I am currently interested in critically analyzing naturalistic accounts of human action in contemporary psychology. Thus, I am interested in (1) identifying the (often) hidden philosophical assumptions of materialism, determinism, reductionism, and egoism in mainstream psychological theories; (2) examining the implications of those assumptions for psychological theory and practice; and (3) articulating viable, alternative approaches to accounting for human action that preserve moral agency and meaning. More specifically, my recent work looks to (1) evaluate evolutionary psychological accounts of religion and religious phenomena; (2) explore the nature of the interface between religion and science; and (3) articulate possible avenues for reconceptualizing psychological science, human action (generally), and religious experience (specifically)—for example, reconceptualizing via the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas and other phenomenological philosophers and psychologists.
Ed Gantt
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Sexual Agency
"In the end, the questions and doubts that generate so many crises of faith for so many can be met by sustained and careful reflection on the premises and perspectives from which such struggles spring."
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Abortion, Down Syndrome, and Eugenics
In the 1920 book Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (“Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life”), jurist Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Höche coined the phrase Lebensunwertes Leben or “life unworthy of life.” The book was a pseudoscientific argument for the systematic elimination from society of those who were deemed to be unfit, disabled, mentally defective, and racially suspect. It was not an unusual work for the times, nor was it outside the mainstream of thinking in the worldwide eugenics movement that began in earnest with the writings of Francis Galton in the late 1800s. Binding and Höche’s book did serve, however, as a mainstay resource for Nazi racial science over the following two decades.
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Why Ontology Matters in Family Science
At the center of moral philosophy in the Western tradition has been the notion that human beings should always be treated as ends in themselves, rather than as means to other ends. This principle can be found in the works of moral theorists as disparate as Aristotle, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Kant. One need only a passing acquaintance with history to see that treating people as means rather than ends has been a core feature of tyranny and oppression down through the ages. To define a person principally in terms of the functions that person can serve is to render them an interchangeable part, replaceable by any other person who can perform the same functions. The mechanical anonymity of such persons, however, provides no grounds for what everyday human beings in fact find most meaningful about each other.
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