Teaching Psychology and The Socratic Method: Real Knowledge in A Virtual Age

Teaching
Psychology and the

Socratic Method
Real Knowledge in
a Virtual Age
James J. Dillon
Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method
James J. Dillon
Teaching Psychology
and the Socratic
Method
Real Knowledge in a Virtual Age
James J. Dillon
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, Georgia, USA
ISBN 978-1-349-95049-2 ISBN 978-1-349-95050-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8
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CONTENTS
1 Why We Teach 1
2 Who Is Socrates and Why Should We Read Him? 13
3 The Socratic Method 19
4 Socrates Structures the Course 27
5 Teaching Neuroscience with Phaedo 35
6 Teaching the Psychology of Memory with Phaedo 45
7 Teaching the Psychology of Learning with Meno 53
8 Teaching Sensation–Perception Psychology with De Anima 65
9 Teaching Cognitive Psychology with De Anima 75
10 First Academic Conference on Psychology and the Body 81
v
vi CONTENTS
11 Teaching Developmental Psychology with Republic 93
12 Teaching Moral Development with Theaetetus 105
13 Teaching Abnormal Psychology with Nicomachean Ethics 117
14 Teaching Psychotherapy with Phaedrus 129
15 Conference 2: Good, Better, and Best in Psychology 139
16 Teaching Personality Psychology with Apology 147
17 Teaching Social Psychology with Crito 159
18 Teaching Motivation and Emotion Psychology

with Euthyphro 169
19 Academic Conference 3: What Is the Self? 181
20 Omnibus Academic Conference: The Socratic Method 191
Appendix A: Interlocutrix Worksheet 201
Appendix B: Conference Feedback Form 203
Index 205
CHAPTER 1
Why We Teach
During a class discussion a few years ago, a student struggled out loud with
the many demands of college life: classes, work, parents, romance, friends,
clubs, sports, and other obligations. “I just can’t make it all work,” she
said with exasperation and the beginning of a few tears in her eyes. This
was a capstone seminar for senior undergraduate psychology majors. The
topic on the floor was time management, and this student expressed how
hard it was for her to balance getting schoolwork done along with all the
other things she wanted and needed to do. Another student piped up to
counsel her, “Look, don’t let school interfere with your education.” These
words from Mark Twain seemed to elicit near universal agreement from
the class. “Of course,” they agreed, “the really important learning in col-
lege takes place outside the classroom. Don’t ever forget that.”
Lest we think this scenario is an anecdotal blip, 70 % of college students
say that “social” learning outside the classroom is more important than
academic learning (Grigsby, 2009). It is not only students who think this
way. The famous psychologist Carl Rogers said of his career in teaching,
“It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively
inconsequential and has little or no significant influence on behavior”
(1969, p. 302). These sentiments remind me of what my uncle used to
say over the Thanksgiving table to needle me: “Those who can, do; those
who can’t, teach.”
In this day of online classes and “distant learning” platforms, is the liv-
ing, breathing teacher necessary at all? What can college students learn in
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

J.J. Dillon, Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_1
2 J.J. DILLON
a classroom, face-to-face with a skilled teacher they cannot learn anywhere

else? Some have argued the answer is “skills and information” (see Craig,
2015; Hettich, 1998). Indeed, there has been great pressure from leg-
islators, administrators, students, and other stakeholders to have higher
education be “relevant,” to show that learning really produces concrete
results in the world in terms of obtaining employment, earning higher
incomes, and acquiring “real world” job competencies. As a result, the
past 25 years have witnessed a wholesale transformation of the teaching
profession into an activity focused primarily on the transfer of relevant
skills and information to students.
What is ironic is that this lurch toward relevance and applicability actu-
ally puts the professor on the path of the Dodo Bird. A colleague of mine
has a picture on his office door of a professor standing before a classroom.
Below it the caption reads, “Dead Man Talking.” The scenario is not that
far from being a reality. Once teaching becomes about skills and informa-
tion, it can just as easily be “put online.” It strikes many as absurd that we
haven’t already put college completely online (e.g., Carey, 2015; Crow &
Dabars, 2015; Selingo, 2015). I actually agree with these critics: if higher
education is really about skills and information, then it should all be put
online. Students should not be asked to waste their time driving to campus
and sitting through face-to-face classes if they can just as easily acquire
them by a cheaper and more efficient means. But what I will try to show
in this book is that higher education is not at all about acquiring skills and
information.
I return to the Twain quote, “Don’t let school interfere with your edu-
cation.” I tend to think that any popular idea like this must have at least a
kernel of truth in it. This view of education appreciates that for learning to
matter, it needs to be useful to the learner. It needs to pertain to and even
be derived from “the real world” rather than be a set of abstract principles
that apply to nothing. It needs to be something we achieve through our
own efforts rather than be “given” to us by a teacher in a classroom. But
this view misses other vitally important facets of learning, what we might
think of as the deeper aspects of education. Deep learning aims to develop
higher order and critical thinking in the learner, to help the student see
the underlying assumptions behind claims to knowledge, to be able to
evaluate those assumptions, and consider better ones. Deep learning seeks
to enable students to logically reason from premises to valid conclusions
or to induce others’ premises from listening and careful observation.
Deep learning teaches students to engage in thoughtful, persuasive speech
WHY WE TEACH 3
and writing, to go out into the world and be able to really know and
understand it to its core. Deep learning seeks to develop the young human
being’s mind to be able to live a meaningful life and productively engage
the franchise of democratic citizenship. The important point is that for
deep learning to happen, it requires an intimate and interpersonal learn-
ing community. These things cannot be taught or learned online. And one
does not just pick these things up from one’s family, friends, and social
life. One does not acquire them from working in or running a business.
One can only learn these things in a classroom from a teacher who already
has these abilities himself or herself and who knows how to construct sce-
narios for students to learn and rehearse them.
My practice in this book is to pose questions about the role of the
teacher to the ancient figure Socrates. Socrates devoted his entire life to
teaching and was even willing to die for what he saw as the noblest of
all vocations, one which he thought required more strength and courage
than the soldier and more practical intelligence than the businessman. In
the dialogue Ion, Socrates speaks with the famous rhapsode Ion. A rhap-
sode is a minstrel of sorts who gives oral recitals of the great poet Homer.
These figures were quite esteemed in ancient Greece. Given the adulation
he has enjoyed, Ion is quite convinced he is the greatest rhapsode who
ever lived. Always taken aback by displays of self-confidence, Socrates is
determined to find out what this young man knows which leads him to
his bluster.
In conducting this investigation through dialogue with Ion, Socrates
introduces a distinction between an art (techne) and its purpose (ergon).
The purpose of the art of medicine, he says, is health. The purpose of the
art of farming is food. The purpose of the art of carpentry is furniture.
The skilled practitioner of any art, Socrates maintains, has not only techni-
cal skill, but also an intimate knowledge of the overall purpose of the art,
where the art is supposed to lead. The practitioner uses this knowledge
of the end point to guide his or her specific actions while practicing the
art. Socrates tells Ion, since you are such a good practitioner of the art of
rhapsody, I assume you must also be conversant with its ergon. So what,
Socrates asks him, is the purpose of the art of rhapsody?
Ion mumbles, fumbles, and has an overall great deal of difficulty
articulating what the purpose of his art is. He answers, does it even
need to have a purpose? Can’t my art just be for art’s sake? Socrates
is perplexed. Practitioners of any art should at least be able to provide
an account (logos) of the goal of their craft. Otherwise, they are just
4 J.J. DILLON
blindly doing things, uncritically applying skills they have learned from
their own teachers. Socrates tries to engage Ion further. He asks Ion
to consider his own profession: teaching. He asks Ion, what is the pur-
pose of Dialectical teaching, the philosopher’s art? Is it fame? Esteem?
Is it accomplished students who have productive careers? No, Socrates
answers before Ion even has a chance to reply. It is none of these things.
As the carpenter’s art produces furniture, Socrates argues, the teacher’s
art produces knowledge. The good teacher knows he or she is practiced
in the art of teaching if their instruction facilitates knowledge in the
student. Socrates here introduces two very important concepts for this
book: knowledge and Dialectic. My book is based entirely on these two
concepts. I believe that if we can understand these two ideas, we can
grasp the whole Socratic enterprise and will better understand what
teaching is all about. I will try to thoroughly explain both in the pages
that follow. I look first at knowledge.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: THE MODERN EQUIVALENT

OF WISDOM
Socrates defines “knowledge” as the condition in which a mind appre-

hends the truth about a subject. He puts it more poetically in the
Republic: knowledge is the condition in which a soul has been “turned
toward the light” (518c). Socrates calls this state of knowledge “wisdom”
(Phaedo, 79c). In this book, I refer to wisdom as “real knowledge.” In
modern parlance, we often prefer to speak of “learning outcomes” rather
than “wisdom” or “knowledge,” but the meaning is basically the same.
Today’s schools and academic programs are often required to give an
account of the “knowledge” they seek to develop in their students. This
is a good thing. Imagine if teachers did not do this. We would be like
Ion, practitioners of an art whose purpose we did not really understand.
These learning outcomes are posted on school websites and printed in
brochures and syllabi.
Even in our virtual age of online degrees and Massive Online Open
Courses (MOOCs), when you review these posted outcomes, most aca-
demic programs still aspire to humane, liberal arts goals: self-knowledge
and moral awareness in students, critical thinking, analytical reasoning,
creative problem solving, and coherent writing. These are goals Socrates
would embrace. Not even at the most rapacious, for-profit, or vocationally
WHY WE TEACH 5
oriented school would you see a published learning outcome which sought
to help students seek advantage over others in argument, or to manipu-
late others with their words, to accept expert opinion passively, to earn as
much money as possible. No, even in our much more virtual and business-
oriented age, most schools still seek to develop knowledge and wisdom in
the human person. This is to be celebrated.
While higher education aspires to a lofty set of learning outcomes, the
question is, how well is it achieving them? The picture doesn’t look good.
Recent measures of undergraduates’ ability to think critically, reason ana-
lytically, solve problems, and write show no statistically significant gains for
half of all college students even after four years of college (Arum & Roksa,
2011, p. 35). For the half of students who had some positive effects, the
gains fell between seven and ten percentage points. I want to stand back
and really let that sink in: for almost half of all students, a college degree
has had no measurable impact in terms of the school’s own humane learn-
ing outcomes. For the other half, the impact is negligible. If true, this
should alarm those of us who spend time teaching these poor souls!
A number of other sobering reports on the quality of undergraduate
education in the USA were recently released. Derek Bok, who served as
Harvard University president from 1971 to 1991, wrote a book entitled
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn
and Why They Should Be Learning More (2006). He concluded that many
students graduate from the most elite colleges without being able to write
well enough to satisfy the minimal demands of their employers, without
being able to reason clearly in thinking through problems, and without
even the basic skills in exercising their franchise of democratic citizen-
ship. Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow paint a similar picture in less
competitive colleges and universities in their book, Declining by Degrees:
Higher Education at Risk (2006).
Over the course of my own 25-year teaching career, I have person-
ally witnessed this decline in critical thinking, analytical ability, reading
comprehension, speaking, writing, and even civil behavior. Why is this
happening? The answer is a complex one for sure. There are large cultural,
philosophical, and educational forces which together work to impede the
humane knowledge project: smart phones and social media (see Bauerlein,
2009; Grigsby, 2009; Postman, 1985; Turkle, 2015), increasingly large
classes, scantron pedagogy, along with rigorous tenure and promotion
standards which incentivize grant writing, research, and publication over
teaching, preparing for class, and grading papers.
6 J.J. DILLON
Our elementary, middle, and high schools share some of the blame as
well. An increasing number of students each year begin college unprepared,
with poor study skills, and eventually become part of a non-academic col-
lege culture in which students spend less time studying and more time
engaging in social media, extracurricular activities, and employment (see
Babcock & Marks, 2011; Grigsby, 2009, p. 57). There is also a palpable
consumer mentality that has set in on today’s campuses in which students
expect service delivery for their often exorbitant tuition dollars. Grigsby
(2009, p. 172) notes, customers do not expect they will have to work to
acquire the “product” they are purchasing. And they do not expect to be
negatively evaluated by the people they feel they are paying to serve them.
Falling revenues and declining levels of federal and state financial sup-
port have forced colleges and universities to increase the number of stu-
dents in the classroom. The problem with this is that in order to make
improvements in critical thinking, writing, speaking, and democratic
engagement, you need groups that are small enough to accomplish them.
A professor teaching a large group of 50, 90, 120, or more students simply
cannot do the same types of assignments, exams, readings, and teaching
practices which he or she could do in a smaller group. In addition, many
schools are resorting more and more to online delivery platforms. A stun-
ning 32 % of all enrolled US college students in 2012 took at least one
online class in a given semester, while the number of schools offering a
fully online degree increased from 32 % in 2002 to 62 % in 2012 (Allen &
Seaman 2014). All of these factors greatly complicate a college teacher’s
ability to achieve the laudable liberal arts goals of the institution in which
he or she works.
REAL KNOWLEDGE REQUIRES A REAL TEACHER

