The interpretations of sustainability are varied. In most cases, the focus is on reinterpretations and transformations of human attitudes towards the natural environment and certain (unacceptable) social practices and conditions, i.e. the task would be to shape these spheres of human existence in the interests of sustainability. However, the creation and widespread use of the Internet is fundamentally changing human life that is no longer confined to the natural and social spheres. Web life, as a third sphere of (...) human existence created by the universal use of the Internet, is also a component of human condition, both in itself and through its interactions with the natural and social spheres. It is essential to take this into account: the sustainability of these “three spheres” should be addressed together. The continuous construction of web life can be decisive for the sustainability of the whole human existence. (shrink)

Human existence is being transformed. Its structure, many thousand years old, seems to be changing: built on the natural and the social, there is a third form of existence: web-life. Man is now the citizen of three worlds and its nature is being formed by the relations of natural, social and web-life. We regard as our main goal the study of web-life, which has developed as the result of Internet use.

In Jacobsen, M.H. (ed.): Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008.

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence What is the difference between a simulation of X and simply another instance of X? Is there a point at which the ‘‘virtual reality’’ of a model becomes the real thing? This paper examines these questions using cases taken from recent developments in evolutionary engineering and artificial life research. By implementing the Darwinian mechanism and setting it to work on a design problem, scientists and engineers find that evolution not only can improve (...) prior designs, but also produce novel technological solutions. Artificial life systems Tierra and Avida which operate at a higher level of abstraction than evolutionary engineering applications. I analyze simulation as a rational concept ‘‘S simulates R’’ and argue that it always includes some relevant property P, of R, that is captured but that there is always also some other that it omits, and that pragmatic factors fix what counts as relevant. The border between a simulation and an instance can change depending upon the context. I show that in one sense, evo-technology and artificial life simulate organic evolution, but in another relevant sense they are instances of evolution itself. Biologists can use such systems to experimentally test evolutionary hypotheses such as those involving the evolution of complex features and altruism. This analysis suggests lines for future research on broader questions about models classification and confirmation. (shrink)

By any reasonable standard of assessment, it is clear that human beings lead lives of wildly varying quality. People who live in different societies or belong to different social classes often differ greatly in their life expectancy, material resources, political rights and personal freedoms, and levels of nutrition and health, as well as in their access to education and medical care and their vulnerability to violence and assault. At the extremes, at least, these differences are normally accompanied by great (...) differences in the range of options people have available to them, in their prospects of achieving their aims, and in their sense of satisfaction with their own lives. Whereas many people in many countries enjoy a high level of prosperity and material comfort, and have a reasonable chance of achieving a significant measure of personal fulfillment over the course of their lives, there are many others who can look forward to little more than a miserable life and an early death. Although great progress has been made in combating the worst forms of poverty in recent decades, there continue to be people who live in conditions of extreme deprivation and malnutrition; people whose lack of medical care leaves them defenseless against infection and disease; people who have never received a formal education, have no political.. (shrink)

Human beings begin life as quadrupeds, crawling on all fours, but none has ever been known to retain this gait and develop it into a proficient replacement for adult bipedality. We report the case of a family in which five siblings, who suffer from a rare form of cerebellar ataxia, are still quadrupeds as adults - walking and running on their feet and wrists. We describe the remarkable features of this gait, discuss how it has developed in the members (...) of this family, and consider whether a similar gait may have been used by human ancestors. (shrink)

In April, 2007, 15 Royal Navy sailors and marines were taken prisoner and held hostage for nearly two weeks by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Their crime? Allegedly crossing over into Iranian waters. Within 48 hours a British sailor was plastered all over Iranian TV publicly confessing that the Britons were entirely at fault in the matter. Another sailor wrote a letter—no doubt under some duress— calling for the UK to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq. Then to cap things off, (...) the British soldiers were paraded in front of the Iranian President, where they gave him a big “thumbs up” before being allowed to go home. If you were one of the captives, what would you have done? Would you have cooperated with your captors? Or would you have resisted them, possibly putting your own life at risk? Not surprisingly, the British people recoiled in shame. As one commentator put it, “The honorable thing would have been to renounce their coerced behavior, denounce the Iranians’ use of them for propaganda, and acknowledge that anything they endured was nothing.. (shrink)

