Michael Levin
| Michael Levin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 May 1943 |
| Era | Contemporary Philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy, Reliabilism |
|
Main interests
|
Epistemology, philosophy of race |
|
Notable ideas
|
Heritability of intelligence |
Michael Levin (/ˈlɛvɪn/; born 21 May 1943) is a philosophy professor at City University 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.
Levin studied at Columbia University where he received a doctoral degree.
Levin advocates reliabilism in epistemology and the theory of compatibilism in free will.
In 1982 the 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.
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."
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 for, and that this abnormality must be a source of unhappiness, even though it may go unrecognized. Philosopher Roger Scruton has 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 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.
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