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Virtual Morality: Christian Ethics in the Computer Age

by Graham Houston
Leicester: Apollos, 1998. 224pp. pb. £14.99 ISBN 0-85111-461-X

reviewed by GORDON GRAHAM

This book has an interesting and ambitious aim - to link the seemingly disparate subjects of philosophy of technology and Christian ethics in such a way as to provide some moral guidance in the modern computer-dominated age, and in particular a moral perspective on the fast approach of cyberspace and virtual reality. Furthermore the author aims to assert a convincingly Christian view of these things in the era of postmodernism (or perhaps post-postmodernism) and thus in the climate of its associated challenges to the reality of ethical judgement. The strategy deployed to bridge these seemingly enormous gaps is both plausible and topical. The relation between science and religion, which has been the subject of widespread debate since Darwin, is an obvious starting point, but Houston builds upon it by raising another important question, though one much less widely discussed, namely the relation between science and technology. Is technology, as is so often assumed, simply the application of science? Or is the relationship more interactive than this? Then, within the sphere of the technological, there are important ethical questions. The deeper and more philosophical of these are not so much the familiar ones about genetic engineering and the like, but about the ethical standing of technology itself? Is technology be understood (as it usually is) as an neutral instrument whose ethical implications lie exclusively in the uses to which it is put? Or does technology itself both present and shape ethical problems?

By raising these issues together, Houston pretty rapidly and effectively uncovers a connection, or rather a set of connections, between religion, science, technology and ethics. These are interconnections that can usefully be made more obvious than they usually are, and Dr Houston is in a good position to do this because he has an impressive familiarity with a very wide range of literature. It is familiarity of a kind that has increasingly been squeezed out of academic inquiry by the highly specialized and professionalized times in which we live, and is thus very welcome. A further virtue, also a virtue often threatened by academic specialization, is that he writes in an easily accessible style without very much in the way of academic technicality or computer jargon.

Yet, despite these undoubted merits, I cannot say that the book achieves what it sets out to do. To begin with, as will have been clear from the foregoing summary, the field he explores is very large. At the same time his book is not very long. This is not in itself a criticism, or intended as such; in fact I welcome short books on large topics. But they do run the danger of skimming the surface of the subject, and this is a danger that Houston has not altogether avoided. This is especially evident, I think, in his treatment of the vexed and difficult question of the relation between science and religion. Are these in deep conflict as surface appearances suggest, or are they at some deeper level compatible? Houston summarizes his position as follows: "While we have criticized some of the connections made between the ideas of revelation in theology and discovery in science, this does not invalidate the basic [compatibilist] position for which Polanyi, Torrance and Polkinghorne have argued. We have suggested a revised version which . . . is more consistent with Christian tradition. . (p.23). This is a summary of the 'results' of just four pages of discussion.

My second complaint is a methodological one. Although, as I have said, Houston shows himself to be knowledgeable about a wide range of literature, his method tends to be a sort of 'pick and mix', the stitching together of a variety of different claims with which he broadly agrees. This is not to say that he has no views of his own, but what is missing is a sense of working through the various issues, as opposed to assembling a sustained view about some central questions, and this deficiency is increased by a lack of much rigorous critical anaysis. Indeed, I would make this my third complaint: I do not find him to be critical enough. For instance, right at the end of the book he says "Christian ethics offers principles of conduct by which we may live . . . in every environment, real or virtual". It is a thesis he has been at pains to defend and the defence is in part against those who hold, for a variety of reasons, that old principles cannot be relevant to dramatically new situations. There is something to be said for his view, and for restating it in the newer context of computing and the context of the wider world. But it is essentially a restatement of the familiar. A far more difficult, challenging and potentially damaging line of thought is this: Does Christian ethics have any distinctive principles, relevant or irrelevant? Actually, although I describe this as potentially damaging, I think it also holds out the promise of a truly fresh approach to many of the issues with which Houston is concerned. It is because he does not broach this and other more radical lines of thought, that this book is to be described as well informed and worthy, rather than fresh and stimulating.

Gordon Graham is Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen

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