We are here with Peter Boghossian.
He is a professor of philosophy at Portland State University.
How are you doing today?
Excellent, it's been a great convention.
Oh yes TAM, TAM is very very great.
So in the Socratic, um.
Pedagogy.
Pedagogy, sorry, in the Socratic pedagogy you challenge the popular, perhaps mythical,
characterization of Socrates and his method of argumentation.
What do you think is the fundamental misrepresentation there?
God that's a great question.
Um, so some people think, well ok so let's back up and answer it in a more general way.
So I use the Socratic method to engage students, to engage prison inmates,
to engage people of faith to help them develop more reliable ways of thinking about problems.
And some people think that there's no historical, there was no historical Socrates,
in fact Christopher Hitchens talked about this.
I don't think it makes any difference whether or not there was a historical Socrates.
In fact one of the workshops we went to was about Shakespeare nihilism,
People who deny Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare.
And they institutionalize that and they give degrees in that.
I don't think it matters whether or not there was a historical Socrates,
I think what matters is the method that he gave is incredibly effective for disabusing
people of either of bad ideas or for helping them to
think through problems.
Sure, yea that is actually a pretty good answer to that question.
Um, why is a more accurate understanding of Socrates's method so important, you kind of
eluded to it.
Maybe you can give us a little more detail as to what makes his method so powerful and
so important.
Well, ok, great question.
So it's basically a way of asking people questions to see if they agree with themselves.
Ok.
So it paves the way for people to convert themselves.
They just need that facilitated somehow.
It's an incredibly powerful tool that's no cost, that's the other thing that's interesting
to me about it is that we can use that and we can teach people about these methods at
literally no financial cost.
And you can usually do them fairly quickly.
Do you think it's a, the Socratic Method is limited by being one on one?
Or do you think you can use it say, I don't mean to use it, but you are a professor,
Professor student relationship, or say, presenter crowd.
Ya so even if someone doesn't say anything, then when they see,
For example when a prisoner sees the engagement between the instructor and another inmate,
he can model that behavior.
So he can understand, so the idea is the line of literature called Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy, and the idea is that if you want people to
desist from crime (which is an action) and I'm talking about serious crime, or violent
crime.
So the way that you do that is you change their cognition, so when you change their
cognition's their behavior will follow.
Sure.
So the Socratic Method in a sense acts in a way to help people to help themselves change
their cognition's.
It's basically like you're asking someone a question you're finding a counter example.
It sounds complicated, it's really quite simple.
Here it is, here's the steps.
Begins in wonder, you wonder about something.
What is justice?
And someone offers an answer.
Justice is "x."
You know like justice is paying your debts.
This is from the Republic.
And then you have a counter example.
Well what about if you borrow a butcher knife from a man, or in modern context, a gun, and
he later becomes crazy, or she later becomes crazy.
Do you give him back the gun?
Then it goes to the four stage.
If they say yes to that question, then we hold that as provision as true,
that justice is paying your debts.
So I thought of an example when paying your debts wasn't, didn't accord with the example
of justice.
So basically you're trying to undermine what people think they know.
You're trying to help them become less certain and less dogmatic.
Sure.
And so that's the, Dawkins Children's book is that it opens up a sense of wonder for
them because the sense of wonder has been often
closed down often by faith and religion.
They think they know.
Yeah they're more concerned with the fairies at the bottom of the garden to take a quote
from Dawkins.
They're not looking at the flower, they're looking at the bottom.
Yeah and what a sad and tragic way to live your life.
Absolutely, I think so too.
You discuss using the Socratic Method as an educational tool to benefit students.
Um, can you give a quick summary about what is your position on that?
I, well I teach philosophy, critical thinking, Atheism, New Atheism, Reason, Rationality
and Understanding so that's, in Portland State University we have these
cluster classes.
I use it in every one of my classes.
And so basically what I do is I try to undermine people,
even if their own, their uh ideology, ideological commitments or similar to my own,
I really don't have any ideological commitments.
But even if they have beliefs different from my own
the idea is to help them really examine those, and the way that you help them really examine
those is to constantly throw out counter examples.
Well what about this, well what about this or does it work in this situation?
Can you think of a condition under which that would be false?
Even asking that question: hey can you think of how could your belief
be wrong?
It seems like a necessary condition before one any kind of emergent property of thinking
about things can come to past.
It would seem to me that you have to know how your belief could be wrong.
I think that the part of that that makes me most interested is where you make, not maybe
"make," But you encourage the student to think of
their own counterexample.
Um, forcing them to be on the other side.
I know in debate class you're basically forced to do that.
But uh maybe not so much in a philosophy class or a math class.
See that's, so okay, so one of things you'll see happen with that is and I do the best
job I can to tear down those power boundaries so people
call me by my first name.
I never, this is fancy because it's an interview, But I dress in a T-shirt and jeans
and so I do everything I can to really make it so that the person who has the better argument,
I mean that what it is about.
It's not about a title, that I have a Doctorate, or it's not about a position,
it's not about the clothes I wear.
So we need to do away with those because they help prevent truth from rearing its head or
truth from flourishing.
So once we can do that, one of the things you'll see is the result from these Socratic
Questioning is that towards the end of the class, presumably
to everywhere I do this.
I've done this with old folks.
I've done this in hospitals.
Almost invariably, people will start using that method on you.
And that's when you know they've got it.
And when they really have it, they use the method on themselves.
So they're just hanging out, walking around, trying to figure out a problem trying to do
what their trying to do and they impose these ideas or this way of thinking:
Well how do I know that?
Is that true?
Can I think of an example of something that could be false?
Could I think of a condition that would undermine what it is that I think that I know.
I think that what you're doing is fantastic work.
Thanks.
It's like a self-contained tool set.
Yeah, it keeps you honest with yourself.
Which I think a lot of people, a lot of believers, we say, you know, you're lying to yourself.
Or like Dawkin's title, it's a delusion.
It's a delusion and if it's not a delusion then we have a heck of a lot of people who
are pretending to know things they don't know.
And I find that, we obviously both find that extremely dangerous because it leads to all
sorts of horrible and bad things.
It's reversible.
My new book is A Manuel for Creating Atheists from Pitchstone Press
And it will teach you how to talk people out of faith and into reason and rationality.