WEBB KEANE is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and with a particular interest in religion and morality. In this entertaining and readable book, he uses his fieldwork in Indonesia, and that of colleagues elsewhere, to show, without jargon, that moral decisions in a changing world are always contextual. This should come as no surprise to Anglicans, given our differences on moral issues.
In chapter one, Keane discusses driverless cars that cause accidents and deaths, albeit conceding that humans drivers kill many more people. Who is to blame? And what is acceptable? Don’t expect any answers: this is an anthropologist writing, whose role is to uncover our various eccentric responses across cultures.
Next, he considers the permanently comatose on life-sustaining machines who almost become half-human and half-machine. They then present relatives with the huge burden of deciding when to turn off these machines — a decision that differs from one culture to another. Apparently, in otherwise secular Japan, relatives typically want maximum medical interventions followed by a swift return of the patient home just before death, because of evil spirits thought to lurk in hospitals.
Then there is a chapter on the way in which people variously anthropomorphise both pets (as in Britain) and sometimes even prey: traditional hunters in Canada mimic elk and apologise to hibernating bears.
Next, he looks at robots increasingly taking on human functions (and, oddly, some becoming pets), regarded variously as useful or threatening, before he turns to artificial intelligence that passes the so-called Turin test (when human and computer-generated responses can longer be differentiated) and then challenges human responses.
This whirlwind tour concludes with a coda that faces the jibe that social scientists simply relativise morality. He offers a helpful counter-example, namely, that there are many languages around the world, but we all need at least one culture-bound language to communicate with others and to understand the world. So, why not accept that we all need morality, even though — despite the efforts of colonial missionaries and, ironically, Enlightenment philosophers — we cannot convince all cultures of the truth of any single form of morality? And likewise, perhaps, religion.
A book to enjoy.
The Revd Dr Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Kent and Editor of Theology.
Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the moral imagination
Webb Keane
Allen Lane £20
(978-0-241-61320-7)
Church Times Bookshop £18