Hm. First of all, I, and I think you, understand that a Socratic method of discussion cannot be unilateral. Mostly, I think this is the natural way to discuss ideas, it really doesn't take a mother-may-I predicate. I don't think asking questions or splitting hairs (which I freely admit to) is "foisting" anything on anybody. I have no idea how you bring bad faith into this point. "Bad faith" together with "disgrace to the legal profession," "jackleg," "bad poster," "lacking self awareness" and other invectives, or simple LOL's mostly come up as a way to avoid responding to a point. It's pretty clearly an admission that the poster has nothing important to say but is desperate to post a response. Discussions around here often turn into discussions about posters, (like your post and my response). Discussing people is always easier and less taxing than discussing ideas; but such discussions are never as interesting. Maybe I have an "implicit behavior" to other posters or maybe not. But if I do, I can assure you that it isn't antagonistic except for some cases when I am returning serve. I consider all here (except for two) friends. Even when I make respectful comments to the two hostiles, I'm seldom met with a serious response.
The bottom line is, yeah, I do probe, split hairs, cajole, and try to be somewhat provocative with posts--when discussing ideas or legal issues. I don't force anybody to read what I say. Food for thought.
1. A discerning view reveals that my post was framed as a discussion on ideas. The only aspect that made it about you was using you to exemplify the ideas. I could have used "one" instead of "you" and the effect probaby wouldn't have been any different. You might have even assumed that one was you.
2. Let's stipulate this definition of the
Socratic Method:
[The Socratic Method] involves finding truth through direct questioning. These questions seek to find consistency and point out contradictions. The method is used to find truth and question assumptions through a series of steps. These steps include examining a claim, questioning that claim, and finding true knowledge.
My impression is that what generally occurs here on the WC when actually discussing ideas is sometimes the above form and the rest of the time, the two people have preformed their own truth and have no intention of arriving at "the" truth via the Socratic Method. The latter case is not actually Socratic, only the former.
Other possibilities are using the questioning to simply test one's reasoning or ability to reason, to test one's ability to spot and weed out sophistry, and a host of similar goals.
3. Using the Socratic Method for anything other than seeking some truth is some degree of deviation from its original intent and unless explicitly agreed upon by both parties, thus introduces a second, unspoken and ambiguous, goal into the context.
For example, one person might be assiduously striving to attain some truth while the other is sending him down a thousand rabbit holes of sophistry to test his ability to spot them. I think it's clear to anyone that the person striving for truth is likely to become exasperated with the other sooner or later, because he is erroneously assuming the other person is abiding by the standard definition of the Socratic Method.
If the above example becomes a pattern of behavior for a particular person in a group of people, that is, many of those people are seeking truth and becoming exasperated with that one person, it's understandable that those people will try to resolve their frustrations and that involves talking to that person about that person.
