Taking Socrates as a model of public discourse would not be complete without noting that it got him condemned to death. The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit.
Socrates was not executed because he "asked questions". He was executed because he opposed the Athenian democracy and was considered partly responsible for the brutal oligarchy ("The 30 tyrants") which was installed after Athens defeat in the Peloponnesian war. While Socrates did not directly support the tyranny, one of his students was a leading member. This is why Socrates was executed for "corrupting the youth" after the tyranny was overthrown.
Point taken - I was thinking of the charges out of context:
A general amnesty issued in 403 meant that Socrates could not be prosecuted for any of his actions during or before the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. He could only be charged for his actions during the four years preceding his trial in 399 B.C.E. It appears that Socrates, undeterred by the antidemocratic revolts and their aftermaths, resumed his teachings and once again began attracting a similar band of youthful followers. The final straw may well have been another antidemocratic uprising--this one unsuccessful--in 401. Athens finally had enough of "Socratified" youth.
Cambridge University classicist Professor Paul Cartledge claims that, rather than being a farce, Socrates’ trial was legally just and that he was guilty as charged. Instead of being a warning from history, he argues, it is an example of just how different Ancient Greek politics often were.
“Everyone knows that the Greeks invented democracy, but it was not democracy as we know it, and we have misread history as a result,” Professor Cartledge said. “The charges Socrates faced seem ridiculous to us, but in Ancient Athens they were genuinely felt to serve the communal good.”
> The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit
Actually, it's a broader set of people. Most ordinary people don't like too many questions under ordinary circumstances. Every book on effective communications that I've read said that asking leading questions will trigger hostility and even if you're asking out of pure curiosity people will misinterpret them as leading questions. You have to develop the skill of signaling curiosity and asking in a manner that doesn't induce hostility.
In my lifetime I've been shouted at multiple times due to using the Socratic method. It would always take me by surprise - I was always asking in good faith. Only when I read these books did I realize that it wasn't the people who were flawed but the method.
There Are limited domains where it is effective - like between a teacher and a student or between two people engaging in rhetorical debate. But in most situations it's a bad idea.
I've heard that therapists are now taught to limit their use of "why [did|do] you..." questions to patients, because people are likely to instinctively take those as hostile or suspicious. Maybe these questions seem especially personal, and especially likely to bear a subtext of "it doesn't seem like you had a good reason".
Scientists regularly run into complications getting things to work but with determination and cleverness can often find a way to make it happen - maybe the same is true here.
It's fundamentally embarrassing to be caught with your pants down not knowing the sort of basic things the line of questioning inevitably leads to. Most of us are intellectually sloppy. Few of us will admit to that.
You'll find an army of people willing to defend say human rights, but very few of them could convince Socrates why. It's not that it's an indefensible position, of course it is, it's just that nobody really seems willing to shine light at central ideals like that. It's something that's so often taken for granted that very few actually bother to learn to motivate it, so when questioned, they flounder and fear maybe it can't be motivated, and react with aggression and threats instead of curiosity.
In the end, the Socratic method is a harsh and bitter medicine that not everyone wants to swallow. Everyone likes to call themselves a skeptic when it comes to the thinking of others, but few wants their own assumptions scrutinized. I think walking around like Socrates accosting people with it probably will get you in trouble now as it did then.
It's not even about being right or wrong. The person on the receiving end of the Socratic method can experience irritation and frustration. If you expect them to be collaborative after you engaged them in a time consuming, frustrating experience, you are in for a surprise.
And if you (the questioner) are actually proven wrong after weeks of debate, rest assured you will never get the other person to listen to you. Next time, they'll ask you to "write up a doc" and prove that you know what the hell you are talking about.
Are you ever proven wrong as the questioner. The original method consist of extending the argument so far that at some point some contradiction will show up. Instead of blaming it on the extension then one claims victory and that the original statement was wrong.
The biggest mistake made by humans is to think that they are always right. Very often, questioners don't realize that their line of reasoning has flaws. Their stubbornness in pursuing a contradiction only succeeds if there is a contradiction they were already aware of. Otherwise, it just makes the questioner appear as an asshole
What is the questioners line of reasoning if they haven't made any claims? If they have made a mixture of claims and questions then they can have flaws but its misleading to call them "questioners" at that point, since they've done more than just ask questions.
