In the next few posts, I'd like to share a few short essays I've written which explore topics raised in the talk: Susan James 'Spinoza on Animal Species' for two reasons:
One, I found it an engaging talk which has inspired me to research topics within it further, especially since it deals with one of my research interests within Spinoza's writings.
Two, I decided to write it up and begin to share my research thoughts and findings with my readers because they may find the topics in her paper and in my further discussion of these topics of interest, given the perplexing amount of focus on my 2016 paper I have noticed while casually looking through my academia website stats over the past few years. For some unknown reason, this conference paper of mine receives the most amount of attention on my academia website, very frequently ending up my top paper of the week for years now. You can read it here:
Although I'm not sure 🤷 why there is so much focus on this version of it despite this 2016 paper being rewritten and incorporated into Part 3 of my 2018 Volume 1 ebook on Spinoza, available on this site here via the links provided to the relevant chapters in the Contents section:
Susan James on Spinoza and Animals: Contextual-Argument-Analysis
In this talk, Susan James structures the analytic argument analysis aspect of her Spinoza interpretation around three main questions:
Q1: Is it possible for an individual of one kind to metamorphose into an individual of another kind?
Q2: Is it possible for an individual of one kind to produce offspring of another kind?
Q3: Which common characteristics best capture the nature of species and the difference between one and another?
These questions arise from the contextual aspect of her Spinoza interpretation because they are rooted in the context of the hot topics discussed by philosophers in the 17th century which Spinoza heard around him and to which he decided to respond, while giving his own unique take on the issues. Susan James spans several fields of philosophy here while addressing these questions above, especially:
metaphysics: when analysing Spinoza's Ontology in question 1 and topics such as classification in question 2, both of which interlinks with....
epistemology: when considering common notions, inadequate ideas and what we can know to be true about kinds;
ethics: while analysing Spinoza's book titled Ethics, including Spinoza's passages on emotion as well as giving her own original account within the philosophy of emotion and animal ethics;
social and feminist philosophy: when relating the philosophy of emotion to social and affective interaction between humans as well as between humans and animals while touching upon issues discussed in feminism concerning male/female interaction;
political philosophy: when relating social interaction to Spinoza's political works.
Tailoring Constructive Criticism to a Speaker
In this post, I shall answer Susan James's request for "questions, comments or criticisms" of her talk. I don't criticise her work as I do others mainly because her philosophical method does not lead her into the same errors and argumentational problems as other philosophers commit. So I feel that a good appraisal of her work requires an alternative approach which becomes a different task. This is not some sort of way of just 'being nice' about her work. I try to provide everyone with constructive criticism which I feel would be of benefit to them and their projects, and I simply feel that assessing and criticising Susan James's philosophy calls for an approach which takes into account her particular strengths and style. A style which I very much like and connect with. It's perhaps easier for me to tune into her wavelength of thought 🧠 because I was privileged to be taught by her for 4 years at college as well as hear her on radio, podcasts, YouTube and in person talks, workshops and so on for over a decade. So I'm very familiar with her style and it suits me well. 🙂 💜💪
Of course, it's not a one way street - I'd be more than happy for her to reply to me directly, be it with an explanation, comment or philosophical criticism. After weathering decades of criticism since childhood be it in the arts or sport or academic marking, I'm much hardier than other academics when it comes to dealing with criticism, be it positive or negative. So she doesn't need to worry that I'll have a wobble 😟😳 🤯 if she tells me I've missed the point!
My Understanding of the Talk
I thought the aim of her paper was to show the importance of the affects in social interactions and how, through a Spinozistic account, we can value others, no matter who they are, because we are all fellow human beings. Moreover, affective interactions with others empower us and are instrumental in helping us to live together cooperatively. In much the same way, she argues that humans can interact with animals affectively in a life enriching, empowering way, perhaps more so than Spinoza allows in his account. Here she gives her example of Jane Goodall and her interaction with chimpanzees which functions as a possible counterexample to Spinoza: Surely, she argues, it's counterintuitive to think that Goodall does not have meaningful, affective interactions and relationships with chimpanzees which empower her in some way. However, Susan James acknowledges, much as humans can have meaningful, affective interactions with animals, Spinoza is right to argue that human to human interaction is more emotionally fulfilling and that humans come together more harmoniously, including sexually, because they are more similar to each other so can fulfill each other's needs.
Q&A
But given the content of the questions she received, I didn't feel the questions, comments and criticisms were matching up with her talk. Especially surprising since the paper had already been circulated in advance so they had time to read and think about it and prepare a question.
Maybe the problem is two-fold.
One, her knowledge of philosophy as a whole, not just of Spinoza, is extensive therefore it's harder for her to just give us a short overview. She's having to deselect and truncate certain points which introduces many suppressed premises and assumptions. It then leaves it up to you to either already know what these are or at least be able to figure them out. This leaves it open to misunderstanding something and filling it in with our own assumptions, erroneously or not. For instance, one question was where was she going with her paper, what's her overall aim. Well, if you've missed the thread of the argument then you will be swimming about and remain within your own hobby horses eg thinking of Aristotle and his categories even though Susan James never mentioned his name once. Or you may start thinking about your own research projects and how her talk relates to that rather than staying with her train of thought, her aims, her approach to the text. That's fine if you do that afterwards and cite her as your source of inspiration but not there and then as your question about her research.
