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Trust Principle #24: Coach with Questions, Not Answers
Published in Brent D. Timmerman, Starting Lean from Scratch, 2019
The technical term for this type of coaching or training through the use of questioning is sometimes called the Socratic Method, although this terminology historically referred to something different, known as Socratic debate. Socratic debate is a form of cooperative debate between individuals, asking and answering questions, to brainstorm ideas and review the underpinning assumptions. In order to avoid confusion, I prefer the more self-explanatory term “coaching through questioning.”
Galilean resonances: the role of experiment in Turing’s construction of machine intelligence
Published in Annals of Science, 2023
Russell concluded by emphasizing that the proper use of the Socratic method is for questions about the meaning and use of words: The matters that are suitable for treatment by the Socratic method are those as to which we have already enough knowledge to come to a right conclusion, but have failed, through confusion of thought or lack of analysis, to make the best logical use of what we know. A question such as ‘what is justice?’ is eminently suited for discussion in a Platonic dialogue. We all freely use the words ‘just’ and ‘unjust’, and, by examining the ways in which we use them, we can arrive inductively at the definition that will best suit with usage. All that is needed is knowledge of how the words in question are used. But when our inquiry is concluded, we have made only a linguistic discovery, not a discovery in ethics. (Russell 1945: 93)The meaning and common use of the words ‘machine’ and ‘thinking’ or ‘intelligence’ were just the central topic of Turing’s 1950 paper. Nonetheless, again in parallel with Russell’s point that no positive discovery could come out of an application of the dialectical method, Turing emphasized that he did not expect to have very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support his views. He declared instead that ‘[t]he only really satisfactory support’ that can be given for the belief on his prediction ‘will be that provided by waiting for the end of the century and then doing the experiment described’ (455). Turing’s use of Socratic dialectic ‘to point out the fallacies in contrary views’ compelled him to acknowledge that he was also limited by it, and thus only a practical experiment could provide satisfactory support for his views.