The Socratic Method
A Practitioner’s Handbook
- ISBN-13: 978-0944583319
- ISBN-10: 0944583318
The Socratic method is a style of thought. It is a help toward intelligence and an antidote to stupidity.
- How to think: be curious and seek answers to important questions
- Minimal requirements: common sense and common speech
- Helpful technique for solving any kind of problem
- Asking and receiving questions fearlessly
- Asking hard questions without fear and receiving them without offense
- Treating challenge and refutation as acts of friendship
- Loving truth and staying humble when corrected by it
- Improve everyday activity of making sense out of life and how to live it
- Produce a mindset that is useful all the time
This book will also offer some ideas about how Socratic teachings relate to our current cultural and political difficulties. Let us backtrack a moment. The ancient Romans built elaborate networks of pipes to deliver water where they wanted it to go. The networks were a marvel. But many of the pipes we made of lead, and the water carried the lead along with it. One school of thought regards this as part of the reason for the decline and fall of Rome: lead poisoning gradually took its toll, impairing the thought and judgement of many Romans, especially at the top. The theory is much disputed; perhaps it contains no truth. But as a metaphor it is irresistible. We have built networks for the delivery of information – the internet, and especially social media. These networks, too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage. It craves confirmation and resents contradiction. Attention spans collapse; imbecility propagates, then seems normal, then is celebrated. The capacity for rational discourse between people who disagree gradually rots. I have a good deal more confidence in the lead-pipe theory of the internet, and its effect on our culture, than in the lead-pipe theory of the fall of Rome.
1. The Socratic Problem
What is the Socractic Problem?
No one knows who Socrates is. When Socrates is referred to, we don’t know if it is the literal man himself or an aggregation of Plato’s imagination and memory of Socrates.
The end-goal is to understand a style of thought, ie. the Socratic method. So it’s irrelevant to strictly identify who Socrates is in each context. Instead we can focus on how Socrates thought.
2. Method vs. Doctrine
What is the purpose of the Socractic method?
The unexamined life is not livable. The mind left to itself (intellectus sibi permissus) is automatic, irrational, confused, and error prone. The Socratic method is a manual, corrective thought process.
Plato’s two types of teachings:
- Practical lessons with specific conclusions
- The Socratic thinking process (the focus of this book)
3. Elements of the Method
What are the elements of the Socractic method?
- Question and answer, open-ended dialogue seeking truth
- Consistency via counter-examples to previous thoughts
- Identify the underlying principles behind the thoughts
- Common, concrete examples to illustrate ideas via imagination and analogy
- Socrates does not claim expertise, he confesses his own ignorance
Oversimplified Socratic method:
- Ask questions about a claim and look for inconsistent answers
- What does the claim mean?
- What else does the claim holder believe?
- Show with follow up questions that the initial claim is contradicted or unsatisfactory
- Artful denial does not sound like an argument
- The initial claim is then modified, and we start over again seeking truth
Socratic View
In the natural process of growth in the human mind, belief does not follow proof, but springs up apart from and independent of it; an immature intelligence believes first, and proves (if indeed it ever seeks proof) afterwards.
Denying what someone claims is an act of friendship. As a result we may change our mind for the better, or we may improve our understanding of why we think the way we do. We then become more humble and aware of our own ignorance; less likely to be absolutely certain of our internal “truths” and more open to understanding viewpoints of others.
Good hearted contradictions to hard questions may be best kept to ourselves in the ongoing dialogue within our minds. It is easier to question others, but more dangerous (Socrates was executed for it). It is harder to question ourselves and be open to challenging our own beliefs.
We can seek a different kind of comfort. Rather than concrete answers of absolute certainty, we can be satisfied without satisfactory answers while continuing to seek the truth. The good life is this daily struggle to acquire wisdom. Claims of truth are easily broken apart; thus we can think and live accordingly.
4. The Socratic Function
What is the Socractic Function?
Invoking the Socratic method upon ourselves to actively/skeptically question our own beliefs/claims during the daily process of seeking wisdom and truth.
Our mind’s process of thinking is an ongoing internal dialogue with ourselves. Plato displays this in his dialogues as explicit externalization of differing thought processes as metaphorical characters in debate; thus transforming our abstract implicit internalizations into concrete ideas. This helps self-awareness by portraying our internal Socrates thinking out loud (it separates our sense of self from our thoughts).
5. Question and Answer
Why a question/answer dialogue?
