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

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 contemporary algorithms challenge humanist assumptions while seemingly maintaining older structures of meaning.

Derrida’s Critique of Metaphysics and Logocentrism

Derrida’s deconstruction of metaphysics exposes the West’s historical privileging of speech over inscription. The philosophical tradition has long assumed an immediate link between thought and spoken word, relegating textual representation to a secondary role. However, in his notion of arche-écriture, he argues that all meaning is already deferred and mediated through traces rather than being fully present. This view challenges logocentrism—the belief in a central, self-contained origin of meaning.

When Derrida states that cybernetics, even as it dismantles certain metaphysical concepts, must still retain the notion of writing, he underscores the persistence of these structures. If automated systems redefine intelligence as pattern recognition and decision-making without invoking traditional ideas of mind or soul, they nevertheless function within a system of traces, storing and organizing data in ways that remain dependent on earlier frameworks of signification. The displacement of certain concepts does not equate to an escape from their structuring influence.

Cybernetics and the Illusion of Breaking with Metaphysics

The claim that an epoch’s closure can be outlined without fully stepping outside it is crucial to understanding why cybernetics—and by extension, modern computation—may not entirely sever ties with the past. The movement from human cognition to machinic processing appears revolutionary, yet it still operates within inherited categories of representation.

Derrida’s skepticism of radical breaks is evident in his second quote. Even as thinkers outline the limits of metaphysical traditions, the subtle ways in which they remain bound to them are difficult to discern. The cybernetic shift did not erase foundational oppositions; rather, it reconfigured them into informational terms. Instead of presence versus absence, it introduced code and signal processing; rather than consciousness and memory, it speaks of storage and retrieval. These linguistic and conceptual shifts may obscure the continuity between metaphysical assumptions and the technologies that claim to transcend them.

Modern AI: A Break or a Continuation of Metaphysical Assumptions?

The rise of machine learning and neural networks has reignited discussions on whether synthetic cognition marks an epistemological rupture. While sophisticated algorithms appear to bypass human-centered notions of intelligence, they continue to rely on structured models of meaning. Large language models, for instance, generate responses based on vast textual corpora, reinforcing patterns without engaging in interpretation as traditionally conceived.

If Derrida argued that all meaning is constituted through difference and deferral (différance), then AI, in processing symbols statistically rather than semantically, might seem to escape logocentric constraints. Yet, the very act of computation depends on categorization, prediction, and retrieval—mechanisms that suggest an implicit faith in stable signification. The persistence of training datasets, the reliance on archives, and the instrumental logic of AI models indicate that while the form has changed, the underlying metaphysical assumptions have not entirely disappeared.

AI and the Writing of the Future: Beyond Presence?

Derrida’s insistence that writing structures all meaning suggests that intelligent systems, rather than constituting an autonomous form of cognition, are simply a continuation of textual processes by other means. Automated systems do not think or understand; they recombine traces, perpetuating the logic of inscription without departing from it.

At the same time, the machinic nature of contemporary computation challenges older notions of authorship and originality. If AI-generated texts have no central origin, no clear intentionality behind them, does this signal a break from the metaphysics of presence? Or does it instead illustrate différance in its purest form—an endless play of signifiers without a final referent? The answer remains uncertain, but what is clear is that the history of metaphysics cannot be dismissed simply because a new technology claims to move beyond it.

Conclusion

The critical question Derrida poses remains open: can an epoch fully escape itself, or does it merely transform and extend its fundamental assumptions? AI appears to challenge traditional humanist concepts, yet its reliance on structured archives, predictive modeling, and encoded traces suggests it is not entirely outside metaphysical traditions. Cybernetics did not erase logocentrism but rather reformulated it; in much the same way, AI may not be a break from metaphysical thought but its latest permutation. In asking whether artificial intelligence truly moves beyond the concept of presence or simply reintroduces it in a new form, we are still engaging with the same foundational structures that Derrida aimed to deconstruct.

Related Post

Rewriting "The Program:" Derrida’s Of Grammatology in the Age of AI

https://posthumansemiotics.blogspot.com/2025/03/blog-post_06.html

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961


 

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