In this edition, two recent addresses in the CAPPE public lecture program are presented in full. Dr Barry Jones asks how complex issues are tackled in public life, and what role the pursuit of truth and objectivity plays in these important debates; his assessment is not positive. Professor Peter Newman argues that, amidst the public debate on climate change and resource degradation, there has been little discussion of peak oil and the grave threats it poses. In his article, Professor (...) Newman explains what peak oil is, the dangers involved and what we can do to avert them. Also in this edition, Professor Tony Coady offers a new analysis of terrorism and why it is wrong, as well as the moral dangers posed by recent counter-terrorist activity. (shrink)

of (from British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference) In moral reasoning, we sometimes encounter situations where what our ethical principles tell us to do and what we actually do conflict. In legal ethics, such anomalies arise for lawyers in defending a client who commits perjury. Wallace argues that such lawyers have not mastered the practice of truth-telling, and thus suffer from some sort of moral deficiency. However, due to the complexities of legal practice, particularly the value of truth and evidence, lawyers (...) must learn to accommodate cases of perjury into their moral taxonomies, and this is not a simple feat. In addition, I examine the ethics of lying in everyday life, such as in cases of protecting reputation or feelings. As such, I posit that Wallace is oversimplifying the situation and individuals in “perjured client” cases actually have a better and more realistic grasp on the exercise of practical ethics than he claims. (shrink)

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny’s defense of it—especially his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be normative even though it isn’t—is unsuccessful. I close with a sketch of an alternative proposal, one that provides for a (...) genuine normative role for rationality while defusing the attendant problems. (shrink)

In simplified form, the argument that I am defending holds that the incompatibility of our freedom with determinism follows from the conjunction of (1) a plausible supervenience claim which says that whether a human agent is free depends only on what happens during the agent’s life and (2) a freedom-cancellation principle of Richard Gale which says that an agent is not free if all of her actions are intentionally brought about by another agent. Improved versions of (1) and (2) (...) are also considered. (shrink)

Moral relativism is often rejected on grounds that it is either descriptively inadequate, at best, or self-defeating, at worst. In this essay, I swim against the predominant anti-relativistic philosophical tide. My minimal aim is to show that relativism is neither descriptively inadequate nor self-defeating. My maximal aim is to outline the beginnings of an argument that relativism is a truth resting on deep facts about the human normative predicament. And I shall suggest that far from being a source of cultural (...) degeneracy, the fact of relativism has the potential to ground a culture that is deeply life-affirming. My argument against the twin charges of descriptive inadequacy and self- defeat turns on a distinction between tolerant and intolerant relativism. I concede that many of the standard arguments against relativism do have force against tolerant relativism. But against intolerant relativism, those arguments are entirely unavailing. The crucial difference between the tolerant and intolerant relativist is that although the intolerant relativist agrees with the tolerant relativist that norms are relative, she insists that agents are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which they are not bound. I shall argue that just because the intolerant relativist allows that we are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which we are bound but they are not, she is able to escape both the charge of descriptive inadequacy and the charge of self- defeat. In particular, I shall show that the intolerant relativist has a coherent and satisfying account of the nature of moral disagreement and moral argument. Establishing the ultimate truth of relativism, however, would take more than showing that one form of relativism escapes certain standard arguments against relativism. Though I do not pretend to conclusively discharge the burden of showing that relativism is true in the space of this essay, I do sketch the beginnings of an account of what I call the bindingness of norms that has intolerant relativism as more or less straight-forward downstream consequence. If there are independent grounds for accepting that account of bindingness, then there are independent grounds for accepting intolerant moral relativism. (shrink)

The struggle to create and sustain meaning in our everyday lives is fought using cultural ingredients to spin the webs of meaning that keep us going. To help reveal the complexity and intricacy of the webs of meaning in which they are suspended, Tom Inglis interviewed one-hundred people in their native home of Ireland to discover what was most important and meaningful for them in their lives. Inglis believes language is a medium: there is never an exact correspondence between what (...) is said and what is felt and understood. Using a variety of theoretical lenses developed within sociology and anthropology, Inglis places their lives within the context of Ireland's social and cultural transformations, and of longer-term processes of change such as increased globalisation, individualisation, and informalisation. (shrink)

