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Janet Levin on Physicalism, Zombies, and Changing Minds

Andrea hosts philosopher Janet Levin, newly retired after 40 years at USC and the department’s first tenure-track woman hire, to discuss a life in analytic philosophy and debates about mind and consciousness. Levin recounts stumbling into philosophy at the University of Chicago with Ted Cohen and later studying at MIT amid figures like Jerry Fodor, Noam Chomsky, and advisor Ned Block, and writing the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on functionalism. They contrast dualism and physicalism, explain metaphysics as inquiry into what exists and what is possible, and examine thought experiments such as Descartes’ arguments, Jackson’s knowledge argument, and Chalmers’ zombie case. Levin holds that our feelings and experiences are nothing over and above physical processes in the body, primarily the brain and central nervous system. The conversation closes on teaching, women in philosophy, and how openness, identity, and social forces affect willingness to change one’s mind and pursue truth.

The Road Taken APA Talk

Janet Levin

Time Stamps:
00:00 Big Questions on Mind Change
01:47 Consciousness and Zombies
02:11 Welcome and Season Setup
03:22 Meet Janet Levin
07:31 Stumbling Into Philosophy
08:25 Why Minds Change Slowly
11:10 Synthetic Hippocampus and Extended Mind
12:57 Chicago Origins With Ted Cohen
18:02 MIT Era and Cognitive Revolution
22:01 From Behaviorism to Functionalism
26:17 Defining Physicalism and Supervenience
29:23 What Is the Mind Really
34:46 Cognitive Phenomenology Debate
37:31 What Metaphysics Studies
40:02 Classic Metaphysics Puzzles
43:15 Free Will and Determinism
46:34 Descartes and the Self
51:41 Conceivability and Zombie Arguments
58:40 Dualism’s Causation Problem
01:11:40 Type B Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts
01:22:46 Water Lightning Mind
01:24:15 Identity Theory Pushback
01:27:51 Physicalism Explained Broadly
01:30:05 Phenomenal Concepts Introspection
01:32:17 Introspection As Skill
01:34:44 Defending Armchair Philosophy
01:37:22 Armchair Near Window
01:39:10 How Minds Change
01:43:55 Bias Identity And Windows
01:45:35 Women In Philosophy Shifts
01:50:28 Grad Training Mentorship
01:54:43 Teaching Confidence Bloomers
01:57:42 Love Retirement Future Questions
02:02:12 Host Outro Waymaking

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Janet Levin is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, where she was a longtime faculty member in the School of Philosophy. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from MIT and her B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Much of her work engages with one of the hardest problems in philosophy: how to account for the subjective, felt quality of conscious experience within a broadly physicalist framework. She has also written the entry on functionalism for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — the view that what makes something a mental state depends not on its physical makeup, but on the functional role it pl

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Changing Minds, Metaphysics, and a Life in Analytic Philosophy with Janet Levin of USC

Love & Philosophy

Changing Minds, Metaphysics, and a Life in Analytic Philosophy with Janet Levin of USC