Michael Levin (philosopher)

Michael Levin (; born 21 May 1943) is an American philosopher and writer. A professor emeritus of philosophy at City College of New York, he has published on metaphysics, epistemology, race, homosexuality, animal rights, the philosophy of archaeology, the philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science.

Levin's central research interests are in epistemology (reliabilism and Gettier problems) and in philosophy of race.

Education
Levin graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1960, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University in 1964, and studied at Columbia University where he received a doctoral degree in 1969. His dissertation was titled "Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics".

Philosophical views
Levin advocates reliabilism in epistemology and the theory of compatibilism in free will.

Political and social views

Torture
In the 1982 article "The Case for Torture", Levin argued that "there are situations where torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory." Levin reiterated this view in 2009.

Economics
For Christmas 2000, Levin published a libertarian critique of Dickens's popular novella A Christmas Carol in which he defends Scrooge as "an entrepreneur whose ideas and practices benefit his employees, society at large, and himself."

Homosexuality
Levin has questioned the morality, wisdom, and naturalness of homosexuality. He argues that homosexual acts are abnormal because their participants are not using their sexual organs for what they are designed, and that this abnormality must be a source of unhappiness, even though it may go unrecognized. In his book Sexual Desire (1986), the philosopher Roger Scruton criticized Levin's attempt to show that homosexuality is abnormal, calling it absurd. Timothy Murphy has criticized Levin's arguments about homosexuality in detail. Murphy states in Gay Science (1997) that while Levin "more or less accepts that there is a strong biological basis for homoerotic orientation" he nevertheless believes that discrimination against gay people may be defensible on several grounds, including the possibility that there is a biologically based dislike of homosexuality.

Feminism
Feminist Susan Faludi writes in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991) that Levin's 1988 book Feminism and Freedom characterizes feminism as an "antidemocratic, if not totalitarian, ideology" without a single redeeming feature.

Race
Levin agrees with Arthur Jensen and Richard Lynn that white people score higher on IQ tests than black people due to genetic differences—a view that has been criticized by scholars such as Leon Kamin of Princeton University.

Levin defended this view in an exchange in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

Throughout the 1990s Levin frequently wrote about race differences in intelligence, biology, and morality for the white nationalist publication American Renaissance. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies him as an "unabashed white supremacist."

Personal life
Like Michael H. Hart, he is one of the ethnic Jewish supporters of white nationalism.

Levin is married to philosopher of mathematics Margarita Levin.

Selected publications

Books
Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem, Oxford University Press, 1979. .
Feminism and Freedom, Transaction Publishers, 1987. 
Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean, Praeger Publishers, 1997.

Articles and essays
Levin, M. E. 1968. Fine, Mathematics, and Theory Change. The Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 2: pages 52–56.
Levin, M. E. 1971. Length Relativity. The Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 6: pages 164–174.
Levin, M. E. 1973. On explanation in archaeology: a rebuttal to Fritz and Plog. American Antiquity 38, no. 4: pages 387–395.
Levin, M. E. 1974. Kant's Derivation of the Formula of Universal Law as an Ontological Argument. Kant-Studien 65, no. 1-4: pages 50–66.
Levin, M. E. 1975. Kripke's argument against the identity thesis. The Journal of Philosophy 72, no. 6: pages 149–167.
Levin, M. E. 1975. Relativity, Spatial and Ontological. Nous: pages 243–267.
Levin, M. E. 1976. The extensionality of causation and causal-explanatory contexts. Philosophy of Science 43, no. 2: pages 266–277.
Levin, M. E. 1976. On the ascription of functions to objects, with special reference to inference in archaeology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 6, no. 3: page 227.
Levin, M. E. 1977. Animal rights evaluated. The Humanist 37, no. 4: pages 12–15.
Levin, M. E., and M. R. Levin. 1977. Flagpoles, shadows and deductive explanation. Philosophical Studies 32, no. 3: pages 293–299.
Levin, M. E., and M. R. Levin. 1978. The independence results of set theory: An informal exposition. Synthese 38, no. 1: pages 1-34.
Levin, M. E., and M. R. Levin. 1978. Lavoisier's Slow Burn. Philosophy of Science 45, no. 4: pages 626–629.
Levin, M. E. 1979. On theory-change and meaning-change. Philosophy of Science 46, no. 3: pages 407–424.
Levin, M. E. 1979. Quine's View (s) of Logical Truth. Essays on the Philosophy ofW. V. Quine: pages 45–67.
Levin, M. E. 1979. The universalizability of moral judgments revisited. Mind 88, no. 1: page 115.
Levin, M. E. 1979. Forcing and the Indeterminacy of Translation. Erkenntnis 14, no. 1: pages 25–32.
Levin, M. E. 1979. Ahab as Socratic Philosopher: The Myth of the Cave Inverted. ATQ: The American Transcendental Quarterly 41: pages 61–73.
Levin, M. E., and M. R. Levin. 1979. The modal confusion in Rawls' original position. Analysis 39, no. 2: page 82.
Levin, M. E. 1980. Reverse discrimination, shackled runners, and personal identity. Philosophical Studies 37, no. 2: pages 139–149.
Levin, M. E. 1981. Equality of opportunity. The Philosophical Quarterly 31, no. 123: pages 110–125.
Levin, M. E. 1981. Is racial discrimination special? The Journal of Value Inquiry 15, no. 3: pages 225–234.
Levin, M. E. 1981. Phenomenal Properties. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42, no. 1: pages 42–58.
Levin, M. E. 1984. Why Homosexuality is Abnormal. The Monist 67, no. 2, Sociobiology and Philosophy: pages 251–283.
Levin, M. E. 1984. Why we believe in other minds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44, no. 3: pages 343–359.
Levin, M. E. 2007. Bundling Hume with Kripkenstein. Synthese 155, no. 1: pages 35–64.
Levin, M. E. 2007. Compatibilism and Special Relativity. The Journal of philosophy 104, no. 9: pages 433–463.
Levin, M. E. 1982 The Case for Torture
Levin, M. E. nd. In Defense of Scrooge , a libertarian apology in favor of the popular protagonist of Dickens' A Christmas Carol

See also
American philosophy
Biology and sexual orientation
List of American philosophers
Logical truth

References

External links
Levin's academic page at CUNY
Michael Levin, Southern Poverty Law Center

1943 births
Living people
21st-century American philosophers
American libertarians
American white nationalists
Jewish philosophers
Jewish white nationalists
City College of New York faculty
Columbia University alumni
Male critics of feminism
Race and intelligence controversy
Stuyvesant High School alumni
Place of birth missing (living people)