Diversity and the Socratic Method

W. Russ Payne Ph.D.

As a philosophy instructor I am constantly teaching the dialectic or the Socratic method.  As I see it, the Socratic method is the central kernel of all rational inquiry including what we call the scientific method.  Prior to Socrates, philosophers and natural scientists proposed various views about the nature of the world and motivated these with rudimentary arguments based on their observation of the world.  But, their views were basically held as a matter of dogma because there was no systematic method for evaluating the arguments in favor of one view or another.  In this environment it is no surprise that the first professional educators, the Sophists, tended to adopt a position of epistemic and moral relativism.  Epistemic relativism is the view that there is no objective standard for evaluating some lines of reasoning as better than others.  Instead, the epistemic relativist holds that what counts as a good reason for holding a view is relative one’s situation and interests.  Analogously, moral relativism is the view that there are no objective standards of right action but instead various standards that are only legitimate relative to this or that person or group of people.  The moral relativist denies that investigation into morality can reveal any universal moral truths.  The epistemic relativist denies that rational inquiry can reveal knowledge of any truths about the world whatsoever.  This sort of relativism is famously expressed in the initial line of Protagoras’ most influential book “Truth, or the Rejection” (the rejection of science and philosophy) which says “man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are not.”[1] 

Socrates, while having been trained by the Sophists, rejects their epistemic and moral relativism.  He does not, however, merely assert his own dogma.  Rather, Socrates ultimately accepts the Oracle of Delphi’s pronouncement that no one in Athens is wiser than he because he recognizes his own ignorance, while others think they know but do not in fact know.[2]  In accepting his own ignorance, Socrates exemplifies the sort of humility that is essential to any rational inquiry.  Also, in accepting his own ignorance, he accepts that there is a real difference between knowledge and mere opinion.  Socrates’ contribution to philosophy and science was not to establish, prove or advance any specific system of views.  Rather, his significant contribution is as the originator of a method for evaluating any set of views we might care to entertain about the nature of the world, morality, or ourselves.  That method is the dialectic, or Socratic method. 

The Socratic method is elegantly illustrated in Plato’s early Socratic dialogues[3].  The sort of knowledge Socrates seeks in Plato’s dialogues is conceptual knowledge.  In asking about the nature of piety or justice, for instance, Socrates wants an account of the content of our concepts of piety or justice.  It’s often said that Socrates seeks definitions of moral terms like “justice.”  But I don’t think this quite gets the nature of his project right.  There is a sense in which we as language users can define our terms however we like.  Were we as English speakers to start using a particular linguistic expression differently, then, of course, it would thereby come to have a different meaning.  But Socrates is not seeking to define bits of language in the sense of attaching an arbitrary meaning to an expression.  Rather, he is trying to better understand a meaning that we already attach to a term in our ordinary usage.  For instance, there is a sense in which we all grasp the meaning of the expression “romantic love.”  We use this expression to refer to a particular special kind of relation that sometimes holds between two people.  But any one of us would be hard pressed if asked to give a detailed account of nature of that special relation.  We could, as a mere matter of linguistic convention, assign any meaning we like to the words “romantic love.”  We would thereby, in a sense, define “romantic love.”  But we would not thereby say anything interesting about the kind of relation between people that we in fact use the words to express.  The point here is just that the objects of Socrates’ inquiry are not bits of language, but the properties and relations we already use our language to identify or express.  Properties and relations are not defined into existence, nor are they social constructs or artifacts of the imagination.  Rather, they are part of our world and therefore appropriate objects of human inquiry.

Socrates investigates the nature of moral properties and relations by means of a question and answer process.  He solicits an answer to a question such as “What is justice?” or “What is romantic love?” and then subjects that answer to critical evaluation.  This evaluation may yield a counterexample to the proposed definition or analysis, or it may yield some other sort of argument against the proposal.  In any case, when some objection is raised, it is examined.  If the objection holds up Socrates’ interlocutor is asked to reformulate his answer or formulate some new analysis of the concept at issue.  Here we have a process of trial and error.  A hypothesis is offered and then tested against the evidence.  In the case of evaluating analyses of concepts like justice or romantic love, the evidence may be the semantic intuitions we share as members of the same linguistic community.  We have some limited grasp of what properties terms pick out in our linguistic practices.  The dialectic provides a means of testing proposed accounts of the nature of these properties against our background beliefs about these and related properties.  The process we call induction in the physical sciences is essentially the same.  We propose a hypothesis and test it against the evidence.  If the hypothesis holds up, we seek further empirical evidence.  If it does not, we reject the hypothesis and seek an alternative hypothesis.  Karl Popper describes the dialectic in the physical sciences as a process of conjecture and refutation.[4]  But this is the very same process that Socrates applies fruitfully to the analysis of moral concepts.