The humanity-nature divide is a modern Western construction based on the notion that matter (nature) is dead, while consciousness (humanity) is alive, rational, and positioned to use matter (nature) to achieve its ends. In contrast, in the world views of the indigenous Maμori of New Zealand and Aborigines of Australia, nature is not separate from humanity and all is infused with consciousness. The ecofeminist and Goddess movements which emerged in the last decades of the twentieth-century, share with many indigenous religions (...) the perception that all of nature is alive and that human beings must respect other beings within the web of life. Yet these are postmodern rather than premodern movements with an explicit critique of the assumptions of modernity. Process philosophy, especially when understood through the “feminist process paradigm” proposed here, is a postmodern philosophical system that affirms the insights of indigenous peoples, as well as Goddess and ecofeminists, that humanity must situate itself within the web of life. At the same time, process philosophy provides the tools for reconciling “premodern” insights with the findings (but not the assumptions) of modern science. Each of these resources can help us to provide alternatives to the humanity-nature divide. (shrink)

As our civilization careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world, has been invalidated by modern science. Award-winning author, Jeremy Lent, investigates humanity's age-old questions -- Who am I? Why am I? How should I live? -- from a fresh perspective, weaving together findings from modern systems thinking, (...) evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience with insights from Buddhism, Taoism, and Indigenous wisdom. The result is a breathtaking accomplishment: a rich, coherent worldview based on a deep recognition of connectedness within ourselves, between each other, and with the entire natural world. It offers a compelling foundation for a new philosophical framework that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on a flourishing Earth. The Web of Meaning is for everyone looking for deep and coherent answers to the crisis of civilization. -- Amazon. (shrink)

People from Native American/First Nation spiritual traditions and from Christian religious backgrounds express sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary perspectives on humans' role in an interrelated and interdependent "web of life." The extinction of salmon species in the Columbia-Snake river system of Canada and the United States, and the loss of salmon from the Haida Gwaii fisheries off the western coast of Canada, provide bioregional stimuli for reflection on whether nonhuman species have intrinsic value or solely instrumental value, and the extent (...) to which species preservation should have equitable status with, or take precedence over, human wants and apparent human needs. If societal needs and species conservation, and the common good of all creatures, are to be integrated for the good of the commons then a relational consciousness must replace "dominion" and "stewardship" attitudes toward creation. (shrink)

There are two opposite ways of interpreting the web: one Ptolemaic and one Copernican. The first analyzes the web starting from the concept of information, as in the case of Luciano Floridi. The latter recognizes the importance of information, and as a consequence Floridi’s work, but it takes a step forward. Indeed, it highlights the importance of documents and the relationship between information and human life. In this way, it makes it possible to comprehend the human way of being (...) and the revolution we are witnessing. (shrink)

Heidegger is well known for his views on technology. What would he have to say about the crowning glory of digital technology, the Internet? This paper argues that he would not reject the new technology, which would be just as inauthentic as being delivered over to it. Instead, Heidegger would urge us to reflect critically on it to see how we could develop a free relationship to it. He would say that in order to have a free relationship to it, (...) we need to avoid letting it serve to make us forget our Being as Being-in-the-world. An inauthentic relationship with the Internet occurs when we take to it because of the anonymity it affords, or because we mistake the wealth of information it makes available for real knowledge. For all that, Heidegger regards technology as having a “saving power,” or the potential to reveal Being. However, I argue that to be saved by technology’s saving power, we need to develop, on the one hand, what Foucault calls the “arts of existence,” and on the other what Habermas calls “human interests,” interests that will help realize the potential of the Internet. (shrink)

