Michael Levin
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Michael Levin (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.
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Education
Levin studied at Columbia University where he received a doctoral degree.
Philosophical views
Levin advocates reliabilism in epistemology and the theory of compatibilism in free will.
Political and social views
Torture
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.
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 for, 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 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 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.
Throughout the 1990s Levin frequently wrote about race differences in intelligence, biology, and morality for the white nationalist publication American Renaissance.
Levin defended this view in an exchange in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
See also