There is a good deal more to say about the rational method.  Ultimately it leads us to the study of logic, which has seen remarkable development in just the past century or so.  But the aspects of the rational method that I want to address here are not so technical.  We’ve said enough about the Socratic method to explain why it is the friend of diversity.

The Value of Diversity in the Socratic Method

The first thing to note is that intellectual progress by means of the dialectic benefits greatly from entertaining and critically evaluating views from diverse perspectives.  Arguably, beyond the very initial stages, the basic methods of rational inquiry require the participation of a diverse community of inquirers. An individual working alone too quickly arrives at an account he or she is perfectly content with.  And there inquiry ceases until someone with a different point of view presents a cogent critique.  To some degree, this is what happened with philosophers thinking about the nature of the world prior to Socrates.  So, intellectual progress using rational methods requires a community of inquirers working from different points of view.  Thomas Kuhn illustrates the need for such a community in his distinction between normal science and pre paradigm science.[5]  In developed normal science, Kuhn takes a community of practitioners to have shared epistemic values as well as a shared theoretical framework. Members of that community must be like-minded about their methods.  That is, they must be able to agree on what would count as a good explanation or what counts as a cogent criticism of a proposed view.  But beyond considerations of method, like-mindedness can be more of a hindrance than a benefit.  If the members of a community all agree on a particular set of views, they are liable to be equally blind to its shortcomings.  Like-mindedness tends to ossify into dogmatism.  This can be plainly observed in assorted religious traditions and political ideologies.  On the other hand, diversity of mind within a community provides a constant renewal of intellectual vitality in the form of new points of view and new critiques of existing views.  Diversity of mind within a community of inquirers that share some epistemic values and methods is essential to rational intellectual progress.

For the past few decades, it has been fashionable for multiculturalists and pluralists more generally to adopt a position of epistemic relativism that says that no traditions of inquiry have any advantage over any others with respect to revealing the way the world is.  For some, even this way of putting the matter doesn’t go far enough as the very notion of inquiry presupposes that there is some object of inquiry, something to be discovered rather than merely held.  Holders of this view reject talk of discovering truths altogether in favor of recognizing different and potentially incompatible “truths” as revealed by different but equally legitimate “ways of knowing.”[6]  On this post-modern view, various discourses can be seen as expressions of this or that political aesthetic or other system of values.  The dialectical model of rational inquiry born in ancient Greece and developed extensively since then in western science and philosophy is seen, from this post-modern point of view, as merely one among a potential multitude of epistemologies.  These various epistemologies are taken to be equally legitimate “ways of knowing” their own potentially different and incompatible truths. 

What practitioners of the traditional western model of rational inquiry have long understood is that a thorough going epistemic relativism and the values of tolerance and respect cherished by those who see value in diversity can be but casual bedfellows at best.  Epistemic relativism has it that no “way of knowing” is preferable to any other.  Authority in judgment, on this view, is stripped from the human capacity for reason and vested instead in various social sentiments, political movements, or institutions.  Some “ways of knowing” place positive epistemic value on having a diversity of perspectives, but some do not.  The traditional conception of rationality that comes to us from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle is one that does positively value diversity.  But other possible “ways of knowing” may have little or no use for diversity.  Other “ways of knowing” may yield authority in judgment to some individual, class of individuals, book or whatever.  But insofar as what can be known or asserted as true is shielded from objective standards of rational evaluation, the value systems according to which claims to knowledge are to be evaluated are liable to subject minority perspectives to arbitrary and capricious censure.  

Building moral, political, or cultural values into alternative “ways of knowing” insures that some “ways of knowing” will be de-legitimized relative to others.  The “way of knowing” that takes consistency with the Bible literally interpreted to provide the ultimate test of sound belief de-legitimizes most current scientific theory.  The antebellum plantation owner’s “way of knowing” de-legitimizes the black man’s claim to basic human rights.  Epistemic relativism denies that there is any independent standard by which we can judge the ante-bellum plantation owners “way of knowing” as lacking legitimacy.   For anyone who values tolerance and respect for people in general, allowing social political or cultural values that vary from group to group to be embodied in epistemic principles of sound reasoning and coherent belief is bound to lead to a moral travesty.  For this reason, epistemic relativism that takes social or cultural values to be embodied in various and equally legitimate “ways of knowing” must be rejected if we are to uphold respect and understanding of people different from ourselves as social virtues. 

The mistake made by multi-culturalists and pluralists who embrace epistemic relativism lies in thinking that the traditional conception of rationality embodies the social and cultural values of a specific group to the exclusion of other values.  History offers any number of cases where groups of individuals have claimed the mantle of rationality in order to assert their own agenda.  And clearly they were wrong to do so.  Using an appeal to rationality as a tool for dominating others is a cheap rhetorical trick.  The use of rational argument can compel people’s assent.  But insofar as it does, it is not the political aims of the arguer that compels assent, but by the quality of the argument and the rationality of the audience. 