This observational study analyzes the impact of Internet use on the quality of life and well-being of the elderly. Specifically, it seeks to understand and clarify the effects of Internet use on relationships in terms of self-esteem, life satisfaction and online and offline social support in a sample of senior and elderly Italian people (over 60 years of age). A cohort of 271 elderly people (133 males, 138 females) aged between 60 and 94 years old participated in the (...) study: 236 were Internet Users while the other 35 were Non-Internet Users. The results showed that the time elderly people spend online has a negative effect on their perception of Offline Social Support (Offline Emotional and Informational, and Offline Affective Social Support) and a positive effect on their perception of Online Social Support (particularly on Online Positive Social Interactions). Surprisingly, Internet Use among elderly people seems to impact positively on the perception of Offline Social Support. Indeed, Elderly Internet Users have a more positive perception of Offline Social Support (particularly Offline Positive Social Interactions and Offline Affective Social Support) than Non-Internet Users. A discussion of this finding is provided, positing that the Internet seems to represent the technological side of a functional organ that allows the elderly to stay in closer touch with their family and friends, and in doing so to also overcome some age-related difficulties. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the web-rhetoric of companies offering home-based personal health monitoring to patients and elderly people. Two main rhetorical methods are found, namely a reference to practical benefits and a use of prestige words like “quality of life” and “independence”. I interpret the practical benefits in terms of instrumental values and the prestige words in terms of final values. I also reconstruct the arguments on the websites in terms of six different types of argument. Finally, I (...) articulate a general critique of the arguments, namely that the websites neglect the context of use of personal health monitoring technologies. Whether or not a technology is good depends on the use of the technology by a particular individual in a particular context. The technology is not good–or bad–in itself. I support this critique with a number of more specific arguments such as the risk for reduced personal contact. For some elderly people social contact with care providers is more valuable than the independent living made possible by remote monitoring, for others independence is more important. (shrink)

Web mining refers to the whole of data miningand related techniques that are used toautomatically discover and extract informationfrom web documents and services. When used in abusiness context and applied to some type ofpersonal data, it helps companies to builddetailed customer profiles, and gain marketingintelligence. Web mining does, however, pose athreat to some important ethical values likeprivacy and individuality. Web mining makes itdifficult for an individual to autonomouslycontrol the unveiling and dissemination of dataabout his/her private life. To study thesethreats, (...) we distinguish between `content andstructure mining' and `usage mining.' Webcontent and structure mining is a cause forconcern when data published on the web in acertain context is mined and combined withother data for use in a totally differentcontext. Web usage mining raises privacyconcerns when web users are traced, and theiractions are analysed without their knowledge.Furthermore, both types of web mining are oftenused to create customer files with a strongtendency of judging and treating people on thebasis of group characteristics instead of ontheir own individual characteristics and merits(referred to as de-individualisation). Althoughthere are a variety of solutions toprivacy-problems, none of these solutionsoffers sufficient protection. Only a combinedsolution package consisting of solutions at anindividual as well as a collective level cancontribute to release some of the tensionbetween the advantages and the disadvantages ofweb mining. The values of privacy andindividuality should be respected and protectedto make sure that people are judged and treatedfairly. People should be aware of theseriousness of the dangers and continuouslydiscuss these ethical issues. This should be ajoint responsibility shared by web miners (bothadopters and developers), web users, andgovernments. (shrink)

Though many kinds of multi-agent systems based on argumentation have been proposed where only rule-based knowledge is taken into account, they have been unable to handle the ontological knowledge so far. In our daily life, however, there are a lot of human argumentation where both ontological and rule knowledges are used. For example, in e-commerce, a seller and a buyer usually use ontologies about products along with their respective strategic rules for buying and selling. Recent progress of the Semantic (...) Web technology provides expressive ontology languages. In this paper, we demonstrate integration of the Semantic Web reasoning and argument-based reasoning. We have implemented the integrated system such that Logic of Multiple-valued Argumentation-based agent system (specialized to two values { f, t }) can be accessible to the Semantic Web reasoning established as the description logic reasoning system, given ontologies expressed by OWL DL or its notational variant the DL SHOIN (D). An interesting argumentation result using both ontologies and rules about the university curriculum is shown as an example executed by our system. (shrink)