One of the biggest factors in explaining some of the declines in student
performance in higher education is that we have embraced a view of
education which sees the teacher as irrelevant, a view very similar to my
uncle’s and the students’ cited at the beginning of this chapter. Ironically,
many teachers and administrators have embraced this view of teaching
as well. Far too many in my profession and the culture at large have lost
sight of the true purpose (ergon) of the teaching art. We teachers have not
offered the public an adequate or compelling picture of exactly what it
is we do, how important we are to the development of the minds of the
young, and the health of society. At bottom, we are confused about what
WHY WE TEACH 7
real knowledge is and how this knowledge is developed in students. This

confusion has led us to embrace expedient and inferior teaching methods,
including the use of didactic lectures and atrociously written textbooks to
achieve our otherwise noble learning goals.
I explore this disconnect between laudable, liberal arts academic aspira-
tion and messy, unsuccessful practice by looking at my own discipline of
Psychology. Psychology instructors, like most in the academy, use road-
tested texts and teaching methods to achieve their learning objectives. The
text college instructors most often use in their undergraduate classes is the
“big textbook,” sometimes 800 or 900 pages long (see Dillon, 2013).
The average page length of the five best-selling Introductory Psychology
textbooks (King, 2009, 2010; Myers, 2009; Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner,
2010; Weiten, 2010) is 803.2 pages. The most utilized teaching method
among college professors is the lecture (Bligh, 2000, p. 3; Nance &
Nance, 1990, p. 6).
Recent theory and research in education have raised some serious ques-
tions about how well the lecture format and “big book” help instructors
achieve the humane learning outcomes described on their course syllabi
and posted on university mission statements (see Bain, 2004; Bligh, 2000;
Fink, 2003; Johnson & Carton, 2005; Reder & Anderson, 1982). When
we include research indicating that students are not able to recall very
much even just a few weeks after a textbook-based course is over, the situ-
ation looks dire, even depressing (see Rickard, Rogers, Ellis, & Beidleman,
1988; VanderStoep, Fagerlin, & Feenstra, 2000).
At bottom, this situation is due to what Ryle (1949) calls a category
mistake: course learning goals are typically conceptual, critical, and per-
sonal, while textbooks and lectures are factual, didactic, and impersonal.
There is a deep structural inconsistency between our course goals and
the teaching resources we use to achieve them. Let us consider the col-
lege textbook as an example. The reading of a typical textbook is a mind-
numbing experience involving page after page of new terms, concepts,
facts, and figures. It is difficult to see a central theme within a chapter. The
book does not invite students to stand back and tie things together, and
there is precious little opportunity to think critically or directly engage the
research questions being discussed yourself.
Given its popularity, the textbook is not worthless by any means. It
provides the instructor with a single place for a great deal of information.
But this wealth of information can be a mixed blessing that ironically may
work to inhibit learning. Johnson and Carton (2005, p. 84) point out that
8 J.J. DILLON
the large textbook actually works against students’ ability to retain infor-
mation because it puts unrealistic reading demands upon them, engages
only shallow cognitive processes, promotes “crammed” study sessions,
and uses boldface type for key terms in the chapters which impairs read-
ing comprehension. As noted above, most learning goals do not intend
for students to assimilate great masses of factual information; rather, they
speak of students’ learning various philosophical perspectives, thinking
critically and scientifically, applying what they are learning, and growing
personally. Large textbooks are thus excellent reference resources to have
available to students during a class, but they do not function well as the
principal teaching tools on a class-by-class basis.
How about the lecture? I would wager that when most of us close
our eyes and think about college, we likely think of a professor delivering
a lecture. The lecture is a teaching method where the professor discur-
sively presents important information to students which they then write
down or transcribe in some fashion. There may be time for clarification
questions or even a few open-ended questions from the professor, but
the didactic format remains the same. Bligh (2000, p. 3) has argued that
like the textbook, the lecture’s strength lies in conveying information.
On its own, however, the lecture does not promote critical thought or
change attitudes without significant variation to the didactic format which
includes: student practice and rehearsal, strategic breaks every ten minutes
or so for students to reformulate and process what they have heard, and
real dialogue between student and professor.
Data support the idea that students who actively engage with course
material through class discussion (Bane, 1925; Barnett, 1958; Brookfield
& Preskill, 1999; Graesser, Person, & Hu, 2002; Spires, 1993), essay
writing (e.g., Asch, 1951; Benton, Kiewra, Whitfill, & Dennison, 1993;
Horton, 1982; Zubizaretta, 2003), and role-play activities (e.g., Adams,
Tallon, & Rimell, 1980) are more likely to retain information, engage in
critical thinking, modify deep-seated attitudes, and even acquire profes-
sional skills (see Dillon, 2013). But here is the point: for these things to
happen, you need a real teacher.
Despite the negative trends I cite, I am optimistic about the future of
higher education. Our problem lies not in our goals and aspirations, but
in the means we have chosen to achieve them. We have embraced a slate
of expedient methodologies in which our presence, expertise, and role are
grossly minimized. If it is true that we can only achieve our stated learn-
ing outcomes when students actively engage the course material through
WHY WE TEACH 9
live discussion, and when they write a lot and role-play in class, then the
teacher needs to be front and center in the process.
You need a teacher to produce real knowledge. Real knowledge is the
deep learning I spoke of earlier, not skills and information. Real knowl-
edge does not just happen “on the job.” We do not achieve the goals of
higher learning from just going out into the world and doing things in
our social and professional lives. We cannot just “get the notes” on our
own, study them, and then pass the test to be able to learn. We can learn
things on our own up to a point, but we are all too trapped in error,
deception, and ignorance to achieve real knowledge by ourselves with-
out being challenged, questioned, and corrected. We need the help and
effort of a teacher who talks back and forth with real students in real time.
Teaching must therefore be done through dialogue or what Socrates calls
the “Dialectic.” The learner needs to first articulate and engage what he
or she already knows. Based on this, the teacher can then make a real-time
response based on where that learner is and offer exactly what he or she
needs in order to develop further knowledge. This takes time and can only
really be done face-to-face in small groups. I will discuss the details of this
“Socratic” process in the chapters that follow.
I return to the question which is the title of this chapter: Why do we
teach? We teach to help students achieve real knowledge. This means students
who know who they are and what they are talking about. It means stu-
dents who can write well, think critically, rationally deliberate, and behave
civilly with each other. It means students who can go out into the public
square and tell the difference between a good argument and a bad one
and then exercise their democratic citizenship with compassion and virtue.
Real knowledge can only happen in students if we teachers and admin-
istrators fight to hold at bay the many distractions and obstacles to knowl-
edge in their path (e.g., cell phones, social media, Sparknotes, textbooks,
online learning, passive lectures). For this to happen, we professors must
ultimately become countercultural figures. We must stop worrying about
how to fit our students into the world and start working to protect their
budding minds from the world. At times, this protection may even mean
shielding them from many things going on within the academy itself. In
the classroom, being countercultural means having students read original
sources, write, role-play, and engage in real discussion in class. A teacher
who embodies this view of education is Socrates. Socrates is among the
world’s most engaging and effective professors. For almost 2500 years,
teachers and students the world over have found their encounters with
10 J.J. DILLON
Socrates have helped them explore the intricacies of the human mind and
the wider world as well as to learn and employ critical thinking skills,
clearly define basic terms, state premises, logically reason to conclusions,
and communicate with others in a persuasive and civil way. Socrates’ teach-
ing goals are thoroughly humane: to liberate the intellect of the particular
student through dialogue and personal encounter.
Socrates is not interested in an impersonal group of students or text-
books written for the general reader. I argue in the next chapter that
meeting the person of Socrates is one way to develop real knowledge in
students. But how do we meet him? We meet him through the classical
texts written by Socrates’ finest student, Plato. He wrote a series of texts
known as the “dialogues” which are designed to help students personally
encounter his own great teacher, Socrates. I turn to these texts now and
consider the reasons we should have our students read them.
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it means for students. Las Vegas: Amazon.
Spires, H. A. (1993). Learning from a lecture: Effects of comprehension monitor-
ing. Reading Research and Instruction, 32(2), 19–30.
Turkle, S. (2015). Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age.
New York, NY: Penguin.
VanderStoep, S. W., Fagerlin, A., & Feenstra, J. S. (2000). What do students
remember from Introductory Psychology? Teaching of Psychology, 27(2), 89–92.
Weiten, W. (2010). Psychology: Themes and variations (9th ed.). New York, NY:
Wadsworth.
Zubizaretta, J. (2003). The learning portfolio: Reflective practice for improving stu-
dent learning. Bolton, MA: Anker.
CHAPTER 2
Who Is Socrates and Why Should

We Read Him?
Over the past few decades, several resources have provided instructors
with strategies that move away from the lecture and big textbook. They
emphasize active and experiential teaching techniques as an alternative to
the traditional lecture format (e.g., Bain, 2004; Brannigan, 1999; Fink,
2003). They also provide concrete tools for teachers to develop students’
critical thinking skills (e.g., Bean, 1996; Brookfield, 1991; Sternberg &
Spear-Swerling, 1996), as well as offer strategies for using role-play in the
classroom (e.g., Fairclough, 1995), original source readings (e.g., Edgar
& Padgett, 2007; Stoddart & McKinley, 2006), and seminar-style dis-
cussion (e.g., Brookfield & Preskill, 1999; Exley, 2004; Finkel, 2000).
Following this work, I will show that classical texts—together with semi-
nar discussion, essay writing, and role-play—give teachers a more effective
way to achieve their learning outcomes than the big textbook and lecture.
In this chapter, I explore the idea that Plato’s classic texts are among the
best ways to achieve real knowledge in students and that Socrates is one
of the best teachers. I look at the classics first and then turn to Socrates.
While the notion of a classic has come under some fire recently (e.g.,
Bérubé, 2006; Rodriguez & Villaverde, 2000; Steinberg, 2001), they are
still worth utilizing in the modern college classroom when compared with
the alternatives.
What is a classic text? A classic has been variously defined, but for our
purposes, I define it as a work that uses exalted and beautiful language,
spans the ages, influences the collective imagination, elevates the soul,