The traditional conception of rationality comes with some metaphysical baggage, but not with much.  The traditional conception of rationality takes for granted that there is some way the world is and that our beliefs, claims and opinions about the world might be true or false.  So, from a rational point of view, claims that there are many different worlds or many different incompatible truths are really quite outrageous.  But I suspect that what people mean when they make these sorts of claims is just the fairly obvious truth that things appear different to different people.  If we are to take seriously the notion that we all live in different worlds with their own mutually incompatible truths, then it’s hard to see how communication is possible at all.  This is because the metaphysics of this view doesn’t admit of any shared object of thought that can serve as the content of communication between two people.

There are open questions here about whether or not you can tell another's story from the outside.  It may be that one can’t just because one can’t entirely share another's conceptual space or epistemic position.  But to say that one’s story can not be told from the outside because the outsider lives in another world or knows an independent realm of truths relative only to his epistemology or conceptual framework is metaphysically outrageous and antithetical to the very possibility of inquiry.  To say the outsider can’t tell an accurate story for this reason is to embrace the solipsistic result of taking the world to be fractured.  The fallacy here is mistakenly taking an epistemic insight about subjectivity to have a specific and dramatic metaphysical implication.    

In the plain truth that people experience the world subjectively, from different perspectives, there is no reason for denying the existence of a shared reality.  We can live in a single world and accommodate the apparent incommensurability of paradigms.  It’s even possible that we occasionally know the same truths.  People with different conceptual frameworks can individuate objects differently and literally be seeing different things.  Significant enough differences between conceptual frameworks may prevent grasping and understanding the same truths.  But this is still a statement about the ways in which individuals are sensitive to a shared reality. It constitutes no objection to our in fact experiencing a shared reality.  It is not that individuals with differing conceptual frameworks occupy different worlds nor that one conceptual framework gets that world right but all others miss.  Rather, we should allow that the real world shared by both persons is abundant in the things, properties and relations it contains and that different individuals may be sensitive to different aspect of a single real world.  When their conceptual frameworks are sufficiently similar, they are capable of communication and cooperation in sharing information and exercising rational methods.

The rational method does not impose any limits beyond coherence on how our shared world might be.  Nor it does promise us unassailable certainty in our best-supported beliefs.  The traditional conception of rationality does embody epistemic values.  These include values that pertain to how we should revise our beliefs in the face of evidence, for instance.  But it does not embody moral or cultural values.  That this conception comes to us from ancient Greek men is quite beside the point.  Its aim is to establish standards of quality reasoning for human beings.  Any deviation from this goal of epistemic excellence for humans in favor of this or that subgroup would provide compelling grounds for revising our conception of rationality.

I’ve argued that the Socratic method, as the central component of the traditional conception of rationality, is the friend of diversity of mind.  And I’ve argued that rejecting this model of rationality undermines the social values of tolerance, respect and understanding we ought to uphold.  I want to close with a brief mention of what in addition to diversity of mind is required for rational inquiry to flourish.  Diversity within a community of individuals is not all that is required for a vital intellectual tradition.  Fear can co-exist with diversity and fear is poison to the intellect.  Insecurity, fear of being opposed or contradicted, can shut down rational inquiry as surely as the absence of diversity of thought.  Such fear ultimately led to Socrates’ prosecution and execution by a diverse and democratic Athenian community.  Prior to this, Athens had briefly lost its democracy to the tyranny of a small group of oligarchs in a period known as the rule of the thirty.  Once the oligarchs had been disposed, Athens regained its democracy, but the city was left shaken and insecure.  Athens no longer had patience for the intellectual challenges offered by Socrates.  It wanted unity and cohesiveness more than intellectual vitality and growth.  In short, Athens lost its courage.  There is no courage in mere conviction.  Mere conviction is more often a sign of intellectual insecurity and complacency.  There is great courage in being able to subject your convictions to the test of rational criticism and standing prepared to abandon them if they fail.  But lacking this courage, Athens saw treason in Socrates’ dissent.  And so he was sentenced to death and drank the hemlock.  Whether rational enquiry faces a similar threat in the similar circumstances we now live under remains, hopefully, an open question. 

Works cited

Grenz. Stanley J..  A Primer on Postmodernism.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996

Kuhn, Thomas.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1962

Nahm, Milton C.  Selections from Early Greek Philosophy.  New York:  Appleton-Century Crofts, 1964.

Plato.  The Last Days of Socrates.  Penguin USA, 2003

Popper, Karl.  Conjectures and Refutations.  New York:  Basic Books, 1962.