Unquestionably, the zeitgeist of Web 2.0 is symbolized by the dominance of social networking sites (SNS) and user-created content (UCC). MySpace, Facebook, and Cyworld mini-hompy are but a few examples of SNS that are becoming increasingly part of urban everyday life and interwoven into the historicity of the Internet. Web 2.0 has promised much about new forms of participation, creation, collaboration, and authorship, and yet within each location, we can find examples of both empowerment and exploitation. This is particularly (...) the case in the divergent region of the Asia-Pacific. Rather than the region being a sum of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983), this paper argues that the distributed social networks of Web 2.0 UCC is formed, informed, and maintained through the perpetual process of “imaging communities.” These imaging communities can be seen in the visual, textual, and aural modes of UCC and can be seen to reflect the region’s new technocultural cartographies. (shrink)

Recently, many opportunities have emerged to use the Internet in daily life and classrooms. However, with the growth of the World Wide Web (Web), it is becoming increasingly difficult to find target information on the Internet. In this study, we explore a method for developing the ability of users in information seeking on the Web and construct a search process feedback system supporting reflective activities of information seeking on the Web. Reflection is defined as a cognitive activity for monitoring, (...) evaluating, and modifying one's thinking and process. In the field of learning science, many researchers have investigated reflective activities that facilitate learners' problem solving and deep understanding. The characteristics of this system are: (1) to show learners' search processes on the Web as described, based on a cognitive schema, and (2) to prompt learners to reflect on their search processes. We expect that users of this system can reflect on their search processes by receiving information on their own search processes provided by the system, and that these types of reflective activity helps them to deepen their understanding of information seeking activities. We have conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of our system. The experimental results confirmed that (1) the system actually facilitated the learners' reflective activities by providing process visualization and prompts, and (2) the learners who reflected on their search processes more actively understood their own search processes more deeply. (shrink)

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how (...) ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history--and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others."--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

Fundamental turns in biological understanding can be interpreted as replacements of deep models that organise the biological knowledge. Three deep models distinguished here are a holistic ladder model that sees all levels of nature being complete (from Aristotle to the 18th century), a modernist tree model that emphasises progress and evolution (from Enlightenment to the recent times), and a web model that evaluates diversity (since the 20th century). The turn from the tree model to the web model in biology includes (...) (1) a transfer from modern to postmodern approaches, (2) a shift of semiotic threshold to the border of life, and (3) building the semiotic models of living systems, i.e., the rise of biosemiotics. (shrink)

In Life Beyond the Gene, Steven Rose offers a theory of life which insists that we as humans -- and indeed all living creatures -- create our own futures, though in circumstances not of our own choosing. Placing the organism at the center of life, Rose confronts the ideology of reductionism and ultra-Darwinism, with its insistence that all aspects of human life from sexual preference to infanticide, political orientation to violence, male domination to alcoholism, are in (...) our genes and are the inevitable consequences of natural selection. These claims, Rose asserts, are not only socially naive, but fundamentally misunderstand the active and irreducible nature of living processes. Rose argues that life depends on the elaborate web of interactions that occur within cells, organisms, and ecosystems, in which DNA has one part to play. From early in their development, living organisms have to be capable of quasi-independent existence while growing to maturity. If we are to understand life, we must recapture an understanding of the entire living organism and its trajectory through time and space. Rose calls these trajectories lifelines. Provocative and incisive, Life Beyond the Gene provides a compelling response to those enthusiasts of the gene who would deny the complexity of life. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of whetherpersonal surveillance on the world wide web isdifferent in nature and intensity from that inthe offline world. The article presents aprofile of the ways in which privacy problemswere framed and addressed in the 1970s and1990s. Based on an analysis of privacy newsstories from 1999–2000, it then presents atypology of the kinds of surveillance practicesthat have emerged as a result of Internetcommunications. Five practices are discussedand illustrated: surveillance by glitch,surveillance by default, surveillance bydesign, surveillance by (...) possession, andsurveillance by subject. The article offerssome tentative conclusions about theprogressive latency of tracking devices, aboutthe complexity created by multi-sourcing, aboutthe robustness of clickstream data, and aboutthe erosion of the distinction between themonitor and the monitored. These trendsemphasize the need to reject analysis thatframes our understanding of Internetsurveillance in terms of its impact onsociety. Rather the Internet should beregarded as a form of life whose evolvingstructure becomes embedded in humanconsciousness and social practice, and whosearchitecture embodies an inherent valence thatis gradually shifting away from the assumptionsof anonymity upon which the Internet wasoriginally designed. (shrink)