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14 J.J. DILLON
and offers a treasured experience for the people who have read them. It
is also a text where a re-reading offers us as much as the first reading (see
Calvino, 2001; Cowan, 1998).
The classics really do something to us. They are like “touchstones,”
while we are the unformed jewels (see Zeiderman, 2003). We become
different and better as a result of their working on us. Unlike most other
texts, the classics have the potential to upend our typical modes of under-
standing, challenge our baser impulses, and confound our historically and
culturally constituted presuppositions. The classics are “spiritual exercises”
that leave our souls finer and stronger than they were before we read
them. They humanize us, liberate our intellects, enable us to think about
our own prejudices, and ponder what it means to live a good life. But the
classics are not magical entities. Their power can only be realized with a
competent guide and with readers who are willing and able to listen seri-
ously to their questions and claims.
For the most part, today’s college students are not reading the classics
in their courses. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, they instead read
dry and often poorly written textbooks. If these works speak of the great
minds and original sources at all, they do so second or third hand. There
is really a crisis aspect to this situation. Most of today’s college students
will never read Plato, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Marx, Freud, or the Bible in
their original form in college. They will read about these works perhaps,
but they may never actually read them. It wasn’t always this way for col-
lege students. Why did this change in teaching resources occur? Richard
(2009) traces what he calls a “Golden Period” of influence of the classics
upon American education. It was during the time between the founding
of the nation and the Civil War that the influence of the classics extended
from being a privilege of white aristocratic males to the whole culture: to
women, frontier people, even slaves.
Richard (2009) marks the moment of decline of the classics with the
Civil War. The use of the classics in the classroom has been declining ever
since (see also Reinhold, 1984; Winterer, 2002). The major reason for
this is that the classics were used to justify slavery and other oppressive
social conditions. So in the minds of many, the classics were not universal
in scope at all, but were seen to reflect the narrow interests of a privileged
and white minority. The classics are tainted with the stench of the ruling
class. This prejudice remains today. If one is to be “progressive,” a new
beginning in textual tradition was needed. Richard (2009) notes what
is often forgotten is that the opponents of slavery and other unjust social
WHO IS SOCRATES AND WHY SHOULD WE READ HIM? 15
conditions also went to the classics for support. In addition to these his-
torical biases, today’s academics are supposed to specialize and publish
original research in their disciplines. The classics cannot speak directly to
most of these narrow concerns, so the instructor is prone to toss them out.
More and more students become trained in the specialized concepts and
jargon of an academic discipline rather than learn a common linguistic and
philosophical tradition. A shared, proscribed canon of texts feels like an
irrelevant, outdated, racist, misogynistic dead weight to many who seek to
educate today’s college students.
Despite this resistance, I make a case for the superiority of Socrates as a
teacher and excellence of Plato’s and Aristotle’s texts as undergraduate teach-
ing resources (see Baskin, 1966). For those who are unfamiliar with these
figures, there have been several excellent biographies of Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle (see Bluck, 1951; Natali, 2013; Navia, 2007). Socrates remains a
very elusive historical figure indeed. Even after reading hundreds of pages of
Plato’s dialogues, which feature Socrates, we are still in the dark about him.
For our purposes, Socrates was born in 460 B.C.E. He was a well-known
figure in Athens who would wander barefoot and pot-bellied around the
city engaging in philosophical discussion with young students. He prided
himself on taking no money for his teaching services. He never wrote a book
and died a man condemned by the city he loved. After his death, his student
Plato became alarmed at some of the negative things that were being written
and said about this teacher he loved so much. So Plato set to work compos-
ing his many dialogues, which are basically case studies of Socrates’ teaching.
Among the many influential things which emerge from Socrates’ work
is a picture of a distinct method of teaching and approaching knowledge
which has come to be known as the Dialectical or Socratic Method. This
book is devoted to exploring this method and to seeing how psychology
might profitably be taught with it. One of the most important aspects of
the Socratic Method is that it helps us to discover knowledge which we
cannot acquire by empirical means. The things Socrates is interested in—
Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Love, and Justice—can only be approached and
known philosophically through the Dialectic.
There are several excellent texts intended to introduce teachers to the
works of Plato and Aristotle (e.g., Adler, 1997; Barnes, 2001; Proffitt,
2004). There are also books which show teachers unfamiliar with the
“classics” how they can use these and other original sources in their
classrooms as an alternative to the traditional textbook (see Adler, 1972;
Edgar & Padgett, 2007). To someone who has never looked at Plato or
16 J.J. DILLON
Aristotle, or who hasn’t looked at them since high school or college, these
works may seem like something only a trained expert in philosophy could
pull off. But this is the furthest thing from the truth. Plato and Aristotle
actually intended for most of their works to be used in classroom settings
and to be accessible to students operating at a college level. A few of the
texts surely require some advanced training, but most do not. I have used
Plato’s and Aristotle’s texts with elementary students as young as five or
six (see Zeiderman, 2003).
Each of the Platonic dialogues is written like a play with various charac-
ters speaking with each other about topics important to them: love, death,
the mind, truth, or beauty. The Platonic dialogues begin with a question
that is of intense interest to someone in the dialogue. What is justice? Can
virtue be taught? Is it ever right to disobey an unjust law? After the ques-
tion is put on the table, Socrates works with the student to answer it. The
texts start with and build upon the student’s natural curiosity to explore
certain fundamental questions. In the process, the characters (and we
readers) learn not only something of substance about this important ques-
tion, but more importantly, they learn how to learn and answer questions.
Plato’s goal—and the teacher’s—is to bring the student into contact
with the person of Socrates. The real learning takes place in this personal
encounter. Socrates will employ his method upon us, one-on-one, in this
intimate exchange. This is why Socrates never wrote any books. He wanted
to speak only to specific people, not the general reader. Though Plato uses
writing, he tries to bring Socrates to life for us in an intimate encounter
rather than propose a general theory or system. The next chapter explores
what this Socratic Method is all about and what makes it so different from
all the other educational and philosophical projects that existed at his time
or since. I develop the elements of this method in the next chapter and
explore how it can be profitably employed to teach psychology.
REFERENCES
Adler, M. (1972). How to read a book. New York, NY: Touchstone.
Adler, M. (1997). Aristotle for everybody. New York, NY: Touchstone.
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Barnes, J. (2001). Aristotle: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford.
Baskin, W. (1966). Classics in education. New York, NY: New York Philosophical
Library.
Bean, J. C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing,
critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
WHO IS SOCRATES AND WHY SHOULD WE READ HIM? 17
Bérubé, M. (2006). What’s liberal about the liberal arts?: Classroom politics and
“bias” in higher education. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Bluck, R. S. H. (1951). Plato’s life and thought, with a translation of the Seventh
Letter. Boston, MA: Beacon.
Brannigan, G. L. (1999). Experiencing psychology: Active learning adventures.
New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Brookfield, S. D. (1991). Developing critical thinkers: Challenging adults to explore
alternative ways of thinking and acting. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Brookfield, S. D., & Preskill, S. (1999). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and
techniques for democratic classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Calvino, I. (2001). Why read the classics? New York, NY: Vintage.
Cowan, L. (1998). Invitation to the classics. New York, NY: Baker.
Edgar, C., & Padgett, R. (2007). Classics in the classroom: Using great literature to
teach writing. New York, NY: Teachers & Writers Collaborative.
Exley, K. (2004). Small group teaching: Tutorials, seminars and beyond. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Fairclough, J. (1995). History through role play. London, UK: David Brown.
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated
approach to designing college courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Finkel, D. (2000). Teaching with your mouth shut. New York, NY: Heinemann.
Natali, C. (2013). Aristotle: His life and school. D. S. Hutchinson (Ed.). Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University.
Navia, L. (2007). Socrates: A life examined. New York, NY: Prometheus.
Proffitt, B. (2004). Plato within your grasp. New York, NY: Cliffs Notes.
Reinhold, M. (1984). Classic Americana: The Greek and Roman heritage in the
United States. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University.
Richard, C. J. (2009). The golden age of the classics in America: Greece, Rome, and
the Antebellum United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Rodriguez, N., & Villaverde, L. (2000). Dismantling white privilege. New York,
NY: Peter Lang.
Steinberg, S. (2001). Multi/intercultural conversations. New York, NY: Peter
Lang.
Sternberg, R. J., & Spear-Swerling, L. (1996). Teaching for thinking: Psychology in
the classroom. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Stoddart, R. M., & McKinley, M. J. (2006). Using narratives, literature, and pri-
mary sources to teach introductory psychology: An interdisciplinary approach.
In D. Dunn & S. Chew (Eds.), Best practices for teaching introduction to psychol-
ogy (pp. 111–128). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Winterer, C. (2002). The Culture of classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in
American intellectual life, 1780–1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University.
Zeiderman, H. (2003). Touchpebbles volume a: Teacher’s guide. Annapolis, MD:
Touchstones Discussion Project.
CHAPTER 3
The Socratic Method
So far we have explored why we teach and which texts we should use.
I turn now to how we teach. This brings us to issues of method, a cen-
tral focus of this book. A “method” is simply a way of doing something.
When we speak of the “Socratic Method,” we speak of the way Socrates
elicited knowledge in his students. People often use the term “Socratic
Method” in ways that more or less caricature the original. One thinks here
of Professor Charles Kingsfield from The Paper Chase (Osborn, 1978)
who subjects his students to a rigorous process of questions and answers
that mostly leaves them defeated and afraid to ever raise their hand to par-
ticipate in class again! Many of us who had such “Socratic” experiences in
the classroom may wish to be done with that sort of thing as well. But the
Socratic Method is not about jousting or public shaming. It is not about
the knowledge of the professor or leaving the student empty and humili-
ated. It is far more gentle, patient, and humorous than all that. Properly
employed, the Socratic Method should leave the student filled with knowl-
edge rather than feeling like he has been taken apart. If done well, the stu-
dent will feel that he or she has derived the knowledge themselves rather
than through the hand of the teacher. Let us consider the major elements
of Socrates’ method of teaching.
I define some terms which will help elucidate the Socratic Method:
Question—a sentence designed to explore a topic and elicit information

from a student, for example, “What is justice?” Questions typically start
with the words “What,” “Why,” or “How.” The question forms the