- Questions are instruments of creative thought
- Explore hypothetical use cases
- Refutation/refinement cycle via contradictions
- We can learn from asking questions (not from declaring beliefs/claims/opinions)
- Small incremental questions slow down the thought process (automatic 👉 manual)
- Slow down thought process to increase comprehension of the thought/claim/idea
- Inspect and dissect thoughts like a connoisseur tastes wine or looks at art
- The mind’s optimal speed is slow and steady (Socrates is never in a rush)
Side Effects
- More intelligent understanding
- Lose absolute certainty of being correct
- Lose ability to easily know what to think
6. The Elenchus
What is the Elenchus?
A constant search cycle for truth via testing, refutation, contradiction, shaming, and ridicule.
- Make a claim/thought/idea
- Socrates gets us to agree with another proposition
- Socrates shows that other proposition is inconsistent with the original claim/thought/idea
We can then modify original claim/thought/idea and repeat the search cycle.
Progressive Shame
Socratic questioning forces concessions which are too embarrassing to deny. We can feel shameful of our mind’s inconsistencies. This is shame within ourselves; a feeling derived from post-processing previously held incorrect beliefs. It’s a sign of progress.
Purgative Consequences
All I’m saying is what I always say: I myself don’t know the facts of these matters, but I’ve never met anyone, include the people here today, who could disagree with what I’m saying and still avoid making himself ridiculous.
The elenchus transforms false certainty of knowledge into more accurate feelings of ignorance.
- Shows we don’t believe what we thought we believed
- Shows we don’t know what we thought we knew
The elenchus can also be used for proof by contradiction, ie. if the opposite of a postulate P is impossible, then it follows that P is true.
The Art of Falsification
We cannot arrive at truth without identifying fallacies. After detecting and removing falsehood, truth is what remains. This occurs after a sufficient amount of refutation/contradiction cycle(s) have been performed, and the conflicting claims/thoughts/ideas have been resolved. This consistency cleanses dissonance and is evidence of this path’s virtue towards truth. Consistency is a paramount test of truth. It forces us to lightly hold our beliefs ephemerally as we constantly search for additional confirmation or refutation.
Self Examination
The elenchus is a trap we cannot set upon ourselves. Socrates thinks in advance how to create contradictions. But we cannot sneak up on ourselves the same way a conversational partner can. Thus, using the elenchus on ourselves is the search process of contradicting our internal beliefs. This is hard to do since we have blind spots when viewing ourselves. It requires a humble acceptance that we are constantly incorrect which makes the search for truth plausible since it detaches us from our false views. We can get used to being wrong and being wrong more often than we think we are.
7. Consistency
Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same.
Internal consistency was paramount for Socrates to live in accordance with nature. The elenchus allows us to internally debate our own thoughts against each other to acquire internal consistency in the pursuit of truth.
Socrates is a master of refutation, so it becomes hard to be certain about anything important. Conclusions that stand unrefuted are provisional; they may yet be refuted. Socrates has a rare combination of beliefs: confidence that truth exists, but humility about whether he knows it. (Think of how strangely common the reverse has become.) That is part of why inconsistency matters so much. It doesn’t just show that you are wrong. It shows that it’s possible to be wrong. Philosophy means thinking carefully about whether you believe all that you say and whether it’s true. It is the effort to stay awake.
Imagination is necessary for questioning internal beliefs, and internal critique is universally applicable. This is similar to testing a musical instrument, not with an external measuring device, rather with an internal consideration of being in-tune with itself.
Socrates viewed internal inconsistency as a moral sickness to be purged. We cannot believe two contradicting thoughts without being ignorant (or crazy). Internal conflict causes practical problems, such as disabling good decision making.
8. Systole and Diastole
The Socratic method uses 2 methods of thought: systole and diastole.
- Systole
- seeing similarities between things which appear different
- platonic collection: seeing many as one via categorical “buckets” of similarities
- Diastole
- seeing differences between things which appear similar
- platonic division: seeing one as many via categorical “buckets” of differences
9. Analogies
Socrates uses analogies for clarification and refinement of ideas.
- Fill-in-the-blank
- Socrates provides a definition of something and asks others in dialog to provide a similar definition for something else
- Socrates uses these analogies as an example of how to “do it like this”
- Fill-in-the-blank interrogations
- Socrates uses this style of questioning as a thought path which starts with simple, familiar things and is guided towards difficult, unfamiliar things, ie. beginning with what is known and attempting to map that information onto what is unknown
- When someone is having difficulty formulating a sufficient response, show them a proper response in a more familiar universe of discourse which is simple to understand
- Extended comparisons
- Socrates compares food for the body and the information we commit to our minds as corresponding food for the mind
- Argumentative analogies
- Good tasting food may be bad for your health, while bad tasting medicine may be good for your health
Why Analogies?
- To think hard in unfamiliar ways
- Associate abstract ideas with tangible things
- Taking care of our minds similarly to our bodies
What is epagogic reasoning?
