Greetings Doyle...
Comments after passages.
> ,
>
> Ken,
> Why is the Socratic Method authoritarian and anti-people. It consists of
> getting people to discourse about a problem in a question and answer
format
> rather than dictating what is true. It allows people to interact to
discover
> whether definitions are adequate and to show the inadequacy in the views
of
> others. It was used by Socrates to show that the elite politicians, poets,
> and others did not know what they were talking about and spoke to please
and
> mislead the people. What is reactionary about that? Because Socrates was
> after democratic politicians!
>
> Doyle
> Carrol is writing about the e-mail process. This list exchange is not a
> Socratic dialogue. Many questions (on an e-list) feel to someone they
are
> directed at as an interrogation about one's beliefs from a stranger who is
> hostile, detached from oneself, etc. in short a pedantic device to
> manipulate the answers out of one. If you think about what Plato was
> writing about (in describing Socrates), he was describing a conversation
> people had face to face in a society where that was almost exclusively how
> people communicated. E-mail is not like a conversation. In pointing out
> how asking questions to another person can stifle conversation, Carrol is
> trying to encourage communication processes.
COMMENT: Carrol is writing about the e-mail process but he also has a number
of remarks about the Socratic Method.
That is what my comment is about.
Right the list exchange is not a Socratic dialogue. Agreed. However, it
does not follow the Socratic Method is not useful in email. One aspect of
the Socratic Method is to show that what another person says implies a
seeming contradiction. For example someone might say that arguing against
practices that most people abhor is defending colonialism. Now if that is
the case then if we do not defend colonialism it will follow that we do not
(or should not) argue against these practices. The aim in this is to
indicate to the group that the premise of the original argument is false
since presumably we do want to argue against these practices.
>
> What is missing from your comment above is an analysis of what happens in
> e-mail lists.
COMMENT. But why should I be analysing that? I am not talking about what
happens on email lists, analysing grammar-for example the referent of
"this"in your final sentence. I am criticising a statement that Cox makes.
I don't think Socratic dialogues have much untility for
> informing us of the relative democratic (as opposed to your
characterization
> of authoritarianism) process of e-mail exchanges.
COMMENT: I was taking about the Socratic Method. Presumably you mean
"utility". Your comment shows that I cannot communicate very well with you.
I am talking not about the email process but about the Socratic Method. I
haven't a very good handle on what you are trying to say in this passage but
I think a case can be made that the use of the method in email has
democratic aspects and is also useful.
The Socratic Method allows people to state their positions and then
alllows others to criticise them and then allows others to in turn
critically evaluate that. That seems to me: democratic in that no one is
shut up and no one has the power just to state something unchallenged.
Indeed this might through a dialectical process reach something like the
truth or consensus. Why cannot this be done on an email.
Shit maybe we could even automate it.....
Thank you , Ken Hanley(sic)