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20 J.J. DILLON
central focus of a dialogue. Answering the question is the overall pur-

pose of the dialogue.
Dialogue—the sum total of verbal exchanges between Socrates and his
students on a given topic or question. Dialogues typically have titles, for
example, Meno, Euthyphro, and take place at a single sitting.
Dialectic—the unique method of questioning and answering developed
by Socrates. In this sense, the “dialogues” of Plato are case studies of
Socrates’ method of Dialectic.
Interlocutor—the parties who are actually speaking in a dialogue or
Dialectic.
Pass—when an interlocutor expresses a point, asks, or answers a question.
Definition—a proper answer to a Socratic question. Typically, the defini-
tion expresses what is common to the subject as a whole rather than par-
ticulars or examples. A proper definition of courage could be “Courage
is acting despite one’s fears” versus an example like, “Courage is when
you run up a hill in battle.” The definition will also come to be called
one’s “position” in the Dialectic.
Example—a particular instance of a definition. A definition of roundness
might be “approaching the shape of a circle.” An example of roundness
would be “a coin.”
Argument—the provision of a rationale for one’s answer, definition, or
position; the reasons one gives for supporting a definition or claim.
Counterargument (sometimes “rebuttal” or “counterexample”)—an
argument which contradicts the truth status of an interlocutor’s defini-
tion. For example, if the definition of courage is “to proceed head on
into danger,” then a counterexample could be “might one behave cou-
rageously by running away from danger in order to strengthen one’s
forces and later face it head on?” The counterargument is the most
important part of the Socratic Method and helps expand the knowledge
of the interlocutor (if he or she is open to it).
Premise—the assumption that one’s definition is true or correct. This is
the place where one starts in making an argument, for example, “If all
men are mortal, then…”
Conclusion—the claim one makes or the belief one arrives at after engag-
ing in an argument or Dialectic. A conclusion usually follows from a
premise, for example, “If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then
Socrates is mortal.”
Logic—the web of reasoning which leads one from a premise to a
conclusion.
THE SOCRATIC METHOD 21
Interlocutrix—an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and a representa-

tive of a sub-discipline of psychology.
Students are often surprised that most of the Platonic Dialogues end
abruptly and are not tied up into a neat conclusion. This can be very
unsatisfying for a reader. Often, the Dialectic breaks down completely
with one of the interlocutors walking away in frustration. We learn from
studying these many breakdowns that there are some things which must
be present in order for a Dialectical discussion to take place at all. We learn
how the method should work from watching it go badly:
1. There must be a willingness to answer questions rather than simply

deliver theory or speeches in a didactic fashion. You cannot have a
dialogue with someone if you think you already know the answer.
2. We must explicitly start the Dialectic with a single question and
must consider only one question at a time. This requires some self-
discipline on the part of the student and some monitoring on the
part of the teacher.
3. There must be a willingness on the part of all parties to engage in
“elenchus,” the process of having one’s views cross-examined by
someone else. If one is too proud, too attached to being an author-
ity, too emotionally insecure, or thinks one’s views are so true as to
be beyond question, the Dialectic cannot work. The Socratic
Method requires a great deal of humility on the part of all parties.
This is something that the aggressive Paper Chase model of the
Socratic Method misses.
4. All parties must share the assumption that the goal of the Dialectic
is to determine truth, not to win an argument, cause controversy
(eristic), be transgressive, or deliberately provoke an emotional
response in another.
5. All parties to the Dialectic must be aware that determining truth
requires intellectual exertion (work). They must be willing and able
to expend considerable intellectual effort to truthfully answer ques-
tions and correct oneself when required.
6. All parties must share the assumption that determining truth
requires faith in logic, that is, that the method, if properly followed,
will lead us to the truth about very difficult and controversial matters
provided we clearly state our claims and provide the best rationale
for supporting them as we can. We may need to abandon and restate
our initial claims, but this is how we come to know the truth.
22 J.J. DILLON
7. There will be a great temptation to consider deep questions of

importance to be matters of personal opinion, for example, “You
have your view of Beauty and I have mine.” For Socrates, there is a
right and a wrong about the most abstract of matters which we can
discern through the Dialectic. We cannot ever give up on logic and
public deliberation. There is never anything that is too deep or
abstract as to be beyond discussion.
8. All parties must be willing to change their minds and alter their ini-
tial premises in light of evidence and logical argument. A measure of
safety and personal affection are required for this. This is yet another
reason why the aggressive, Paper Chase model of the Socratic
Method cannot work well.
I elucidate the Socratic Method by comparing it to its close cousin:

the Scientific Method. There are important similarities and differences in
each. Socrates’ method begins with a question about a conceptual matter,
for example, “What is courage?” “What is beauty?” Then, one thinks it
through and tries to propose a conceptually testable hypothesis or “defi-
nition” that attempts to answer the question, for example, “Courage is
running to face one’s enemies.” The third step in Socrates’ Dialectic is to
rigorously cross-examine this proffered definition by imagining cases that
conform to the definition but leave something to be desired. These cases,
if successful, are called “counterexamples,” for example, “Well, what if
a man runs to face hundreds of enemies alone with little chance of sur-
vival, is that courage or foolishness?” If a counterexample is generated and
accepted, we must return to step two of the Dialectic and propose another,
better definition. This takes the participant of the Dialectic deeper into the
true essence of the phenomenon in question. If no successful counterex-
amples can be generated, we accept the definition as provisionally true,
though always subject to later revision.
The Scientific Method is structurally identical to the Socratic Method,
but in science, we begin with an empirical question rather than a con-
ceptual one, for example, “How does stress work?” The scientist then
proposes a hypothesis, tests it, and possibly reformulates the hypothesis
based on the “counterexamples” given by the data. It is important to
present students with this basic distinction between empirical and con-
ceptual questions at the beginning of their work with Socrates. As they
become more familiar with Socrates and his method, they appreciate the
distinction between conceptual and empirical questions, which methods
are appropriate to use in answering these two types of questions, as well

as the variety of empirical methods which are employed in the modern
science of psychology.
Many people get frustrated at some point with the method. Most of the
time, these people are interlocutors in the dialogue itself! Today’s students
get frustrated with the method as well. Many of these difficulties stem from
fact that modern students struggle with the notion that there is a level of real-
ity other than the empirical. A materialistic ontology has prevailed in which
all that is real is seen to be matter in motion. Anything “real” that is invisible
is regarded as a matter of opinion where each person’s view is as valid as any
other’s, for example, “You believe in God; I do not.” This is especially true
in the Social Sciences. It is a very different matter for Socrates. For him, the
conceptual is more real and more worth discussing than the empirical realm.
He offers us a method to approach the conceptual realm that is as powerful
as today’s Scientific Method. The Socratic Method is meant to help refine
our intellectual faculties so as to be able to perceive—conceive, actually—
higher order realities. When we conceive these higher order realities, we then
have “real knowledge.” Socrates genuinely believes that true happiness is to
be found by moving our souls as close to these realities as possible.
In the dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates uses the analogy of a midwife to
describe his way of working with students. He claims his mother was a
midwife and that he learned a similar set of skills for working with men
as his mother had with women. The only difference he sees is that “…my
concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth”
(150c). Socrates casts his students as being in the throes of giving birth
to ideas that struggle to spring forth from them. His role is to make sure
the idea is capable of thriving and growing on its own (is true) or deciding
whether it is a stillborn, a phantom, incapable of surviving long outside of
the womb. He says, “…the highest point of my art is the power to prove by
every test whether the offspring of a young man’s thought is a false phan-
tom or instinct with life and truth” (150c). Socrates’ whole Dialectical
Method can be seen as a process whereby we study the notions we have in
our minds, find out what they are, whether they are true, and eventually
help each other give birth to something new and true. Of course, this birth
process is not always pleasant for the student (or the teacher).
The Socratic Method is not always exactly the same across the Platonic
Dialogues. It will vary based on the nature of the topic as well as the atti-
tude and aptitude of the student. I have identified four different types of
method Socrates will employ:
24 J.J. DILLON
1. Traditional Method: With the Traditional Method, there is a cen-

tral question on the table. The interlocutor is expected to answer the
central question and only the central question. The answer should be
put in the form of an abstract, general definition that embodies the
essence of the matter and subsumes all examples. Socrates will then
provide a counterexample which is designed to expose the short-
comings of the interlocutor’s initial answer. The interlocutor is then
expected to provide a revised and hopefully improved answer based
on Socrates’ counterexample. The method continues in this fashion
until a satisfactory answer is given which can brook no counterex-
amples because it has no holes. In practice, the Traditional Method
continues until the endurance and patience of the interlocutor are
strained. Examples: Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Meno.
2. Role Reversal: Socrates will typically use this method when he has
a strong or provocative position on a matter. He will share his own
answer to a question and then allow his interlocutor to question him
about his rationale for holding it. Socrates will then “play the boob”
and provide a very poor set of initial reasons for his position. This is
intended to embolden his interlocutor to poke holes in Socrates’
shoddy answers. As this proceeds, the interlocutor’s own position
becomes stronger and more articulated as a result. Examples:
Phaedo, Phaedrus.
3. Myth, Metaphor, or Analogy: Some Platonic Dialogues deliver
highly colorful and evocative myths, stories, metaphors, and analo-
gies. Socrates will typically do this to talk about deep and weighty
matters. It is as if Socrates has reached the limit of discursive lan-
guage and feels compelled to tell a story to illustrate his point.
Sometimes, there is no guise of a dialogue at all; other times, there
is a bit of dialogue, but it is quickly subsumed by narrative and sym-
bolic language. Sometimes, a dialogue will start with the Traditional
Method and veer off into Myth, Metaphor, or Analogy. Socrates will
typically use this method to paint a picture of a contemplative
philosophical vision which he has had. Examples: Timaeus, Republic,
Crito.
4. The Essay: This method is similar to Myth and performs the same
function, but here Socrates will use discursive language to sketch
out his points instead of the flowery language of myth and story.
Socrates is really engaging in a monologue here and simply asking
his interlocutor to give nominal assent to whatever he says, which
the interlocutor typically does. At a deeper level, the essay form is as

much a dialogue with the reader as the interlocutor. Socrates offers
an argument in essay form and anticipates the reader’s objections,
which he presents as counterarguments, for example, “Now one
could say that…” He then develops his own argument in the light
of these anticipations. A dialogue is hidden within the Essay, we just
don’t see the reader’s objections printed on the page as we do in the
Traditional Method. This is the closest to the “lecture” that Socrates
will use in his teaching. Examples: all of Aristotle’s texts, parts of
Republic, end of Crito.
Though the type of method will vary from dialogue to dialogue, there are
common features of the Socratic Method which are shared by all Platonic
Dialogues:
1. All the dialogues are focused on a central question.

2. All the dialogues are about teaching the interlocutor (or the reader)
something important.
3. Socrates will make a bad argument or claim a defective memory
which forces his interlocutor to engage in a give-and-take discus-
sion. This provocation serves as an invitation to seek the truth
through the Dialectic (or the interlocutor will make a bad argument
and we readers are meant to think it through).
4. Plato is a very careful writer. Nothing happens by accident. When
dialogue breaks down—as it frequently does—he is trying to tell us
something important about how intellectual inquiry should proceed
and more importantly, about how intellectual inquiry should not
proceed. Sometimes the initial question is not answered; other times
the dialogue ends with Socrates’ saying the answer is unknown,
or something bizarre like “it’s all up to the gods.” Most of Socrates’
interlocutors do not yet know how to engage in true philosophical
discussion. We are meant to learn from their bad example, so the
abrupt breakdowns are always instructive.
The Socratic Method is the central focus of this book. It is a tool which
springs from Socrates’ unique view of the world and which he claims came
to him from a wise female teacher named Diotima. What benefits can
students expect if they take the time to learn and practice it? I believe
that learning to follow the steps of this method is what it means to think
26 J.J. DILLON
clearly and perform disciplined intellectual inquiry. So ultimately, students

can expect to learn to think and attain knowledge. Plato wants Socrates
to get under our skin. Socrates’ influence helps students go out into the
world and learn on their own when the dialogue is over. His voice is “in
our head” as it were, directing our inquiry. Socrates can also teach us how
to talk and think logically and clearly, how to listen with patience and an
open mind, and maybe with a little humor. Plato can teach us how to
read by following the individual threads of the arguments. I turn now to
consider some ways of using the Socratic Method to structure our college
courses and to teach the discipline of psychology.
REFERENCES
Osborn, J. J. (1978). The paper chase. New York, NY: Popular Library.
CHAPTER 4
Socrates Structures the Course
In the previous chapter, I explored the Socratic vision of how teaching

should proceed and what results we can expect to achieve in students. Now
I present some concrete suggestions for bringing the Socratic Method
into the teaching courses in my own discipline of psychology. In the
2600 years since his death, Socrates has had an immense influence upon
the practice of teaching. His student Plato started the famous Academy
which was devoted to Socrates’ pedagogical vision (and from which we
get the word “academic”). In the modern era, there have been countless
attempts to apply the Socratic Method to various educational domains (see
Bagshaw, 2014; Brooks, 2008; Calero-Elvira, Froján-Parga, Ruiz-Sancho,
& Alpañés-Freitag, 2013; Froján-Parga, 2011; George, 2015; Peterson,
2009a, 2009b; Schneider, 2013; Shuai, 2013; Zare & Mukundan, 2015).
These methods and tools are designed to bring Socrates and his method
to life for students and to help them achieve the aforementioned humane
and liberal arts learning objectives. Fortunately, the dialogues of Plato
are already designed to bring students into contact with the person of
Socrates. We just have to help students learn to read them properly (see
Dillon, 2006).
The type of application I discuss can be used for an introductory course
or to organize a sub-discipline course like Social Psychology, Abnormal,
or Developmental Psychology. It could also be used to help structure an
Advanced Placement course at the High School level. These ideas will

