readings:coyne_1995 [Witapedia]

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Enlightenment thinking of rationalitaion and the valorization of the indivdual -- ok?

([Coyne, 1995, p. 2](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) AI implications  
This first account of disruption, this technology-driven rhetoric,  
has most force where we hold to the philosophical position of ra-  
tionalism or Enlightenment thinking, with its valorization of the  
individual, principle, and reason. Another characterization of this  
account is to describe it as modern, continuing the Enlightenment  
project of applying reason instead, supposedly, of relying on author-  
ity or succumbing to prejudice. Rationalism presents us with a range  
of legacies, each of which appears to be somehow challenged by IT.  
The autonomy of the individual and the notion of originality are  
challenged by technologies of mass production and mechanical and  
electronic reproduction. Whereas the rationalist legacy suggests that  
truth resides in the correspondence between a sign (such as a word  
or gesture) and the signified (the entity we are pointing out), mod-  
ern electronic communications, the mass media, and computer im-  
agery, present us with the difficulty of discerning what is referring  
to what. Whereas rationalism supports the notion that human intel-  
ligence resides in individuals and is based in rule, computers are  
shown to manipulate rules faster and more precisely than we can.  
How important then is the individual? Rationalism suggests that the  
world can be described completely and ultimately through unified  
theories. Now there are computer systems that are purported to

([Coyne, 1995, p. 3](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) is this a critique of metaphysics or simply Kant's point, to question these categories?

([Coyne, 1995, p. 3](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) so a shifting but still new ground?  
The second account of disruption pays little heed to the machina-  
tions of the moderns. This is the account of Nietzsche, Heidegger,  
Derrida, and the postmoderns.1 For the postmoderns, the current  
disruption is the realization and working out of the end of metaphys-  
ics (logocentrism). Humankind has always been confronted with un-  
certainty, changing values, and accommodating new technologies.  
But putting an end to metaphysics is a relatively recent project in the  
west-arguably around one hundred years old. The project comes to  
light most cogently in the writings of Derrida and the poststructural-  
ists. Derrida's main project is to detect and go beyond logocentric  
argumentation, especially among those who claim most fervently to  
have abandoned it.

([Coyne, 1995, p. 3](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) yes, there is no ground is a metaphyscial assertion...  and so our multview of metaphysics may represent this postmodern view.  
If metaphysics is the quest for the ground, postmodernism does  
not simply deny that there is a ground (to deny ground is simply  
relativism) but attempts to exorcise its own rhetoric, and that of its  
progenitors, of the metaphysical (logocentric), the need for either  
ground or nonground. To assert that there is no ground is itself a  
metaphysical assertion. Postmodern rhetoric is therefore character-  
ized by a restlessness-no sooner establishing foundations than re-  
moving them. There is an attempt to work out a nonmetaphysical  
view of the topic at hand-language, literature, art, science, culture,  
theology, technology, design, and so on-and as I will show here in  
relation to information technology.

([Coyne, 1995, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) that we live in a changing world and IT will challenge us is a modern metaphysics

([Coyne, 1995, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/5700439/items/4BLYV8T8)) dialectic to key oppositions in play between opposites...  
The postmodern project against metaphysics is well represented  
in Derrida's strategy of deconstruction. Deconstruction is an argumen-  
tative strategy to unsettle and challenge metaphysics (logocentrism).  
It can be seen as an extension of the dialectical principle of the pre-  
Socratics and of Eckhart, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger though  
the principle is extended through the metaphor of play. The dialec-  
tical principle is to keep the interaction between opposites in play.4  
The deconstructive position has also been labeled radical hermeneutics  
by Caputo and Gallagher.5 Deconstruction seizes on the various op-  
positions that are assumed within intellectual inquiry and makes dev-  
astating play of their inversion, reversal, and demolition.