Chad Bochan

How to challenge ideas like Socrates Chad Bochan

This study teaches you how to challenge ideas like Socrates did in ancient Athens, as portrayed in Plato's Socratic dialogues. Learn how to imitate Socrates' way of refuting claims, so that you can examine what others say, or what you yourself believe. It is, as far as I am aware, the only 'manual of Socratic method' that currently exists. I have built this 'manual of Socratic method' from the ground up: reading all the Socratic dialogues, and collecting all of Socrates' conversational refutations of claims for the first time, analysing each conversational refutation in two ways (into its logical form and into its step-by-step delivery), and sorting them into models based on patterns I find running through them. I then explain how to use these patterns to form refutations of new claims imitating Socrates' model examples. For each model, I give an invented example showing how to refute a new claim using the method. The study also includes a Socratic dialogue that I invented to show this method in action, set in the prison cell where Socrates was held after his trial. My analyses of the arguments in Plato's Socratic dialogues offer some new interpretations. Reading the study, you will therefore have a summary of all conversational refutations that Socrates makes in the Socratic dialogues, and an explanation of the skills you need to use the 'Socratic method' yourself, based on Socrates' examples.