Cover -- The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series -- Avatar and Philosophy: Learning to See -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments: I See These People -- Introduction: Time to Wake Up -- Part I Seeing Eywa: "I'm With Her, Jake. She's Real!" -- 1 The Silence of Our Mother: Eywa as the Voice of Feminine Care Ethics -- How Can You See, with Jujubes for Eyes? -- The Gifts of Our Mother -- The Work of Our Mother -- Mother Takes Sides -- Notes -- 2 "Eywa Will Provide": Pantheism, Christianity, and the Value of Nature -- "They're Fly-Bitten Savages Who Live in a Tree" -- "You Are Not in Kansas Anymore. You Are on Pandora" -- "We Will See If Your Insanity Can Be Cured" -- "She's Always Going on About … the Spirits of Animals" -- "The Most Hostile Environment Known to Man" -- "I See You, Brother, and Thank You" -- Notes -- 3 The Tantra of Avatar -- Weaving with Eywa -- "These Dreams of Flying" -- Divine, Mind-Blowing Bliss -- "Maybe You Should Teach Me" -- Tasting the Nectar -- Alien Sex and Sandstone Temples -- "I Don't Want to Be Late for My Own Party" -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Part II Seeing the Na'vi: "You Will Teach Him Our Ways" -- 4 Learning to See the Na'vi -- The Company Man, the Colonel, and the Grunts -- Good Observation Isn't Seeing -- "I Need to Take Some Samples" -- Jake, Empty Cup of the Jarhead Clan -- Loving and Learning -- Notes -- 5 It Doesn't Take an Avatar: How to Empathize with a Blue-Skinned Alien -- "A Demon in a False Body" -- "I'd Say We Understand Them Just Fine" -- "No One Can Teach You to See" -- "My Cup Is Empty" -- "I Fell in Love" -- "I Didn't Sign Up for This Shit" -- Notes -- 6 "I See You" through a Glass Darkly: Avatar and the Limits of Empathy -- Empathy in Blue -- Empathy Versus the Vulcan Mind Meld -- Empathy, Tsaheylu, and the iPod -- "Get Out of My Head!" Tsaheylu and Mirror Neurons.

How the Video Log Helps Us Think: The Extended Mind Hypothesis -- Norm Spellman's Homework: The Socially Extended Mind -- Nature, Culture, and USB Portals -- Notes -- Part III Seeing Nature: "Try to See the Forest through Her Eyes" -- 7 Seeing the Na'vi Way: Respecting Life and Mind in All Organisms -- "They Killed Their Mother": The High Price of Insanity -- Philosophers, Dogs, and Viperwolves -- Seeing through the Eye of Eywa -- Wild Justice for All -- Where There's Life, There's Mind -- "More Connections Than the Human Brain" -- Last Shadow -- Notes -- 8 They're Not Just Goddamn Trees: Hegel's Philosophy of Nature and the Avatar of Spirit -- Spirit-"Driven" Avatars -- The Hungry Na'vi -- "Just Goddamn Trees" -- The Romantic Alternative: "Feel Her" -- The Dialectical Alternative: "All Energy Is Borrowed" -- "The Eye of Eywa" -- Notes -- 9 "Everything Is Backwards Now": Avatar, Anthropocentrism, and Relational Reason -- Deep Humanity in an Alien Avatar -- "Out There Is the True World" -- "Lost in the Woods" -- "Everything Is Backwards Now" -- Notes -- Part IV Seeing Our Bodies: "They've Got Great Muscle Tone" -- 10 The Identity of Avatars and Na'vi Wisdom -- The Continuity of the Self: Your Future Is in His Hands1 -- The Body and the Self: Nothing on Earth Could Come between Them -- Na'vi Wisdom: An Extreme Taste of Reality -- The Identity of Avatars: It's Nothing Personal -- Notes -- 11 "I Got This": Disability, Stigma, and Jake Sully's Rejected Body -- "That Is Just Wrong" -- "Maybe I Was Sick of Doctors Telling Me What I Couldn't Do" -- Is Jake Just a Gamer? -- "Yeah, Baby, I Got This!" -- "One Life Ends, Another Begins" -- Notes -- 12 "See the World We Come From": Spiritual versus Technological Transcendence in Avatar -- Not Mad Scientists -- Science as Salvation: Über-Na'vi Messiah -- Transhumanist Mind Transfer and the Ghost in the Avatar.

"Through the Eye of Eywa" -- Spiritual Evolution: Transcending the Human -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Part V Seeing Our Political Communities: "Sky People Cannot See" -- 13 "We Will Fight Terror with Terror": Avatar and Just War Theory -- "They Attacked Me! How Am I the Bad Guy?" -- "There Was a Sign from Eywa" -- "I Was a Warrior Who Dreamed He Could Bring Peace" -- "It'll Be Humane. More or Less" -- "Find Me a Carrot That'll Get Them to Move, Otherwise It's Gonna Have to Be All Stick" -- "I Was Hoping for Some Sort of Tactical Plan that Didn't Involve Martyrdom" -- "We Will See If Your Insanity Can Be Cured" -- Notes -- 14 The Community and the Individual in Avatar -- "We'd Like to Talk to You about Taking Over His Contract" -- "Think You Can Do That for Me, Son?" -- "Protect the People" -- Bio-Communitarianism -- A Cautionary Tale -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- 15 Avatar and Colonialism -- Cutting Pandora into Two -- Building Roads for "Blue Monkeys" -- "I'd Say We Understand Them Just Fine, Thanks to Jake Here" -- Leaving Pandora -- "White Savior" in a Blue Body -- Notes -- Part VI Seeing Our Ethical Responsibilities: "Sometimes Your Entire Life Boils Down to One Insane Move" -- 16 "All That Cheddar": Lessons in Business Ethics from the RDA Corporation -- Business as Boxing -- "I Didn't Make Up the Rules" -- Who Owns Hometree? -- "Are You Gonna Kill Children?" -- "Blue Monkeys" and "Fly-Bitten Savages" -- Ethical Sleight of Hand -- Rationalizing in a Galaxy Far, Far Away -- "You Don't Want That Kind of Blood on Your Hands" -- Humanity, Inc. -- Notes -- 17 "We Have an Indigenous Population of Humanoids Called the Na'vi": Native American Philosophy in Avatar -- Scott Pratt's Native Pragmatism -- The Principle of Interaction -- The Principle of Pluralism -- The Principle of Community -- The Principle of Growth -- Acknowledgments -- Notes.

18 I See Animals: The Na'vi and Respect for Other Creatures -- C-Fibers, Hammerheads, and Zoe Saldana -- Do Hexapedes Grieve? Should Prolemurises Vote? -- This Consent Is Killing Me -- "Excuse Me. This Is My Video-Log Here" -- "Personally, I Don't Feel These Tree-Hugging Traitors Deserve Steak" -- "I See You, Brother" - And Kill You! -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Part VII Seeing the Movie: "You Are Not Gonna Believe Where I Am" -- 19 The Digital Cabinet of Curiosities: Avatar and the Phenomenology of 3D Worlds -- The Na'vi on Main Street -- Running with Jake in the Recreation Yard -- The Na'vi on the Other Side of the Keyhole -- The Two Jakes -- Into the Third Dimension -- But Is Avatar Too Real? -- Ecology and Special Effects -- Notes -- Notes on Contributors: Our Avatar Drivers -- Index: My Last Video Log.