemed a derivative, exteriorized, and even corrupted form of communication. Jacques Derrida, however, disrupts this assumption in the section “The Program” of Chapter 1 of Of Grammatology , where he introduces the concept of arche-writing , asserting that writing is not simply a representation of speech but the condition of possibility for all signification. Writing as the Origin, Not the Supplement Derrida argues that writing does not merely signify a secondary inscription of speech but instead comprehends and exceeds language. He states: “By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finall...
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Cybernetics, Writing, and the Post-Human: Of Grammatology and the Erasure of the Human Subject

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Introduction The emergence of cybernetics and information technologies has profoundly destabilized the traditional concept of the human subject. With the increasing mediation of thought through digital networks, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic processes, the idea of a self-present consciousness as the locus of meaning is increasingly untenable. Derrida's grammatology, which deconstructs the metaphysics of presence, provides a theoretical framework to understand this shift. His critique of phonocentrism and the privileging of speech over writing exposes the ways in which meaning is always already mediated through inscription, deferring the possibility of a fully autonomous subject. Cybernetics, as both a scientific paradigm and a technological reality, amplifies Derrida’s insights by demonstrating that communication, thought, and memory function independently of human consciousness. The guiding question of this article is thus: How does Derrida’s grammatology, when e...
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