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28 J.J. DILLON
work for smaller unit within a course or even a single class. The key is
to start with the learning objectives for the course (or a single lecture)
and think about how Socrates can help achieve them instead of doing it
yourself through a lecture, PowerPoint, or big textbook. I structure the
remaining chapters of this book to illustrate how Socrates can help teach
psychology. I will also present the results I have obtained when I have tried
the strategies I discuss. To date, I have used this approach in 15 college
level classes for over 600 students.
Each chapter in the remainder of the book will focus on a major sub-
discipline of psychology. Chapters are designed to be delivered over a
13-week semester for two 75-minute periods per week. You can use these
chapters for an entire course, a single week, or class. Each class meeting is
typically devoted to a particular Platonic dialogue which runs about 8 to
9 pages in length. Students also read a small section of Griggs’ Psychology:
A Concise Introduction, 4th ed. (Griggs, 2014), for each class which
briefly presents a sub-discipline of psychology that is directly related to
the Platonic dialogue under consideration. The headings of this chapter
detail the four components of my approach to teaching psychology with
the Socratic Method: Dialogue, Psychologist, Interlocutrix, and Results
and Remaining Questions. There are also two types of class meeting in this
course: Regular Classes and Conferences. I discuss the major components
of the approach first.
THE DIALOGUE
Students read original texts at home before class. These texts are either
a dialogue of Plato or a work written by his student Aristotle. I stress
to students that when they read these dialogues, they must always put
themselves into the shoes of his “student.” Plato and Aristotle write their
texts as teaching tools for their students. So as we read, our job is to figure
out the question Socrates wants us to answer and to respond as he directs
us. Students should always ask, “What is Socrates (or Plato, or Aristotle)
trying to teach me here?” Sometimes, the lesson is a bit of content where
we learn something about what beauty or courage or goodness is. Other
times, Socrates is teaching us about the process of learning itself, about
how to be a good student. Most of the time, it is both. As we read, it is
therefore helpful to ask ourselves: What is the content lesson here? What
is the process lesson?
SOCRATES STRUCTURES THE COURSE 29
The reader will notice a strange set of numbers and letters used next
to the paragraphs in the Platonic dialogues. These letters and numbers
emerged from a Renaissance edition of Plato’s complete works published
in Geneva in 1578 by Henri Estienne, also known by the Latin ver-
sion of his name: Stephanus. These numbers are typically referred to as
“Stephanus.” I will be using Stephanus in this book to cite different pieces
of Plato’s texts, though my quotations come from the Hamilton & Cairns
edition (Plato, 1961).
PSYCHOLOGIST
In addition to a Platonic dialogue, students also read a small selection
from the psychology text at home. In most cases, students would read a
dialogue for one class and a psychologist for another. Many texts would
suffice, but I use Griggs (2014). I have chosen this volume because it very
briefly presents a sub-discipline of psychology that is directly related to
the Platonic dialogue under consideration that day. I have found it much
more reader-friendly than the typical big textbook.
Typical courses in psychology assign whole chapters of textbook read-
ing which contain an immense amount of information which is very dif-
ficult to digest and retain. In previous chapters, I presented my reasons
for not doing this. While “covering” large swaths of the big textbook
can make us feel like we are doing something, it is really just an illusion.
Students do not remember most of this information past the exam, so all
the reading ends up being a waste of time. The approach I offer in this
book is very sparing with textbook reading and uses only small sections
of any given chapter to give a general flavor. We must work hard not to
have any psychology reading for class be more than ten or fifteen pages.
A set of 700- to 800-page traditional introductory textbooks is kept on
reserve in the library for students and sometimes brought to class for use
as a reference source.
THE INTERLOCUTRIX
The Interlocutrix is the heart of the learning experience. Here, we bring
Socrates from our dialogue into contact with the psychologist from the
assigned sub-discipline. It puts the student in the position of employ-
ing the Socratic Method rather than having the teacher do it to each
student (which can often make them uncomfortable). This is an important
30 J.J. DILLON
point of departure from how the Socratic Method is typically used in class-
rooms where the teacher employs the method upon the student.
Students complete the Interlocutrix form at home (see Appendix A). In
doing so, they first need to isolate the central question Socrates is trying to
explore in the dialogue. I call this the “guiding question.” In the begin-
ning of my work with students, I typically have to help them to do this.
But as they get more familiar with Socrates, they quickly master this task.
Students must then boil down in one sentence each both the psycholo-
gist’s and Socrates’ answer to the guiding question.
After this, students must construct a dialogue of at least ten “passes”
between Socrates and the psychologist in which one party tries to answer
the question and the other party performs the Socratic Method upon him.
Sometimes Socrates does this questioning; sometimes the psychologist
does it. The text of the Interlocutrix is based on the actual words of the
author, but students are urged to be colorful, creative, and humorous
here. When students get to class, they work in small groups of six to ten to
compose a single Interlocutrix dialogue to be enacted for the whole class
in a role-play.
RESULTS AND REMAINING QUESTIONS

After we perform the Interlocutrix role-plays and discuss the ideas which
arise in class, students complete the remainder of the Interlocutrix Form
toward the end of the class meeting. They jot down in one sentence how
they would personally answer the guiding question on the table. This gives
students an opportunity to synthesize the wealth of material they have just
considered by taking an actual position on it themselves. They also write
down what they have learned about the guiding question as well as what
they may have learned about the process of teaching and learning itself.
They then quickly note any remaining questions they still have about the
material, which we can save for later dates when we have an Academic
Conference.
REGULAR CLASSES
Most class meetings follow the regular format. The regular class meeting
goes like this: after a very brief (three- to five-minute) presentation of
important information and concepts by the professor, we begin by having
students “check-in” with each other by sharing their questions pertaining

to the dialogue and the psychology text they have read for class. This dis-
cussion is done in “seminar” fashion. In seminar, everyone sits in a circle.
There is no hand-raising since the students learn to run the discussion.
The professor’s role is to be a member of the group and not the author-
ity who lectures, gives the correct answers, or structures the flow of the
conversation. I typically review a few general ground rules for seminar
discussion before beginning the course. These include reminding students
that they should read the text carefully before class, fully listen to their
classmates and do not interrupt them, direct their comments to the group
rather than to the professor, stop talking when you have expressed a single
idea, and that the purpose of a seminar discussion is to make contact with
each other and elucidate the meaning of the text. It is thus not a debate,
but a cooperative exchange of ideas.
Students’ discussion questions are to be no more than 10 to 15 words
in length and are to be prepared in advance of class. They are based on the
text and of genuine interest to the student, for example, “Why is Socrates
so hard on Meno?” or “Why does the bystander effect happen in this day
and age?” These questions are recorded by a student who volunteers to
be the “scribe” and quickly types them out where they are projected for
the class to see.
We then budget about 25 minutes of class around these questions and
attempt to answer them, one at a time, in seminar discussion fashion.
There are typically more discussion questions than can be answered in this
time period, so many will still remain on the table. This is fine! The goal is
not to cover every question. Just hearing each other’s questions out loud
will often get the students silently thinking. We also save these questions
for later classes and Conferences. The purpose of this discussion time is
to elucidate the meaning of the Platonic dialogue or the psychology text.
For the remaining 35 to 40 minutes of class, students use their
Interlocutrix Form to explore the relationship between the Platonic dia-
logue and the psychology text. This is the most important part of the class
meeting. We put Socrates into a living dialogue with the sub-discipline
of psychology for that day. Students answer questions like, “How would
Socrates respond to Piaget’s ideas?” “What would Socrates say about cog-
nitive science?” They do so by working in small groups to write actual
imaginary dialogues that take place between Socrates and the psychologist
in question. Students then enact these dialogues for the class.
32 J.J. DILLON
ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
The majority of class meetings follow the “Regular Class” format.
However, after we have explored about four to five dialogues and sub-
disciplines, there is a need to integrate, summarize, digest, and explore
even larger questions that arise from our work. This is the purpose of
“Academic Conference” classes. They also provide some space for sum-
mative evaluation and grading of students’ assignments. The work stu-
dents do before an Academic Conference should be seen as “formative” in
nature. Students are often very uncomfortable with the material, writing,
and role-playing in the first place, so if we can reduce grading pressures,
it can remove a lot of anxiety. However, Academic Conference time can
be treated differently. Students are more familiar with the material at this
point, so papers and other artifacts can be graded. A short exam may even
be appropriate as well. For my Conferences, I like to keep the atmosphere
as festive as possible by having food and drink on a “pot luck” basis. I
grade the work they submit by reading their papers at home.
These meetings are very similar to the academic conferences professors
attend. Students present their written work and confer with one another
around ideas. Before meeting for a Conference, students read an assigned
Conference text which encapsulates the issues that have been on the table
for the past several units. Students do this reading at home. They also receive
a list of Conference Questions which summarize the dialogues and sub-dis-
ciplines of psychology they have considered up to this point. I assign groups
of students one of these questions to answer at home after reading the
Conference dialogue. In these Conference questions, students write a larger
imaginative dialogue between Socrates and a sub-discipline of psychology.
When we meet for a Conference, there are typically four to five sub-
disciplines of psychology to consider. This means that there are four to five
small Conference groups of six to ten students who have been randomly
assigned the same Conference question. When we meet, small groups
meet together, compare notes on their imaginary dialogue, and enact a
script for the class. This is typically very entertaining! We then take five
to ten minutes of question and discussion time after each presentation to
help students digest what they have just seen. After this, we move to the
next role-play and then five to ten minutes of discussion, and so on.
Many readers may teach courses with as many as 250 students or more.
The ideas presented here can be tailored to larger groups. For example,
instructors can break large classes down into 25 groups of 10 students
who will gather into groups during discussion time and have a rotating
student moderator, and so on. Students could then enact role-plays for
sets of other groups rather than for the whole class. Depending upon the
class size and other factors, the Conference may need to take place over
several classes instead of just one.
In any case, Conferences have proven to be an excellent way to solid-
ify coursework by having students process and more deeply reflect upon
two- to three-week sections of the course. The remainder of the book will
explore the details of using the Socratic Method to teach the major sub-
disciplines of psychology.
REFERENCES
Bagshaw, M. (2014). Reflections on a Socratic approach to engagement. Industrial
& Commercial Training, 46(7), 357. doi:10.1108/ICT-04-2014-0025.
Brooks, T. (2008). Bringing the “Republic” to life: Teaching Plato’s “Republic”
to first- year students. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 3(3), 211–221.
Calero-Elvira, A., Froján-Parga, M. X., Ruiz-Sancho, E. M., & Alpañés-Freitag,
M. (2013). Descriptive study of the Socratic method: Evidence for verbal shap-
ing. Behavior Therapy, 44(4), 625–638. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2013.08.001.
Dillon, J. (2006). The tears of Priam: Reflections on troy and teaching ancient
texts. Humanitas, 19(1), 126–131.
Froján-Parga, M. M. (2011). Study of the Socratic method during cognitive
restructuring. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(2), 110–123.
George, L. (2015). Socrates on teaching: Looking back to move education for-
ward. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 3970–3974. doi:10.1016/j.
sbspro.2015.01.1142.
Griggs, R. A. (2014). Psychology: A concise introduction (4th ed.). New York, NY:
Worth.
Peterson, E. (2009a). Socratic problem-solving in the business world. American
Journal of Business Education, 2(5), 101–106.
Peterson, E. (2009b). Teaching to think: Applying the Socratic method outside
the law school setting. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 6(5), 83–88.
Plato. (1961). The collected dialogues of Plato including the letters. E. Hamilton &
H. Cairns (Eds.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schneider, J. (2013). Remembrance of things past: A history of the Socratic
method in the United States. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(5), 613–640.
Shuai, E. X. (2013). When Socrates meets Confucius: Teaching creative and criti-
cal thinking across cultures through multilevel Socratic method. Nebraska Law
Review, 92, 289–348.
Zare, P., & Mukundan, J. (2015). The use of Socratic method as a teaching/learn-
ing tool to develop students’ critical thinking: A review of literature. Language
in India, 15(6), 256–265.
CHAPTER 5
Teaching Neuroscience with Phaedo
The past 30 years have witnessed an explosion in stature of the field known
as neuroscience. In 1990, Congress designated the entire 1990s as the
“Decade of the Brain.” President George H.W. Bush proclaimed, “A new
era of discovery is dawning in brain research” (Ackerman, 1992, p. 167).
During the ensuing decades, scientists have greatly advanced the under-
standing of the brain. The brain has pervaded so deeply into the culture
that students now routinely use the word “brain” to describe what in
the past would have been referred to as the “mind” or even the “soul.”
Students will say things like, “My brain cannot process that information,”
or “My brain doesn’t work that way,” or “Bill Gates was born with an
excellent brain.” Students will even say that psychology itself is the sci-
ence of “how the brain works.” So I would go even farther than President
Bush above. We don’t live in the Decade of the Brain; ours is the World
of the Brain. The brain is therefore the most appropriate place to start our
exploration of psychology.
If he were alive today, Socrates would likely have some difficulty with
Neuroscience. He would worry that we seem to have made many con-
sequential decisions and rested vast systems of inquiry on rather shaky
philosophical foundations. The dialogue Phaedo is thus an excellent place
to introduce Socrates to psychology because it is here that Socrates will
challenge many of the foundations upon which Neuroscience is based and
will candidly offer an alternative, “soul-based” psychology (for more on
Phaedo, see Robins, 1997). We also learn a great deal about Socrates the

