Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web

Philosophical Engineering represents the first interdisciplinary exploration of the philosophical foundations of the Web, a new area of inquiry with important implications across a range of domains. The twelve essays here bridge the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, and phenomenology. They bring together insightful new scholarship both from well-known analytic and continental philosophers, such as Andy Clark and Bernard Stiegler, and from new "digital native" scholars in philosophy and engineering.

The contributors take into account both the impact of the Web on philosophy and the philosophical foundations of the architecture of the Web. They tackle a variety of questions, such as the impact of Google on intelligence and epistemology, the philosophical status of digital objects, ethics on the Web, semantic and ontological changes caused by the Web, and the potential of the Web to serve as a genuine cognitive extension. The book also includes an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web. Setting a new standard for scholarship in this emerging field, this is an essential volume for those interested in defining a philosophy of the Web.