Two, maybe it's a lack of appreciating her strengths, which are:
1. her open, unbiased approach which I love!
2. she doesn't superimpose anything onto the text but
3. remains faithful to it. If you look up the passages she's referred to, there's an accurate match up.
4. Her fourth strength is explanation, which is an additional type of accuracy.
So how do I think Susan James could encourage more relevant feedback from others?
Perhaps the answer lies in not making such a big distinction between giving lectures and giving talks. Maybe she thinks that since she's presenting her work to academics with specialist knowledge, she can assume knowledge, therefore, doesn't have to sign post, explain or simplify her research ideas. I disagree. I think she should deliver her talks in much the same way as she delivers her lectures. Why? Because a presenter still needs to bridge the gap between what they have in mind and what others already assume, think, and expect. People are prone to solipsism, by which I mean they are unsure of the content of thought of other minds and become stuck in their own thought patterns. So if your points don't match what is already sitting in their heads, they have a tendency to feel unsure of your aims and ideas. Thus their specialist, preexisting knowledge of Spinoza or philosophy may even be a hindrance to understanding you, unlike first year undergraduates who neither make any assumptions about you or what you are teaching.
Suggestions
So, for instance, if I were her, I would have started the introduction to the talk with:
In this talk, I am going to be doing a close textual analysis of Spinoza on animals in accordance with my Contextual-Argument-Analysis of Spinoza. Hence, I am restricting myself to the context of the questions that were circulating about animal species in 17th century Holland. So here are three main questions that reflect the burning questions of his era that Spinoza himself is addressing and arguing against.
So here I've closed off a fair amount of unnecessary questions in advance of question time by sign posting what I am and am not doing in the paper and setting the limits of the scope of this particular paper. For instance, any questions outside the scope of 17th century Holland eg Aristotle; Maimonides, as well as questions about aims of the paper are outside the scope of the paper. Also, if I wanted questions and feedback that's focused on the philosophy of emotion, then I'd simply state that in the introduction, otherwise it opens the paper to ep, met and biology which are minor sub-topics in the paper and not ones I'd be particularly interested in developing for the purpose of this paper/research.
There is, to my mind, nothing to criticise about the content of the paper. It's well supported by textual evidence, it covers a lot, it simultaneously provides an accurate, unbiased interpretation of Spinoza in the history of philosophy while building on this to give her own theory of emotions and social intercourse/interaction. And, as every good talk does, it is open ended enough to stimulate further thought and research on: what is this thing called 'species'?
Question time is there to further the speaker's train of thought, not try to 'hard ball' them or take their topics for a walk. Asking questions is not a game of 'can we catch the speaker out' or trying to generally baffle them. For example, asking her about cyborgs without at least explaining what you mean by a cyborg and why you think it might be tightly relevant to her talk. I know she knows about robotic issues in the philosophy of emotion because I heard her paper at a Cavendish conference in Nottingham 2012 where she argued that a robot cannot be classified as a human because it cannot feel emotion.
Observations
This is not a criticism but it's an observation that Susan James is maybe not driving home her point. After lectures, I'd hear students say how they felt very clear about what information they were meant to understand and take away from that week's lecture. I think the same style of delivery of information would help with her talks. However, unlike with students, with a specialist audience you can hit those winners and go for your shots more, in tennis terms. In other words, the aim of tennis is to swing your racquet freely, not worry about unforced errors but think more in terms of winning the point. Not in competitive terms but in terms of structuring the point so that you can close out the match. In philosophy, if I take myself as an example, I am drilling home the point, ad nauseam, that Spinoza was an Orthodox Jew and that I feel strongly that this theory bears out when looking at his texts. You may disagree with me and that's fine, but my technique and methodology is good enough to withstand negative criticism. I know I have structured my philosophical argument in a way that proves my theory so then the burden of proof is on the other person if they wish to provide a contra.
I feel the same is true with Susan James:
You've done your homework, you have solid textual evidence as support and provided structure and strong arguments. But then you don't capitalise on all your hard work because you don't package it in such a way that you can really drill it home with conviction. All you need is more window dressing and confidence. By window dressing I mean sign post more ie explicitly state what you are doing and not doing and execute it like a tennis match. Don't be afraid to play aggressively and go for your shots. If your favourite shots are your forehand and serve then make them a feature and really step into your shots. So in philosophy, the equivalent is eg you want to focus on the theory of emotion so boldly make that clear, keep the focus of the paper on it and don't accept questions that fall outside the scope of it, either by dismissing them (as you did with the suicide question) or by bringing the question back under the umbrella of affects/emotions. Maybe don't be so broad because it would cause anyone to be overwhelmed and it puts you under too much pressure at question time because you've opened yourself up to an unmanageable breadth of the type of question you might be asked. There's no need for a confidence wobble, and say you don't know the answer to a question when you do but you don't have enough time to respond and you have too many possible answers running around in your head. Of course, rather like a tennis match, speakers need a live audience in front of them, much as tennis players need spectators in the stands. This is especially true when discussing emotion.
To sum up:
It's not a criticism of the paper or of Susan James herself but more of a suggestion of how to repackage her presentations so that people ask the kind of questions that she might want and would further her research areas not theirs! And to help her not feel on the backfoot or 'got at' when it comes to quick-fire Q&A or peer review.
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