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36 J.J. DILLON
person since we encounter him in a traumatic life situation in which he is

more prone to share his deepest views of life and death. Let’s take a look.
SOCRATES, PHAEDO (57A–72D; 85C–86D)1

I must repeat the point I made earlier that it is vital for the assigned section
of text to be short enough to be digested by students in a single night’s
reading of a few hours. When students are overwhelmed, particularly with
textbook reading, they start to look for bold-faced words, headings, and
read to skim the main ideas of each paragraph, if at all. This is not how
we want students to read anything in college, especially these beautifully
written Platonic dialogues. So we must keep our assigned readings small
and manageable. Most of the Platonic dialogues, like Phaedo, are just too
long to read in their entirety, so parts need to be skipped, or split up over
several classes. We do not need to cover everything in a single class or even
a single semester. Students can always go back and finish a dialogue later.
This is also true for any sub-discipline in psychology we may explore. We
are equipping students to be able to go out and educate themselves when
the class is over.
Along with Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, Phaedo is grouped among
the “final days” dialogues of Plato (for more on Phaedo, see Robins,
1997). Socrates has just been sentenced to die by a jury of his peers. In
his final hours, he sits in prison, awaiting execution. His family, friends,
and students visit him in his cell. Phaedo begins with a dramatic picture
of Socrates’ wife Xanthippe who is crying hysterically with their little son
on her knee. Plato uses this scene as a framing device to tell us what this
dialogue is about. The reader is somewhat shocked that Socrates coldly
orders his wife and child away. He will have none of their hysterics. Many
students are irked by Socrates’ behavior. But by having Socrates perform
this dramatic gesture, Plato tells us that for Socrates, it is not the body and
the emotions that are worth our time, but the mind and truth. Socrates
sends his wife and son home so he can be free of their distracting emotions
and engage in philosophical discussion with his students. While most of
us might want to commiserate with family and loved ones at such a time,
Socrates wants to do philosophy!
Alone with him now, Socrates’ friends are heartbroken and scared
about his impending death. While they are not sobbing like Xanthippe,
1
Recall these numbers and letters refer to the “Stephanus” system of notation.
TEACHING NEUROSCIENCE WITH PHAEDO 37
they are emotional nonetheless. They assume Socrates must be feeling the
same way, so they ask him just how afraid he is. Socrates surprises them
by replying that he is not afraid at all. In fact, he says, he is quite looking
forward to death. They are dumbfounded. “How can this be?” they ask
incredulously. He answers by telling them he has no fear of death because
he believes there is an immortal element within himself, which he calls
“the soul,” which can never die. This impending “death” is thus not really
an end at all, but a new beginning.
At this point, everyone in the room with Socrates steps back and takes a
deep breath. Several of his friends are dubious about this “immortal soul”
and quietly believe that Socrates should be afraid. But they do not want to
make him upset or depress him in his final hours, so Socrates must prod
them to share their doubts. At death, they hesitantly argue, doesn’t our
life just go away forever? How can you be so sure it won’t?
Unlike many other dialogues, Socrates’ method in Phaedo is not to sub-
ject his interlocutor to his probing questions. Rather, in these final hours,
Socrates allows them to ask him the questions and he provides answers.
It is a perfect example of what I call the Role Reversal type of Socratic
Method. Lest we be fooled by this turning of the tables, Socrates is always
the teacher. He forces his students to gradually develop and articulate a
complex philosophical position with his intentionally poor answers. Their
questions and his answers get better and better as the pages turn.
The dialogue begins with this question from Socrates’ friends: “How
can you be so cheerful in the face of death?” This is the guiding question
of the dialogue. Socrates’ initial answer is that most people do not realize
that practicing philosophy is really a preparation for death. Philosophy, he
says, is the process of stabilizing the body to allow the soul to apprehend
the eternal Forms. Socrates notes that his body has really been in the way
of his practice of philosophy all his life. With death, he surmises, he will
have no more encumbrances since his soul will finally separate once and
for all from his body.
We step back here to note that Socrates begins his dialogue with a vague
argument to explain his reasons for not being afraid of death. He knows
his argument will be challenged and will need to be further articulated.
He is being vague in order to provoke a response and help his students
develop their views. We learn from this technique that a major feature of
Socrates’ method involves initially offering weaker arguments to students
in order to elicit an even more thoughtful response from them. Contrast
this with what we do in a lecture where the teacher offers the strongest
38 J.J. DILLON
argument at the very outset and has the students write all of the brilliance
down. Students do no work to derive the answer. It has all been done for
them by the teacher. Socrates subscribes to the “constructivist” principle
that you cannot learn and remember unless you work to build it yourself
(see Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Bruner, 1961; Bloom, 1956; Dewey, 1938;
McKeachie & Svinicki, 2006; Montessori, 1966; Piaget, 1985). Socrates
does not wish to be the “sage on the stage” with his teaching; he wants
this role for his students.
Sure enough, Cebes, one of Socrates’ interlocutors, immediately
mounts a counterargument to Socrates’ initial claim about philosophy
being a preparation for death. Perhaps, Cebes says, when the soul is
released from the body at death, it will no longer exist anywhere, but be
dispersed and destroyed like all other things. Cebes agrees with Socrates
that the soul is separate from the body, but he thinks the soul might not
be immortal. Why, he asks, do we assume the soul will continue to exist
when it separates at death?
Socrates tenderly considers this counterargument and now offers a
stronger, more logically based case for his claim that the soul is immortal.
It is important to note that Socrates makes this case by an appeal to logic
rather than emotion or example. He does not allow these kinds of huge
metaphysical questions about life and death to be relegated to mere opin-
ion, for example, “You have your views about these things; I have mine.
Who’s to say who’s right?” No, Socrates strongly believes that philosoph-
ical reasoning through his method can yield real knowledge about the
most abstract matters.
Socrates answers Cebes that opposites tend to generate opposites. Just
as cold springs from hot, and tall from short, life must spring from death
and death from life, “when a thing becomes bigger,” Socrates says, “it
must, I suppose, have been smaller first before it became bigger” (70e). In
addition to this argument from opposites, Socrates reasons that if every-
thing that was ever alive died in the end, only death would ultimately exist
and would suck everything into itself (72c). Thus, Socrates concludes,
it is from the dead that living things and people come (71e). These two
arguments are better than the one Socrates started with, but they still have
flaws which Socrates hopes his interlocutors will notice and try to correct.
From our reading thus far, we have learned several important things
for our further engagement with Psychology. First, Socrates believes that
human beings are composed of two parts: a mortal body and an immortal
soul. The body is subject to change and decay, while the soul is eternal and
immortal. Perhaps even more importantly, we learn that Socrates believes
that human beings can learn about the nature of the human soul by reason
and philosophical investigation. Matters of the soul cannot be relegated to
the realm of personal belief and opinion. There are solid reasons one can
discern for even the biggest questions in life. Third, Socrates leaves us with
several provocative arguments for the immortality of the human soul that
we must seriously consider.
Socrates, Cebes, and another interlocutor named Simmias engage in
several more arguments and counterarguments as to whether we should
believe that the human soul is immortal. For our purposes, we leave these
arguments to the side and skip to another section of the dialogue in the
assigned reading. This is an example of when it is necessary to skip over
parts of a dialogue. We move to the middle of the dialogue (85c–86d)
where Simmias offers what Socrates considers one of the better argu-
ments against the idea that the soul is immortal. Simmias forms an anal-
ogy between the way the strings work together in a musical instrument to
produce “attunement” and the way the parts of the body all work together
to produce what we call the “soul.” Like the soul, Simmias says, the attun-
ement of a musical instrument is invisible, incorporeal, and divine. Like
the body, the instrument itself is corporeal, composite, and earthly. Just as
the attunement of an instrument exists as a result of the instrument being
held together by the physical parts in the right way, the soul exists in the
body through the presence of the body’s physical parts. Since destroying
a musical instrument will destroy the attunement of the instrument, so
therefore will destroying a human body destroy the soul that is supported
by it. The soul’s existence, Simmias argues, depends upon and is structured
by the body.
Socrates has an answer to this fine argument, but we leave the Socratic
discussion here with Simmias’ claim that the soul is nothing but the
ensemble of relations among the physical parts of the body. Students will
be challenged in class to consider Simmias’ point and see if they can make
any logical case at all for the notion of a separate, immortal human soul.
Simmias’ argument introduces us to the neuroscientific position on the
matter of the soul: consciousness or mind is, like a “tune” of an instru-
ment, the product of the ensemble of physical parts (see Gottschalk, 1971;
Langton, 2000; Taylor, 1983). It is an ideal segue for the first major sub-
discipline of psychology the students will consider: Neuroscience.
40 J.J. DILLON
THE NEUROSCIENTIST
In addition to the assigned portion of Phaedo, students also read a selec-
tion from the Griggs (2014) text (pp. 39–43 and 77–85). This is typically
done for a separate class meeting. This text presents what we currently
know about the structure of the neuron, how neurons communicate, neu-
rotransmitters, localization of brain function, and the relationship between
the brain and (a) memory, (b) emotion, (c) thought, and (d) other mental
phenomena like dreaming. The text develops the idea that the basic physi-
cal unit of brain functioning is the neuron. Neurons communicate with
each other through a complex network of electrical and chemical signals.
From this basic understanding of the structure of the brain, students then
explore how stimulation or injuries to particular areas of the brain affect
specific “mental” functions like thinking, memory, attention, and emo-
tion. Neuropsychologists believe that psychological functions are localized
within specific areas of the brain, whether in the brain’s two hemispheres
or in specific brain areas. Students then explore the relationship between
underlying physical and neurological structure and psychological experi-
ence. These points from the psychology text dovetail nicely with Simmias’
argument that the soul depends upon a physical substructure.
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE NEUROSCIENTIST

