Susan James's Podcast: Playing 'Snap' (1)

Last month (19th July) a podcast episode with Susan James came out where she talks about herself and her outlook as a person and as a philosopher in a little more depth. I listened to Susan James's excellent podcast episode about a week after it's release on the 27th July. I would have listened to it earlier if it hadn't been for some outrageous behaviour (that I'm heartily sick of by now😠) going on last month and I would have responded to her podcast episode sooner if the ridiculous nonsense hadn't caused so much unnecessary extra work to deal with it (see my LGBT+ blog where I talk about it there over several posts). But I'm kind of springing off from Susan's thought provoking answers rather than the questions she was asked.

So let's play 'Snap' like the card game, and see how many times I see things the way she does! ♥♥ ♠♠ ♦♦ ♣♣ I discovered that we 'snapped' almost all the time here (and other times): I always knew instinctively we'd make a great team! 🙂 What can I say: great minds think alike! 💭💭🌠

Susan James on why she likes doing the History of Philosophy: Snap! 

Without previously realising it, I like the history of philosophy for very similar reasons to Susan, such as 1) covering a variety of areas in philosophy more easily while 2) linking it to contemporary relevance and 3) enjoying seeing things from all sides. I don't have to limit the fields of philosophy I research in the history of philosophy because past philosophers interelated topics and areas even within the same treatise far more than philosophers nowadays who tend to only focus on a narrower field. So, I think, you can't really understand a past philosopher if you only do one field in their works e.g. Spinoza's metaphysics to the exclusion of being knowledgeable about a cross-section of his works and his other topics and fields. My volume 2 on Spinoza focuses on his epistemology and metaphysics but my volume 3 on him doesn't, because there I examine his politics within his TP from a feminist and gender theory philosophical perspective showing the contemporary relevance. Nevertheless, my volume 1 on Cavendish spans metaphysics to politics, gender and feminism within the one book. Shepherd writes on less broad areas and subject matters so my work on her obviously covers a bit less diversity of fields than when I research other, broader philosophers. I also enjoy seeing a philosophical topic or issue from various different perspectives and through the eyes of different past philosophers. And I like examining a variety of philosophical theories, whether I agree with them or not, seeing how they compare and contrast with one another. 

My uni degree was broad and my chosen options didn't overlap much with compulsory modules so I kept it broader by studying (compulsory) logic; (compulsory) ep/met; (compulsory) history of philosophy; ethics, politics, aesthetics (options) and history of philosophy/ feminist philosophy/ ethics/ passions/ moral psychology (Empathy in Hume, dissertation). Hence I feel comfortable with all areas of philosophy because the ones I didn't directly cover in my BA I've either studied at A Level or are quite related to the above fields of philosophy and were incorporated e.g. philosophy of science and mind was included in ep, met and history. 

A comment on Susan James on Social Explanation and getting 'stuck':

Why did you get "stuck" on the topic of social explanation? Is it because you had babies/toddlers on your hands 👶👶bawling their heads off or you were stuck with the topic itself 📚? Or something else? 🤔 I think it's a good topic, personally, and I've been looking into it for a while. I did something on explanation two years ago and nearly blogged about it but then the pandemic hit and I ended up more concerned about the toilet paper shortage at my local supermarket and in online shops 😱. Just because people can't actually 'see' me doing philosophy a lot of the time, doesn't mean I am not in fact doing philosophy all the time. There's loads of philosophy I've done, read, thought out, written, talked about that nobody has seen, except my mother. I know my philosophy is watertight if my mother thinks it's good and likes it, especially since she's as critical as they come. My mother's not one to say 'yes darling, that's marvellous'! She's more likely to say 'are you sure about that?' although usually I am already pretty sure because I write so many drafts in my head that by the time it's finally on paper and she's reading it, my arguments are already quite secure and tight. 