Inductive reasoning, ie. using anecdotal evidence derived from specific examples to lead a thought process towards a general conclusion. The epagoge and analogy work back and forth between the known and unknown as leverage to continually generate and build upon previous ideas.
10. Socratic Rules for Dialogue
There is nothing worse than self-deception - when the deceiver is always at home and always with you.
- Trying to find truth (dialectic), rather than trying to win a debate (eristic)
- Examining people, not just claims
- Judging arguments by merit, regardless who makes them
- Candor, saying what we think
- One-witness principle, the partner in dialogue is the judge
- the crowd is not to be trusted
- personal dialogue
- insufficient data points: “everybody knows…” or “nobody thinks…”
- Principle of charity
- dialogue partners help each provide clarity towards truth
- consider the best case for your adversarial partner, not the best case for your self-confirming point of view
- come up with strong objections to our own views
- Not giving or taking offense
11. Ignorance
I am better off than he is, for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
Socratic philosophy begins and ends by admitting our ignorance, ie. “I don’t know.” Between the begin and end, we have a dialogue which slowly and iteratively builds upon our ignorance in an effort towards truth. Socrates shows us how difficult truth is to reach by showing “experts” they aren’t actually experts by asking questions which are hard to sufficiently answer. Thus awareness of our ignorance if a prerequisite to allow socratic inquiry to begin.
The einstellung effect occurs when we think we know something, but we actually don’t fully comprehend it. This ignorance occurs often when learning something new. A common example in computer science is dynamic programming for which solutions are easily verified in hindsight but those same solutions are difficult to conjure in foresight. Many software developers will internally believe they understand dynamic programming because they can validate preexisting solutions in hindsight, but that is likely a false belief which is easily contradicted by attempting to solve similar but different problems from scratch (ie. without looking at someone else’s solution).
People have vices, do wrong, and make themselves wretched because they don’t really understand what they are doing and why. They haven’t thought hard enough about it. But there’s a special tier of Socratic dread and contempt for double ignorance – the ignorance of those who don’t know but think they do.
Socrates claims to know nothing, but he does have previously known information. However, he does not allow his knowledge to keep him from continually searching for truth, even if that truth contradicts his previously known information. Socrates continually keeps in mind his own ignorance. When in dialogue, he attempts to forget what he already thinks he knows to truly listen from another perspective.
12. Aporia
There’s one proposition that I’d defend to the death, if I could, by argument and by action: that as long as we think we should search for what we don’t know, we’ll be better people – less faint-hearted and less lazy – than if we were to think that we had no chance of discovering what we don’t know and that there’s no point in even searching for it.
Aporia is an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory. Many Socratic dialogues end in aporia; it is a state of mind which is acquired upon sufficient refutation and refinement cycles, ie. there is nothing left to say or do.
Double Ignorance
- When we think we know something, but we actually don’t know something
- Aporia is a rude awakening from this mindless “sleep walking”
Purgative Prerequisite
- Before we can learn truth, we must unlearn preconceived falsehoods
- Aporetic cleansing prepares us for learning by making us want to learn
- We are hungry for knowledge when we realize how little we have
- Investigations for knowledge do not commence if we already “know it all”
Speechlessness
- Unspeakable truths (verbose discourse similar to mathematical irrational numbers)
- Some truths are perceived without words and/or are ineffable
13. Socratic Goods
Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.
Question: Why Bother?
Socrates cared deeply for seeking truth and taking care of his mind. We naturally acquire an anti-Socrates via automatic, mindless tendencies such as confirmation bias.
Idiocy tend not to fully recognize its own existence; incompetence prevents you from being aware of your own incompetence.
- If we’ve never had something, how could we possibly miss it (or even know that we might want it)?
- Ignotti nulla cupido (there is no desire of the unknown)
What a delusion most needs is the very thing it least thinks of – naturally, for otherwise it would not be a delusion.
- Allegory of the cave
- Departure from the cave
- not valued by those who do not have it
- they cannot comprehend the value of what they are missing
- the absence of good keeps them from seeing why they would like it
- valued by those who do have it
- know such goods exist
- know such goods are worth the effort to acquire
- not valued by those who do not have it
- Departure from the cave
Comparisons
People rarely feel they are in caves since they don’t notice until they get out and look back. We can value the work we’ve put into ourselves only after that work as been done. Then we can look back on our past selves, and remember who we don’t want to be. This concept can be used as a constant reminder that there’s plenty more work to be done.
Socratic Injuries
You don’t know what you’re suffering. Analogous to anosognosia within the mind.
- never learn the truth
- act unethically without reflection
- live a life that would disgust us if we were less ignorant
The more we need this help, the less we want it.