The Interlocutrix is the heart of the encounter between Socrates and
Psychology. We use the Socratic Method to teach and understand the sub-
discipline of psychology upon which we focus. After students read the
portion of the Socratic dialogue and the psychology text, they complete an
Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A) and bring it with them
to class that day. We use this sheet to form our class meeting agenda and
do all subsequent classroom activities.
The guiding questions of this unit are: What is the soul (psyche)? Does
the soul depend upon the working of the body’s physical parts? Students’
answers for this part of the exercise will vary. I will present here my own
analysis of this unit to illustrate how this part of the Interlocutrix might
look. Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding questions might be
that the soul is something immortal and powerful which gives life to the
mortal body and does not depend upon the body for its life or ability
to function. The neuropsychologist’s one-sentence answer might be that
what is typically called “the soul” is simply the sum total of underlying
neurological processes rather than an immortal entity in itself. Here is how

a dialogue might proceed further:
Neuropsychologist: Well, in our field, we really don’t refer to an entity

like “the soul” anymore. This has unnecessary religious and metaphysi-
cal baggage.
Socrates: I see. This is very interesting. Tell me more. What do you call
the entity which thinks, feels, remembers, and chooses?
Neuropsychologist: It is not clear to me that this involves a specific
“entity” other than the brain. When people speak of “the mind,” or
as you say, “the soul,” what they mean by this is simply the phenom-
ena that spring to life as a result of underlying neurological processes.
It might be more accurate to speak of “brain processes” instead of
“mind.” I think people make an error in their language, like when they
say the sun “rises.” It really doesn’t. The same is true for the mind or
soul: it’s really not there, but is just an inaccurate word that people use.
Socrates: Brilliant! So for you, the phenomena of mind all go away at
death when the body dies?
Neuropsychologist: Indeed it does. There is no scientific evidence for a
separate mind or soul apart from the body.
Socrates: Fascinating. How, then do you explain the fact that I can decide
to move my own arm or even slow my own heart rate down? How
would this kind of thing be possible if there is not a mind which is some-
what separate from and even controls the body?
Neuropsychologist: While you feel that you are in control or directing
physical processes, this is merely an illusion. What you are experiencing
is simply one physical process directing another physical process. There
is no “mind” behind the scenes directing it all.
Socrates: Ah, you have thought this all through, I see. And who is this
person having this experience of one physical process directing another
physical process? Who is having the illusion? Is that a body as well?
Neuropsychologist: Indeed it is. There is no other way to explain things
scientifically other than by referring to empirically observable phenom-
ena. There is no “ghost in the machine” having various experiences. We
are a single, physical entity.
I stop my mock dialogue here. In addition to the specific content points

that students would emphasize in their own mock dialogues, I advise them
to pay attention not only to what Socrates and his interlocutors say, but
42 J.J. DILLON
to how they say it as well. Specifically, they should learn to plot the teach-
ing strategy Socrates is using in the dialogue. Why does he say this here,
then there? What does he want his interlocutor to learn by saying what he
says? Students must boil down the structure of the argument, the teaching
Socrates wishes to impart
When they get to class, students work in small groups to construct a
dialogue which they enact for the class in a role-play. After recreating the
Interlocutrix dialogues in class (there are several), students are directed to
say what they now think about the guiding question. In this case, students
must take a position on what they think the soul is in relation to the body.

During the last few minutes of class, students write what they have learned
from this exchange. This is an excellent way to process the reading and the
classroom discussion that has just taken place. I present here a mockup of
my own Results and Remaining Questions for this unit as an illustration.
Personally, I see on this question of the soul, Socrates and the neuropsy-
chologist are quite far apart. Socrates sees the human being as a composite
of body and soul. The body is mortal and empirical; the soul is immortal
and spiritual. The good life is one in which we pursue the things of the
soul rather than the things of the body. For the neuropsychologist, the
human being is a complex physical entity with no immortal soul to speak
of. For the neuroscientist, what we typically see as a separate mental or
spiritual sphere depends entirely upon an underlying physical substrate
(just as Simmias argues).
The last thing students do in a Regular Class meeting is write down the
questions they still have about the guiding question, what is unfinished
for them. My own view is that psychology does not make sense without
an ontologically distinct soul. However, the soul does not seem to be in
ultimate control over the body. The body also exerts a massive influence
on “the mind” and almost seems to have a mind of its own. When the
body is fatigued, or intoxicated, the corresponding “mental” processes are
deeply affected. How can we explain this if the soul is separate from the
body? There is a legend that Socrates could drink immense quantities of
alcohol and his mind would not be affected at all. His interlocutors would
get more and more drunk with wine, but Socrates was impervious to its
effects, no matter how much he consumed. They were astounded at his
self-control. This might be true for Socrates, but it is not true for most of
the rest of us! So the question that remains for me is, “What is the pre-
cise relationship between the soul and the body?” I end this chapter with
Simmias’ question: Why not attunement? Why not see functioning parts
of the body as giving rise to the phenomenon of mind? Indeed, it is very
hard to think beyond this attunement view. It will be one of the goals of
the Academic Conference to come in a few weeks. We leave this question
of the brain to the side for now and shift our attention to the faculty of
memory.
REFERENCES
Ackerman, S. (1992). Discovering the brain. Washington, DC: National Academies
Press.
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Boston, MA: Allyn and
Bacon.
Bonwell, C. G., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the
classroom. Washington, DC: George Washington University.
Bruner, J. S. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1),
21–32.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Collier Books.
Gottschalk, H. B. (1971). Soul as harmonia. Phronesis, 39, 179–198.
Worth.
Langton, R. (2000). The musical, the magical, and the mathematical soul. In
T. Crane & S. Patterson (Eds.), History of the mind-body problem (pp. 13–33).
London, UK: Routledge.
McKeachie, W. J., & Svinicki, M. (2006). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and
theory for college and university teachers. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Montessori, M. (1966). The secret of childhood (M. J. Costello, Trans.). New York,
NY: Ballantine.
Piaget, J. (1985). The equilibration of cognitive structures: The central problem of
intellectual development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Robins, I. (1997). Recollection and self-understanding in the Phaedo. The
Classical Quarterly, 47(2), 438–451.
Taylor, C. C. W. (1983). The arguments in the Phaedo Concerning the thesis that
the soul is a harmonia. In J. P. Anton & A. Preus (Eds.), Essays in ancient Greek
philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York. (Original work published
1970).
CHAPTER 6
Teaching the Psychology of Memory

with Phaedo
Given how much college students are asked to remember and how hard
they struggle not to forget, it makes sense that they are intensely inter-
ested in the process of remembering and forgetting. In this chapter, we
pick up our work with Phaedo and Socrates’ attempt to logically prove the
immortality of the soul. This time, Socrates offers another argument to
his skeptical interlocutors which he calls the “Doctrine of Recollection.”
For this class, students read this new portion of Phaedo where Socrates
explores the faculty of memory to advance his argument for the immortal-
ity of the soul.
SOCRATES, PHAEDO (72E–78B)

In this section of the dialogue, we return to Socrates’ “argument from
opposites.” Since the living come from the dead, he says, “…they must
exist in some place where they are reborn” (72e). Cebes agrees with this
argument, so Socrates notes, almost as an aside, “besides” there is a theory
of recollection we all know about where “what we call learning is really just
recollection” (72e). If that doctrine is true, Socrates says, “then surely what
we recollect now we must have learned at some time before, which is impos-
sible unless our souls existed somewhere before they entered this human
shape” (72e). Again, note the emotional appeal and lack of logical support
for this argument. Socrates wants Cebes to respond. He’s been nodding his
head and agreeing with Socrates far too much for his taste as a teacher.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_6
46 J.J. DILLON
Simmias can’t allow what Socrates has just said to stand, so he jumps
back into the dialogue and directly asks Socrates for proofs for this strange
recollection theory. This is just what Socrates wanted, though he prob-
ably desired the counterargument to come from the more reticent and
less intellectually developed Cebes. Socrates gave such a vague answer in
order to help these two boys articulate their own views. Socrates proceeds
to offer Simmias some reasons why he believes that all learning is really
recollection. He first notes that when a question is put the right way, a
person can give the correct answers about things with which they have
had no prior experience. Socrates has seen this many times with his own
eyes as a teacher, most notably in the dialogue Meno where he stands up an
uneducated slave boy and proceeds to elicit complex mathematical truths
from him which he has never been formally taught. From these types of
experiences with students, Socrates reasons that we must have ideas in our
minds already which we do not acquire from experience. These answers
are elicited under the right circumstances and in response to the right
kinds of questions.
To develop this idea further, Socrates gives an example in Phaedo of
the everyday experience where we decide that two things are “not equal.”
Nobody, he says, has taught us the notion of absolute equality. It is as if
we have this idea of equality in the recesses of our mind and use it to make
judgments about actual cases. He says, “Then we must have had some
previous knowledge of equality before the time when we first saw equal
things and realized that they were striving after equality, but fell short of
it” (75). It is these “innate ideas” which enable us to make the particular
judgments of equality or inequality all the time in our daily life. Since these
kinds of a priori ideas exist for Socrates, he reasons that they must have
come to us before our birth. If this is true, he reasons, then our souls must
have existed before our birth and are therefore immortal.
Knowing that this is also inadequate, Socrates asks Simmias and Cebes
if this argument sounds satisfactory to them. It is an emotionally dazzling
claim he has just made, and he doesn’t want them to accept statements like
this without critical reflection. Recall that the purpose of all of this talking
Socrates is doing is to develop Cebes’ and Simmias’ ideas, not Socrates’.
Simmias takes the bait and says that it is indeed not satisfactory. What
you have proven, Simmias says, is that the soul may exist before birth. Just
because we come into the world with a priori ideas or that our souls pre-
date our birth, he reasons, does not mean that our souls continue to exist
after our death. Why wouldn’t we just simply cease to exist at death as
Cebes said earlier?
TEACHING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEMORY WITH PHAEDO 47
Now the student is really thinking! Socrates agrees with Simmias and
says, “but now we need also to prove that it will exist after death no less
than before birth, if our proof is to be complete” (78b). We can tell that
Socrates has been leading them along. He goes on to develop his argu-
ment a little farther, but we stop our reading here with the notion that the
soul may pre-exist the body because we have this experience of knowing
things already. Students have been provoked to ponder the notion that
our souls “remember” things we may have learned before our birth, that
we have “innate ideas” in our psyches which we use to know and under-
stand the particulars of daily life. They also must consider again Simmias’
idea that death may represent the soul’s destruction and physical disper-
sal. As in the previous chapter, students are left to ponder the notion of
the physical substrate of mental phenomena and the idea that when you
destroy the physical, the psychological goes along with it.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST OF MEMORY

