Animals, Robots, Gods

Adventures in the Moral Imagination

Webb Keane

$45

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Allen Lane
03 December 2024

Philosophy; Ethics & moral philosophy; Animals & society; Ethical issues & debates; Social & cultural anthropology; Artificial intelligence

How do we live ethical lives alongside others? A fascinating exploration of our moral universe

We have always lived with ethically significant others, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in or the machines we are endowing with life. How should we treat them as our world changes?

In Animals, Robots, Gods, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane provides a new vision of ethics, defined less by our minds, religion or society, and more by our interactions with those around us. Drawing on ground-breaking research by fieldworkers around the world, he explores the underpinnings of our moral universe. Along the way we investigate the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, Japanese robot fanciers - even macho cowboys. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains his prey generously gives itself up to him; a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumour as a reincarnated ox; a computer that gets you to confess your anxieties as if you were on the psychiatrist's couch.

With charm, wit and insight, Keane offers us a better understanding of our doubts and certainties, showing how centuries of conversations between us and non-humans inform our conceptions of morality, and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.

By: Webb Keane
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 225mm, Width: 142mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 305g
ISBN: 9780241613207
ISBN 10: 0241613205
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 03 December 2024
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and the author of multiple pioneering works on the philosophy of social thought. His research has been featured in Los Angeles Times, Esquire, USA Today, Financial Times, and on CBS TV News, among others.

Reviews for Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination

This book is penetrating, illuminating, wise, learned, and surprising. The chapters on robots and Artificial Intelligence are simply the best yet written on the subject. The excitement and anxieties about this new technology revisit perennial questions about the nature of being human and our duties to god-like beings - it is fitting that an anthropologist should be the one to show this. An extraordinary achievement -- Scott Shapiro The book I didn't know I'd been waiting for - a fascinating trip through time and space, likening the uncanniness of A.I. not to science fiction but to religious mysteries and the near-humanness of animals. This erudite and original meditation on our relationship with non-human creatures will change the way you think about ethics -- Larissa MacFarquhar