Mind you, I don't just use a creative process in my philosophy research practice, I also draw on Social Sciences (mostly Sociology and Psychology) and Science. Little did I know until you mentioned on the internet recently that science and psychology runs in your family! So there's a similarity I didn't realise because my home education had a great deal of emphasis on science and scientific thinking, since my mother was very talented at chemistry and into biology (especially Botany, but her school did loads on Zoology and she took Human Biology as a chosen extra subject in the 6th form). What type of biology did your father do? You need to expand more - you are too brief! I wish you'd talk more at length. Otherwise, I can think up loads of potential possibilities! Oh and my uncle studied physics and related fields, and he loved collecting science magazines. I was always chatting to my mother and uncle about various fields of science. And as everyone knows by now, I took Psychology at A Level and enjoyed it. I continue to use my knowledge from that course and further study in it both generally and in my philosophy. For instance, my personal stances on topics in ep such as perception, testimony, emotion/passions, empathy, philosophy of mind, etc. Pure science informs my ep and met as well as my philosophy research methodology e.g. creating hypothesis to test.

Anyway, I like that you explicitly said that you defended a Limited Holism position because it's always handy to know what an author's stated stance is. 

Looking at your conclusion in the last chapter of your book, Social Explanation, you seem to go for a sort of hybrid between holism and individualism, with a leaning towards holism, partly to balance out their strengths and weaknesses. This seems to me to be a solid stance to work with and I assumed a good foundation to build on for further research on it. And you've got loads of different philosophers to talk about within that book too. So what happened to your Social Explanation research? I read in a book that Explanation became a hot potato and general uptake declined as a result - was that an issue? 🤔 I didn't know Social Explanation has become increasingly developed and prolific in more recent years - maybe you could revisit your research on it and expand it further? 🙂

On getting 'stuck': not a snap but perhaps a half snap?

I haven't felt 'stuck' yet with any of my independent research, luckily. 👍 However, I'm stuck on a career level (in some respects but then I'm not sure I want any type of traditional career, including as a researcher/ lecturer anymore, I'm happy as an independent researcher and author) due to practical obstacles put in my way for over a decade now! 👎

But, in terms of not getting stuck with research, then maybe that's just because:

1) I have more freedom as an independent researcher to develop my thoughts more organically and freely. I remember that, towards the end of my BA degree, I started to feel as though I might begin to get stuck with my philosophical thinking if I stayed within the restrictive university marking/grading system much longer. I wanted a break from that anyway to return to my original academic system I developed during home education. Constant peer review on quite early research ideas, I feel, lends itself to causing mental blocks and sticking points, so it could just be that. Especially if the peer review tends towards negativity, which apparently it can do if it's from philosophers who may feel as though they are competing against you in the same field 🙄. 

2) I perhaps have a different research process to you, (although I might be wrong about this because you strike me as being a creative thinker), one which is more similar to working and research processes in the creative arts: if a topic doesn't entirely sit well in my head, I merely put it on the back burner and prioritise other topics that are more ready to release into the world for scrutiny. I'll keep thinking, reorganising, reading, playing with different ideas and approaches to the back burner research alongside the books or papers I am releasing, until I feel it's come together fully in my head. Then I'll think up all sorts of contras to my own arguments, expand, prioritise it, write it up and release the back burner idea. 

But anyway you went on to do Skepticism, so you must have done loads of Hume!! That fitted with my dissertation on Hume especially since it involved an area you are interested in namely the passions together with moral psychology (I'm very interested in those topics too). So, I missed out on having you as a supervisor not just once (Cavendish) but twice (Hume). Apparently, you weren't 'suitable' - what on earth does that mean? 🤔 - so how well the topic fitted you wasn't the issue, and there was no opportunity to merely change to a topic they would allow you to supervise me in. Perhaps because you're not religious, more of an humanist and so might influence me badly. I would have thought my uni essays clearly showed I'm not religious right from the start of the degree, and that I found and chose to attend the 2010 Humanism conference with my mother at the end of my first year at uni. And it wasn't because it was your suggestion, or anyone else's, it was because my mother and I are both Jewish Humanists. I did attend uni as an adult not a school leaver. My thoughts, beliefs, attitudes were all pretty much in place already, including Judaism, Panentheism, and Humanism. 

Our same/similar interests predate us meeting and getting to know each other. So, as for you influencing me - I should wish! 

I'll continue playing 'snap' in the next post.......