Socratic Thinking Method

[Heidi Hall]

Socraticquestioning (or Socratic maieutics)[1] is an educational method named after Socrates that focuses on discovering answers by asking questions of students. According to Plato, Socrates believed that "the disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning enables the scholar/student to examine ideas and be able to determine the validity of those ideas".[2] Plato explains how, in this method of teaching, the teacher assumes an ignorant mindset in order to compel the student to assume the highest level of knowledge.[2] Thus, a student is expected to develop the ability to acknowledge contradictions, recreate inaccurate or unfinished ideas, and critically determine necessary thought.

Socratic questioning is a form of disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we do not know, to follow out logical consequences of thought or to control discussions. Socratic questioning is based on the foundation that thinking has structured logic, and allows underlying thoughts to be questioned.[3] The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that the former is systematic, disciplined, deep and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems.

When teachers use Socratic questioning in teaching, their purpose may be to probe student thinking, to determine the extent of student knowledge on a given topic, issue or subject, to model Socratic questioning for students or to help students analyze a concept or line of reasoning. It is suggested that students should learn the discipline of Socratic questioning so that they begin to use it in reasoning through complex issues, in understanding and assessing the thinking of others and in following-out the implications of what they and others think. In fact, Socrates himself thought that questioning was the only defensible form of teaching.

Socratic questioning illuminates the importance of questioning in learning. This includes differentiating between systematic and fragmented thinking, while forcing individuals to understand the root of their knowledge and ideas. Educators who support the use of Socratic questioning in educational settings argue that it helps students become active and independent learners. Examples of Socratic questions that are used for students in educational settings: [4][unreliable source?]

The art of Socratic questioning is intimately connected with critical thinking because the art of questioning is important to excellence of thought. Socrates argued for the necessity of probing individual knowledge, and acknowledging what one may not know or understand. Critical thinking has the goal of reflective thinking that focuses on what should be believed or done about a topic.[5] Socratic questioning adds another level of thought to critical thinking, by focusing on extracting depth, interest and assessing the truth or plausibility of thought. Socrates argued that a lack of knowledge is not bad, but students must strive to make known what they don't know through the means of a form of critical thinking.[6]

Critical thinking and Socratic questioning both seek meaning and truth. Critical thinking provides the rational tools to monitor, assess, and perhaps reconstitute or re-direct our thinking and action. This is what educational reformer John Dewey described as reflective inquiry: "in which the thinker turns a subject over in the mind, giving it serious and consecutive consideration."[7] Socratic questioning is an explicit focus on framing self-directed, disciplined questions to achieve that goal.

The technique of questioning or leading discussion is spontaneous, exploratory, and issue-specific.[8] The Socratic educator listens to the viewpoints of the student and considers the alternative points of view.[8] It is necessary to teach students to sift through all the information, form a connection to prior knowledge, and transform the data to new knowledge in a thoughtful way.[8] Some qualitative research shows that the use of the Socratic questioning within a traditional Yeshiva education setting helps students succeed in law school, although it remains an open question as to whether that relationship is causal or merely correlative.[9]

It has been proposed in different studies that the "level of thinking that occurs is influenced by the level of questions asked".[10] Thus, utilizing the knowledge that students don't know stimulates their ability to ask more complex questions. This requires educators to create conducive learning environments that promote and value the role of critical thinking, mobilising their ability to form complex thoughts and questions.[10]

Socratic questioning has also been used in psychotherapy, most notably as a cognitive restructuring technique in classical Adlerian psychotherapy, logotherapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and logic-based therapy.[11] The purpose is to help uncover the assumptions and evidence that underpin people's thoughts in respect of problems. A set of Socratic questions in cognitive therapy aim to deal with automatic thoughts that distress the patient:[12]

Careful use of Socratic questioning enables a therapist to challenge recurring or isolated instances of a person's illogical thinking while maintaining an open position that respects the internal logic to even the most seemingly illogical thoughts.

In Plato's dialogue "Theaetetus", Socrates describes his method as a form of "midwifery" because it is employed to help his interlocutors develop their understanding in a way analogous to a child developing in the womb. The Socratic method begins with commonly held beliefs and scrutinizes them by way of questioning to determine their internal consistency and their coherence with other beliefs and so to bring everyone closer to the truth.

In the second half of the 5th century BCE, sophists were teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric to entertain, impress, or persuade an audience to accept the speaker's point of view. Socrates promoted an alternative method of teaching, which came to be called the Socratic method.[1]

Socrates began to engage in such discussions with his fellow Athenians after his friend from youth, Chaerephon, visited the Oracle of Delphi, which asserted that no man in Greece was wiser than Socrates. Socrates saw this as a paradox, and began using the Socratic method to answer his conundrum. Diogenes Lartius, however, wrote that Protagoras invented the "Socratic" method.[2][3]

Socrates (as depicted by Plato) generally applied his method of examination to concepts such as the virtues of piety, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Such an examination challenged the implicit moral beliefs of the interlocutors, bringing out inadequacies and inconsistencies in their beliefs, and usually resulting in aporia. In view of such inadequacies, Socrates himself professed ignorance. Socrates said that his awareness of his ignorance made him wiser than those who, though ignorant, still claimed knowledge. This claim was based on a reported Delphic oracular pronouncement that no man was wiser than Socrates. While this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, in fact it allowed Socrates to discover his own errors.

Socrates used this claim of wisdom as the basis of moral exhortation. He claimed that the chief goodness consists in the caring of the soul concerned with moral truth and moral understanding, that "wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state", and that "life without examination [dialogue] is not worth living".[citation needed]

Socrates rarely used the method to actually develop consistent theories, and he even made frequent use of creative myths and allegories. The Parmenides dialogue shows Parmenides using the Socratic method to point out the flaws in the Platonic theory of forms, as presented by Socrates; it is not the only dialogue in which theories normally expounded by Plato's Socrates are broken down through dialectic. Instead of arriving at answers, the method breaks down the theories we hold, to go "beyond" the axioms and postulates we take for granted. Therefore, myth and the Socratic method are not meant by Plato to be incompatible; they have different purposes, and are often described as the "left hand" and "right hand" paths to good and wisdom.[citation needed]

In Plato's early dialogues, the elenchus is the technique Socrates uses to investigate, for example, the nature or definition of ethical concepts such as justice or virtue. According to Gregory Vlastos, it has the following steps:[6]

One elenctic examination can lead to a new, more refined, examination of the concept being considered, in this case it invites an examination of the claim: "Courage is wise endurance of the soul". Most Socratic inquiries consist of a series of elenchi and typically end in puzzlement known as aporia.

Michael Frede points out Vlastos' conclusion in step #5 above makes nonsense of the aporetic nature of the early dialogues. Having shown a proposed thesis is false is insufficient to conclude some other competing thesis must be true. Rather, the interlocutors have reached aporia, an improved state of still not knowing what to say about the subject under discussion.[7]

The exact nature of the elenchus is subject to a great deal of debate, in particular concerning whether it is a positive method, leading to knowledge, or a negative method used solely to refute false claims to knowledge.[8] Some qualitative research shows that the use of the Socratic method within a traditional Yeshiva education setting helps students succeed in law school, although it remains an open question as to whether that relationship is causal or merely correlative.[9]

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