Navigating A Whackadoodle World: Episode 16, or How to Wake Someone Out of Their Assumptions

A Whackadoodle lesson in which my student and I tackle her assignment on the Socratic Method, only to discover how appropriate our discussion is for Rule Two: The Power of Definition and Belief.

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“Did you know that Socrates never actually wrote any of the works he appears in?” she asked, pulling a composition book out of her backpack.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I get so annoyed when people quote Socrates. Like they have a record of what he actually said. If he ever did write anything, it’s been lost to time.”

“So who should they quote?”

“You should know that from you class,” I told her. She glowered at me, so I added, “They should quote the person who wrote the original manuscripts that feature Socrates as a character. The most notable of which is his student, Plato.”

She shrugged noncommittally, and opened her composition book to that day’s notes. “So,” she began. “We’re supposed to write an essay about the Socratic Method. I know it’s a dialogue between students and teacher. I was thinking that it’s a lot like we do. I ask questions, and you try to answer them. If you don’t know the answer, we check Google.”

“Yes, but not quite. In the Socratic Method, I would be the one asking the questions.”

“How’s that?”

“The Socratic Method always has the teacher using elenchus, also know as strategic questions, as a means of eliciting truth and puncturing presuppositions. They are especially useful when you’re try to refute an argument.”

“How does that work?”

“I basically ask questions designed to get you to question your own assumptions. Hopefully, once we’re done, we will have both reached an agreement regarding a new underlining truth. In other words, I will have use questions to open your mind and cause you to think critically.”

“What exactly is critical thinking?” she broke in unexpectedly.

“I suppose at it’s most basic, critical thinking is,” I paused to find the words. “I think that at it’s heart critical thinking is all about being able to question our own assumptions. I assume he’s guilty, but I must argue for his innocence. I won’t be able to do that if I can’t question my own assumptions.”

“I think I could use an example,” she said at last.

It took me a while to chose an example, but I finally asked, “Have you ever seen the movie My Cousin Vinney?”

“You mean the one about the lawyer who goes down to Alabama to defend his nephew against murder charges?”

“That’s the one,” I agreed. “And do you remember the three eye witnesses, who were certain that they had seen the defendants running from the murder scene within seconds of the murder?”

“Yeah,” her brows furrowed in concentration. “I think there was an older lady with glasses, a guy making breakfast, and somebody else that I can’t remember.”

“He was the one with dirty windows,” I laughed. “But do you also remember how Vinney got those eye witnesses to admit that their assumptions about the days events were questionable?”

I saw her thinking back. “I know that that the woman with glasses eventually admitted that she might need new glasses, and the guy cooking breakfast admitted that it took more time to cook grits than his original testimony said, so he couldn’t have seen them running from the scene. I can’t remember what the third one admitted.”

“He admitted that he had dirty windows and a lot of bushes blocking his view, so a positive identification from that distance was a pretty outrageous claim. But my point is this; how did the lawyer get them to admit their misconceptions?”

She took a long moment to think about it. “He asked them questions about their lives on the day of the murder,” she concluded at last.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “And those questions made the witnesses reconsider their previous misconceptions. Questions are at the heart of critical thinking, as well as the Socratic Method.” I suddenly laughed at a memory popping into my brain.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Well, I just remembered when I went to this party and got cornered by some guy who wanted to talk me into an investment scheme. It sounded pretty funky to me, but he kept insisting that it was all perfectly legal. Like that was some selling point. I finally had enough of him, and shut him down with two questions.”

“How,” she asked, suddenly intrigued.

“First, I asked a confirming question. ‘So you’re telling me that when something is legal, that automatically makes it alright?’ He instantly replied, ‘Yes, of course it’s alright.’ Then I asked him a Socratic question, ‘Slavery was once legal, so are you saying that slavery was once alright?’ You should have seen the look on his face when I asked that question. It’s his look that made me laugh.”

“But what made your second question a Socratic question?”

“Because I was asking him to consider his own assumptions. His own beliefs, if you will. I was asking him to consider how he defined what’s ‘alright’.” I paused to let her take that in, then added, “There’s this pretty cool explanation by a philology scholar named Richard Robinson. He wrote:

The aim of the elenchus is to wake men out of their dogmatic slumbers into genuine intellectual curiosity."

(Richard Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic, 1966).

“What is elenchus again?”

“It’s just another name for the Socratic Method of asking people questions to get them thinking critically about their own assumptions.”

“I think this discussion has changed everything I want to write in my essay,” she said dismally. “I might have to think everything over again.”

“Then the Socratic Method has already done it work,” I laughed.

“So,” she said after some thought. “The Socratic Method has everything to do with helping people question their beliefs.”

“That’s right,” I affirmed.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that this is the week we are suppose to be focused on Rule Two: The Power of Definition and Belief?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in Cause and Effect. You have the rules in your mind, so of course you spot a connection. Those connections are everywhere once you know to look for them.”

“I’m thinking about I how might write my essay,” she said at last. “I think that I want to bring in the Power of Belief, and how questions can expand those beliefs. I think that I want to explain how our ability to question our own beliefs using this Socratic Method can actually make us stronger.”

“Sounds like an essay that I might want to read.”

I didn’t say anything more. I just watched her creating outlines and making notes in her composition book. I couldn’t help but smile.

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