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Animals, Robots, Gods

Adventures in the Moral Imagination
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Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025

About this book

A mind-expanding exploration of the ethical bonds we share with the nonhuman

Moral relationships saturate the living world, and the line between the human and nonhuman is blurrier than we might think. Animals, Robots, Gods provides a bold new vision of ethics defined less by the individual mind or society and more by our interactions with those around us, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in, or the machines we endow with life.

Drawing on pioneering fieldwork around the globe by some of today’s leading researchers, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane invites us to expand our moral imagination. We learn about the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, cowboys, and Japanese robot fanciers. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains to a bear why it must come out of hibernation and generously give itself up to him, a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumor as a reincarnated ox, and a computer that persuades users to confess their anxieties as if they were patients on a psychiatrist’s couch. Through these and other stories, Keane challenges us to rethink our most basic ideas about who—and what—we deem worthy of moral consideration.

Brimming with charm, wit, and insight, Animals, Robots, Gods reveals how centuries of conversations between us and nonhumans inform our conceptions of morality and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.

Author / Editor information

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. His books include Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (Princeton) and Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. His work has been featured in leading publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, USA Today, and the Financial Times.

Reviews

"Keane asks us to imagine Confucian robots, or artificial intelligence as conceived by cultures that locate the self across multiple bodies and lifetimes. These, too, may soon be more than thought experiments."---Wessie du Toit, UnHerd --- "Keane's Animals Robots Gods hit me like a revelation. . . . Keane offers a richly textured anthropological perspective on our relationships with non-human entities. This isn't simply another entry in the crowded field of AI ethics texts, but rather a provocative exploration of how humans have always negotiated moral boundaries with the non-human."---Nick Potkalitsky, Educating AI --- "Much of the book’s charm comes from its quicksilver turns, deft transitions and momentary flashes of family resemblance amid a rich array of ways of life."---Simone Gubler, Times Literary Supplement --- "I found Keane’s distillation of fieldwork into the ethics of hunting and animal sacrifice both gripping and provoking."---Simon Ings, New Scientist --- "In Animals, Robots, Gods, Keane embarks on a global journey across our messy moral terrains. Right from the outset, he prepares the reader to accept that identifying an always-applicable law might not be possible, as moral traditions are complex, contingent, and culturally specific. This imbues the discourse on the moral status of nonhumans with just the kind of crosscultural sensitivity that only anthropology can offer. . . . Animals, Robots, Gods lands as a narratively rich circumnavigation of how we treat others. . . . [A] fresh, accessible [entrant] to the burgeoning literature on the more-than-human world and our obligations toward it.""---Joshua C. Gellers, Science --- "Captivating. . . . Keane explores all kinds of fascinating material in his book, most of it taking place ‘at the edge of the human.’"---Mark Epstein, New York Times --- "Longlisted for the Non-Obvious Book Awards"

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Introduction

    1
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    1. Moral Machines, Human Decisions

    15
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    2. Humans: Between Life and Death

    31
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    3. Near- Humans: Animals as Prey, Sacrifice, Workmates and Companions

    57
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    4. Quasi- Humans: Robots, Avatars, Servants and Fetishes

    83
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    5. Superhumans: Artificial Intelligence, Spirits and Shamans

    113
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    Coda: Moral Relativism, Human Realities

    141
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    Notes

    149
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    Bibliography

    157
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    Acknowledgements

    167
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    Index

    169
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 29, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780691270944
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691270944
eBook ISBN: 9780691270944
Keywords for this book
Machine; Dogs; Ethical; Hunters; Spirit; Religious; Sacrifice; Japanese; Algorithms; Traditions; Fieldwork; Trolley; Anthropologist; Patient; Victims; Bear; Cree; Ethics; Possession; Quasi; Brain; Clinicians; Horse; Interaction; Computers; Shaman; Organ; Distinction; Soul; Quasi human; Intuitions; Societies; Systems; Neutral; Pet; Elk; Intelligence; Glossolalia; Academic ethics studies; AI; AI and the future of moral responsibility; AI ethics; Animal rights philosophy; Animals; anthropologists; Anthropology and AI; Anthropology book recommendations; Anthropology of moral imagination; Anthropology of morality; Artifical Intelligence; Artificial intelligence morality; consciousness; Contemporary moral debates; Cross-cultural ethics; Cross-cultural perspectives on nonhuman agency; Cultural anthropology; Cultural anthropology meets artificial intelligence; Cultural relativism in ethics; ethical bonds; Ethical dilemmas; Ethical dilemmas in human-animal interactions; Ethical storytelling; Ethics beyond the human-animal divide; Ethics in the age of AI; Ethics of human-nonhuman interaction; Ethnography of ethics; Global case studies in moral philosophy; Global fieldwork narratives; gods we believe in; How robots challenge traditional ethics
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
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