14. Socratic Ethics
The most vicious wrongdoers have stories to tell themselves in which what they do seems right, all in all. They’re in the grip of mistakes and bad understandings.
- Every soul is deprived of truth against its will:
- Forgive them, for they wouldn’t have done it having known better
- Good socratic exercise:
- re-interpret every wrongful act in the same way: a failure of knowledge/understanding
When people want opinions about how to build something, they consult expert engineers; however, when people want opinions about moral matters (how to live life well), they view their own opinions or other’s unqualified opinions as “expert” advice, rather than acquire information from those with proper credentials (philosophers).
15. Socrates and the Stoics
Begin the morning by saying to yourself: today I will meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, and the arrogant; with the deceitful, the envious, and the unsocial. All these things result from their not knowing what is good and what is evil.
Our problems in this world can be reinterpreted as problems within our thought processes. When people are annoying or wrongdoers: we can forgive them, for they are deprived of truth and don’t know better. People who behave poorly can be pitied; they are mistaken or ethically disabled. Remembering this makes us kinder.
Whenever someone does you a wrong or speaks ill of you, remember that he is doing what he thinks is proper. He can’t possibly be guided by what appears right to you, but only by what appears right to him. So if he sees things wrongly, he is the one who is hurt, because he is the one who has been deceived… Starting from this reasoning, you will be mild toward whoever insults you. Say each time, “So it seemed to him.”
- The stoics view emotion as internal responses/reactions to external stimulus
- Dumb animals lack the emotions of man due to lack of knowledge/understanding
16. Socrates and the Skeptics
[Socrates] argues in such a manner that he affirms nothing himself, but refutes the assertions of others. He says that he knows nothing, except that one fact, that he is ignorant; and that he is superior to others in this particular, that they believe that they do know what they do not, while he knows this one thing alone, that he knows nothing. And it is on that account that he imagines he was pronounced by Apollo the wisest of all men, because this alone is the whole of wisdom, for a man not to think that he knows what he does not know.
“Skeptic” is derived from the greek work skepsis which means “inquiry”
- Skeptics want truth and always try to get closer to it
- Skeptics never reach a stopping point (never find certainty)
- Skeptics dread “rash assent” (thinking you’re done thinking before you actually are)
- a great failing point for humanity
Aporia vs. Epochē
Aporia
- all claims have been refuted and there’s nothing more to say/do
- leads to a state of epistemic frustration
Epochē
- withholding judgement because we are suspended between different arguments
- (either of which could be right)
- leads to a state of detachment from belief
Stoics vs. Skeptics
- Stoics: virtue is the only real good and is a matter of knowledge
- Skeptics: we have no certain knowledge and the best response to a claim is always more argument
17. Finding Principles
Specific questions can be used to identify the root principle of a claim/argument. Socratic dialogue begins with a search for the proper level of generality which establishes the overall universe of discourse for the discussion. Principles are core beliefs unconsciously held at the root of ours thoughts. We can use principles:
- as the second half of the elenchus to test the original claim(s) the principle was derived from; thus seeking inconsistencies between the principle and claim
- as the first half of the elenchus to test the principle itself as a claim for further refutation
- as generalizations of other principles; this is helpful to establish “common ground” early in the dialogue since most people do care about the same things when generalized at a sufficiently high-level
Concepts
A major premise will take 1 of 2 forms:
- a concept that needs to be defined
- a proposition that needs to be defended (ie. test its implications)
18. Testing Principles
Specific questions can be used to test principles of a claim/argument in a non-confrontational way by devising questions which produce agreement; then further questions can be used to find contradictions and inconsistencies with previous agreements to continue the refutation/refinement cycle.
There are multiple methods for coming up with good questions:
- Literalism: think outside the box to test the principle outside the boundaries of its original intelligent
- Extremes: corner cases and outer limits of the principle’s breadth
- Change the politics: seeing the same information from a reversed point-of-view
- Change the perspective: seeing the same information from another’s perspective
- Implications: if this is true, then what follows?
- Next step: consider future consequences
Can We Begin a Dialogue?
With good questions, we can discover what others are willing to accept as evidence they’re wrong, and see what (if anything) may be able to change their minds.
Cooperative vs. Adversarial Reasoning
Instead of saying: “here’s a counter-example to your claim X”, we can state: “there are specific features of the claim X, right?” (to receive agreement), followed by: “then is it possible that X is an exception to a previous claim/argument?”
Epilogue: Socratic Rules of Engagement
- The open table
- The purpose of inquiry
- Challenges wanted
- Arguments met with arguments
- The priority of reason
- Elenctic reasoning
- Self-skepticism
- Group skepticism
- Manners
- Candor
- Offense
- Humility