Dawkins in his The Selfish Gene(1) quite aptly applies the term “selfish” to parasitic repetitive DNA sequences endemic to eukaryotic genomes, especially vertebrates. Doolittle and Sapienza(2) as well as Orgel and Crick(3) enlivened this notion of selfish DNA with the identification of such repetitive sequences as remnants of mobile elements such as transposons. In addition, Orgel and Crick(3) associated parasitic DNA with a potential to outgrow their host genomes by propagating both vertically via conventional genome replication as well as infectiously (...) by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) to other genomes. Still later, Doolittle(4) speculated that unchecked HGT between unrelated genomes so complicates phylogeny that the conventional representation of a tree of life would have to be replaced by a thicket or a web of life.(4) In contrast, considerable data now show that reconstructions based on whole genome sequences are consistent with the conventional “tree of life”.(5–10) Here, we identify natural barriers that protect modern genome populations from the inroads of rampant HGT. BioEssays 27:741–747, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

There is never a shortage of celebratory and condemnatory popular discourse on digital media even in its early days. This, of course, is also true of the advent of Web 2.0. In this article, I shall argue that normative analyses of digital media should not take lightly the popular discourse, as it can deepen our understanding of the normative and axiological foundation(s) of our judgements towards digital media. Looking at some of the most representative examples available, I examine the latest (...) wave of popular discourse on digital media, focusing on the (new) worries and doubts voiced by the alarmists and the (new) hopes and dreams portrayed by the enthusiasts. I shall illustrate that various stances in the popular discourse on Web 2.0 are ultimately rested on different notions of the self. This conclusion entails an important lesson for our practice of critiques of digital media, as it entails that our critiques of digital media cannot be done without referring to a notion of the self. Hence, a normative enquiry of digital media should not only be about the moral and/or prudential goodness or badness per se; it should be about who we should be online, or which notion(s) of the self we should strive for. (shrink)

Currently, the Internet information and communication network has become an integral part of human life. People use social networks such as Twitter, VKontakte, Facebook, etc., to establish global contacts, exchange opinions, gain knowledge, etc. The active participation of not only individual users, but also information organizations in the entire world space makes it necessary to develop measures that correspond to modern trends in the development of information and communication technologies to ensure national security, in particular, the organization of events (...) related to countering the strengthening of ideas of extremism and terrorism. Countering the spread of aggressive information on the global network is an urgent problem of society and government agencies, this task is solved by filtering unwanted Internet resources. However, terrorist and extremist groups rationally use web technologies to perform various functions, including information dissemination, propaganda, fundraising and extremist missions. In such a situation, the Internet poses a threat to national security. In this paper, we investigate the issue of creating semantic analysis models to identify extremist messages in the Kazakh language. For the study, a proprietary text corpus was assembled and models based on bigrams and word input methods were proposed. According to the results of experiments, the proposed model shows the highest indicators for evaluating machine learning methods. (shrink)

Untangle the complex web of philosophical dilemmas of Spidey and his world—in time for the release of The Amazing Spider-Man movie Since Stan Lee and Marvel introduced Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962, everyone’s favorite webslinger has had a long career in comics, graphic novels, cartoons, movies, and even on Broadway. In this book some of history’s most powerful philosophers help us explore the enduring questions and issues surrounding this beloved superhero: Is Peter Parker to blame for the death (...) of his uncle? Does great power really bring great responsibility? Can Spidey champion justice and be with Mary Jane at the same time? Finding your way through this web of inquiry, you’ll discover answers to these and many other thought-provoking questions. Gives you a fresh perspective and insights on Peter Parker and Spider-Man’s story lines and ideas Examines important philosophical issues and questions, such as: What is it to live a good life? Do our particular talents come with obligations? What role should friendship play in life? Is there any meaning to life? Views Spider-Man through the lens of some of history’s most influential thinkers, from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant to Nietszche, William James, Ayn Rand, and Alasdair MacIntyre. (shrink)