> Their stubbornness in pursuing a contradiction only succeeds if there is a contradiction they were already aware of
I don't think this is true at all. You can recognize a statement of the form "X is not X" without having come across it before. As for the stubbornness, this can apply to both parties: the contradiction only appears when the answering party can't bring themselves to say "I don't know", "I assume", or "I don't have time for this"
The Socratic method claims to find inconsistencies by asking questions. Thus, these questions are not questions of curiosity, but questions with an underlying line of reasoning. This in itself leads the answerer to feel that the questioner is disingenuous in the conversation. They could walk away from the conversation, rendering the questioners entire effort futile.
That's a great question, which I'll eventually address.
I wrote a bit about it in another comment[1], but I'll expand here.
Asking questions often forces the recipient to stop what they're doing and think up an answer - it can be disruptive to their flow. People are generally busy, and if this happens in a work setting, they definitely are busy. So they'll want to know why they're expending the effort to answer these questions.
Many of them have been taught that answering the question with "Why do you want to know?" is considered impolite.[2] Unfortunately, they've not been taught a polite way to phrase the question, so they don't ask. This adds to their frustration and annoyance at the questioner. If you've ever seen someone say with clear frustration "Why do you want to know?" it's because they've been trying to restrain themselves from asking this question and they finally cracked.
Most people, if they don't have an answer, will conjure one up. Since they cannot get the answer to "Why do you want to know?" they will make assumptions. A common assumption is that you are asking these questions to prove a point (i.e. these are leading questions). People do not like leading questions. And they'll make a guess at the point you're trying to make when you ask all these questions.
So when you ask "Can a questioner ever be proven to be wrong?" - for most people the assumption will be that you have an argument you are trying to make, and the questions you are asking are to support that argument. That is where the notion of a questioner being wrong comes from. My personal experience is that even when I'm genuinely curious and do not have a stance, people will attribute a stance to me when I ask them questions.
There's also another dynamic at play here. Anyone can, with almost no cognitive burden, come up with questions to ask. Answering them often has a significant cognitive burden. When someone is having a conversation with you and all you're doing is asking questions, that person can clearly see the imbalance in cognitive load. They'll feel (perhaps correctly), that they're doing most of the work in the conversation. They're the ones contributing to it, and the questioner is not really contributing anything to the conversation. So why should he bother answering all these questions?
Give, and ye shall receive. The one asking the questions is not giving. Hence the resentment.
People are busy. If you want them to answer your questions, make it worth their effort. If you don't, their frustration will be legitimate. That's why when I don't have the energy to be polite, I respond with "I'm busy, and this is not worth my time."
BTW, asking questions to waste people's time, and to get them frustrated, is definitely a tactic people use against others. This alone is reason enough for people to be wary when someone comes asking a lot of questions.
One thing I've learned from communications books: If you have a concern, then express the concern openly before asking your question. This will make it clear to the recipient what your intent is, and they will not have to guess.
[2] A polite way I've learned, based on having it done to me several times, is the person I posed a question to responding with "It sounds like you're asking these questions because you have certain concerns on your mind. I'd like to hear them."
I don’t even think it’s the ego of the person being questioned, Socrates was a major annoyance in the incessant way he asked questions. It is quite rude by any measure, as shown by how often people get angry at him in those dialogues. However it is effective, at least for us to read
>It is quite rude by any measure, as shown by how often people get angry at him in those dialogues.
The way I read the dialogues people get angry with Socrates not because he is rude, but because his questions force them to confront their own hypocrisy and thoughtlessness.
I agree, but he deserved his legendary end. He is a lesson in both incessant questioning, and how not to talk to people if you want to keep your head. I think I would have hit him too
"The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit."
I wish I was warned about this in school. My career has been condemned.
On a related note, I've been a big fan of Socratic questioning[0] and have often used it to guide picking between 2 different things, such as technologies. It's also a really nice way to understand something in a consistent way, even if you're not comparing it to something else.
The only place the Socratic Method works is in the fictional dialogues of Plato, where Crito or Meno or Phaedrus or whomever are set up as obvious straw men, answering "yes" or "no" as Plato chooses, to questions most modern readers (and probably more than a few of his contemporaries) would answer differently.
Didn't see the movie: as represented in a book that came out at about the same time (Harvard 1L?), the law school version of the Socratic method didn't sound all that Socratic.