This break in the dialogue provides the perfect segue into the psychology
of memory. We’ve seen what Socrates thinks, but how do modern psy-
chologists believe the process of human memory works? To answer this,
students read a small selection of the Griggs (2014) text on what we know
about human memory from modern scientific research (pp. 189–191;
194–201; 212–217). Students learn about the so-called three-stage
model of memory, that is, that human memory consists of three different
parts: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. The
assumption here is that information enters from the physical environment
through our senses into “sensory memory.” If the information is relevant,
it moves to “short-term memory” and possibly into “long-term memory.”
It flows from long-term to short-term memory if we need to use it. But
note the operative assumption that memory consists of information that is
drawn from the senses that we have acquired from experience.
Students learn about the nature and capacity of both short- and long-
term memories: how much information each system can hold, how long
memories tend to last in each system, as well as the different types of
memories we can have, for example, emotional, olfactory, and so on. They
explore how psychologists believe we “retrieve” information, or remember
things as well as why we forget. This exploration takes them into different
types of retrieval: recall, recognition, and relearning. They also explore the
dominant theories on why we forget, including encoding failure, storage
decay, interference, and cue dependence.
48 J.J. DILLON
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE PSYCHOLOGIST

OF MEMORY
After students read the assigned portion of Phaedo and the Griggs (2014)
text, they complete a fresh Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A)
and bring it with them to class. The guiding questions of this unit are:
What does it mean to remember something? Why do we forget?
Students immediately notice that most modern memory research does
not assume the notion of prior knowledge or innate ideas as Socrates does.
The two readings therefore provide a sharp contrast with one another
which can help students learn both points of view. They are now start-
ing to become more adept at bringing Socrates into dialogue with the
psychology text. Students work to boil down Socrates’ argument about
the nature of memory. They summarize Socrates’ position. In this case,
Socrates says that there are certain important concepts that we learned
before our birth which we use to make sense of the world.
The psychologists’ answer to this guiding question stems from what
we might call a computer model of the mind. Information comes into the
mental apparatus through the senses. It is encoded and “stored” in short-
term memory. If the memory is emotional, useful, or important, it may
make its way to long-term memory. Most of the other memories in short-
term memory do not make it to long-term storage. While our memories
are derived from sensory experience, remembering something means to
“retrieve” this encoded sensory experience from some place in the brain.
We forget because of extinction of this memory store. Here is how the
dialogue between the two might proceed further:
Socrates: I have read your fascinating account of human memory in your

textbook. Congratulations on knowing so much about the human
mind. I for one do not know nearly as much. Could you tell me, how do
you account for those experiences where we use a concept like equality
or beauty which we cannot have ever derived from experience? Nobody
ever taught it to us. We never observed it and yet it is there, in our
minds.
Memory Psychologist: Well first, thank you for your kind words about
my book. Our science of memory has come a long way since your
ancient days. We now believe that all memories are derived from experi-
ence. An infant may be predisposed to learn certain things at birth, but
we all start life with a blank memory store. Someone must have taught
the person the concept of beauty or equality or perhaps he inferred it
from regularities in his experience.
Socrates: But the concept I am talking about cannot be derived from
sensory experience. It seems to be something we use to order and make
sense of sensory experience.
Memory Psychologist: I see. Well, I agree that we certainly do not need
to learn to process certain things with our brains. In that sense, we are
“born” with this ability, but as far as the actual content of a memory,
our system is not wired up to encode memories in any other way but
by what comes to use through our senses from experience after we are
born. There are no memories or ideas which come to us from a time
before our birth.
Socrates: It seems to me that you may have forgotten all of this with your
own birth. I have been able to produce complex mathematical formulae
from illiterate slaves. Would you like me to try my method on you?
Memory Psychologist: As much as I would love that Socrates, I do need
to run back to the lab. Science waits for no one. Our dialogue will need
to end there. Perhaps we can pick this up at a later time.
When students get to class, they work in small groups to construct a

dialogue which they enact for the class in a role-play. There are as many
role-plays as there are small groups.
After recreating the Interlocutrix dialogue in class, students are then
directed to write what they actually now think about the guiding question.
In this case, students must take a position on whether they agree with
Socrates’ “Doctrine of Recollection” or whether they find the psycholo-
gist’s arguments about memory more persuasive.

During the last few minutes of class, students write what they have
learned from the readings, class discussion, and viewing the role-played
Interlocutrix dialogues. I include some of my own items here as an illus-
tration. As in the previous chapter on Neuropsychology, Socrates and
the psychologist of memory are quite far apart. Socrates develops his
understanding of the immortal soul to describe what the soul has learned
before its birth in a body. The important things in life, he believes, are not
50 J.J. DILLON
learned in this life. Our souls already carry important wisdom with them.
It is only a matter of trying to recollect this information in response to the
proper prompts. On the other hand, the psychologist’s view of the soul
is completely contained within the life history of the individual and his or
her sense experiences. This is a fascinating contrast. Students must at this
point take a position here on whether they agree with the recollection
theory or whether there are any strong arguments they can make against
it. They must take a position on where memories come from and if they
can see any basis for the notion of a priori ideas.
The last things students do is write down the questions they still have
about the guiding questions. Personally, I wonder about whether human
souls actually carry knowledge and wisdom about certain things with them
into the body when they are born. I find the notion of innate ideas very
compelling, but wonder whether we can instead develop what Socrates
believes are innate ideas very quickly as infants simply as a result of inter-
acting with the world. The notion of a pre-existing soul would therefore
not be necessary. There is some persuasive support for the doctrine of
innate ideas (see Carruthers, 1992; Chomsky, 1965). I go back and forth
myself on whether Socrates is right or wrong on this aspect of the soul. To
be honest with myself, I must admit that my own philosophy of education
holds that students do have an innate wisdom and that it is my job to help
them “recall” and elicit it, so Socrates’ position is compelling to me.
I return to two guiding questions of this unit: What does it mean to
remember something? Why do we forget? Indeed, it is very hard to think
beyond the notion that our memories are simply built up from sensory
experience and that “remembering” something is to go and “get” stored
information. But Socrates wants to say that this is not the whole story. I
conclude this chapter with the psychologist’s claim that all we know, all
we remember, comes to us in our own individual life history and through
our senses, that we are born essentially as “blank slates,” and that what
we become has been shaped by our own empirical life history (see Locke,
1961/1690). How we come down on this question will have huge impli-
cations for our own self-understanding and the way we view education
and parenting. One of the goals of the upcoming Academic Conference
will be to resolve this issue. For now, we turn to a new dialogue and a new
sub-discipline of psychology.
REFERENCES
Carruthers, P. (1992). Human knowledge and human nature: A new introduction
to an ancient debate. New York, NY: Oxford University.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Worth.
Locke, J. (1961). Essay concerning human understanding. London, UK: J. M.
Dent & Sons. (Original work published 1690).
CHAPTER 7
Teaching the Psychology of Learning

with Meno
At this point, Socrates has helped us consider two rather weighty ques-
tions: What is the soul (psyche), and what does it mean to remember?
We left students in the previous chapter with the question of whether we
already “know” certain things when we are born or whether everything
we know comes to us from experience. Learning is an important idea in
this context because the memories we have stored in our minds had to be
“learned” to get there in the first place. So in this chapter, we turn to the
topic of learning and we do so by looking at Meno, one of the earliest of all
the Platonic dialogues (for more on Meno, see Franklin, 2009).
Meno is a case study in the Traditional Method that Socrates most often
uses in his teaching. Readers of the Apology know that Socrates is con-
victed of corrupting the minds of the youth and not believing in the gods
of the state. His defense is that he devoted his life to the task of educating
the youth of Athens and always helped them pursue the truth. Instead of
executing him, Socrates says in the Apology, the state should give him a
stipend for his good work and support him for the rest of his life! He truly
believes he has benefitted countless people over the span of his life with
his Dialectical teaching method. Needless to say, a majority of the jury was
not completely impressed with this argument.
Teaching and learning are thus very important concepts for Socrates.
The principal focus of Meno is how to teach. It also deals with how to
learn and be a student. The dialogue shows the appropriate behavior for
each role. In addition, Meno gives us some clues as to Socrates’ theory of

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54 J.J. DILLON
knowledge and the nature of the soul that will be explored in the later,
more complex dialogues. After first exploring Meno, we compare and con-
trast Socrates’ argument about how human beings should optimally learn
with theories of learning that come to us from modern psychology.
SOCRATES, MENO (70–82)

Meno is a young student of Socrates’ who is fixated on the question of
whether virtue can be taught or whether we are born with it. It is an
ancient version of today’s “nature-nurture” controversy. Meno approaches
Socrates with the question, “Can virtue be taught?” Socrates begins his
Dialectic with Meno by showering both him and his teachers with feigned
praise for knowing so many answers to things. Of course, he is being sar-
castic, but they do not pick up on it. Socrates notes that he is very different
from these teachers since he doesn’t know the answer to many questions
at all. He therefore cannot talk about whether virtue can be taught until
he first knows what virtue is. So Socrates spends the first several pages of
the dialogue in a frustrating attempt to get Meno to step back from his ini-
tial question and define his terms before launching into a full investigation
of whether virtue can be taught. Meno does not like what Socrates tries to
get him to do here. He is very resistant to Socrates’ many attempts to get
him to define virtue before proceeding any further with his investigation.
Meno just wants to know whether virtue can be taught or whether we are
born with it.
But Socrates does not relent. He presses on with his method and tries
to help Meno to properly participate in the Dialectic. Meno reluctantly
offers Socrates a definition of virtue, but he does so by referring to what
his teacher Gorgias would say. This irritates Socrates quite a bit. “[L]et’s
leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here” (71d). Socrates wants
to know what Meno thinks, not Gorgias. He asks again, “What do you
yourself say virtue is?” (71d). Meno eventually responds in a way that is
very reminiscent of today’s students: virtue means something different for
each person. So it’s impossible for me to present a single account. It’s all
relative. Meno is avoiding Socrates’ question here again. He first tried to
hide behind his teacher, and now he tries to say that answers tend to vary,
so who can say?
Socrates will not let this stand either. His method won’t allow it. Surely,
Socrates agrees, “it” (virtue) varies from person to person, but it is still a
single “it” that people are thinking about in such different ways. Perhaps,
TEACHING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING WITH MENO 55
Socrates asks, we can get to some central quality that the term “virtue”
shares despite varying circumstances and individual perspectives? Socrates
even goes on to help Meno do this. Perhaps, Socrates hints, that central
quality of virtue is temperance and justice (73b). This little bit of help
enables Meno to offer his first genuine definition of virtue. This is no small
achievement since Socrates he has been trying to get Meno to this point
for the past several pages of the dialogue!
Meno says that virtue is “the capacity to govern.” This is obviously an
inferior definition, but at least Meno has tried to give an answer in the
form of a general definition without appealing to the experts or saying
that it depends on the individual. With a properly formulated definition,
Socrates can now engage the Dialectic with Meno. The next step of the
method, we recall, is to offer a counter-definition based on what the inter-
locutor’s definition leaves out or ignores. So Socrates says, surely one can
have the capacity to govern and still govern badly, no? Would we say that
an effective tyrant has virtue? There must be something more to virtue
than merely being able to govern effectively, something that perhaps gets
us to this question of “good” versus “bad” governance.
But Meno has not learned his lesson about how to be a good student
in the Socratic Dialectic. He is supposed to carefully consider Socrates’
counterexample and then reformulate a new and improved definition of
virtue. Instead, he responds to Socrates’ counterargument by giving yet
another example of virtue. He says, “In my opinion then courage is a
virtue and temperance and wisdom and dignity and many other things”
(74a). Unfortunately, Meno is back where he started the dialogue and
has not so far progressed as a student. Socrates then launches into a more
explicit critique of Meno’s responses, which helps us learn a great deal
about Socrates and his method. He says to Meno, if I ask you “what is
shape?” and you tell me “roundness is shape,” is there a problem with this
definition? Roundness is “a” shape, Meno, but is roundness shape? Surely
not. So he tells Meno that he needs him to think about what is common
to roundness and straightness and the other things which we call shapes
rather than offer the examples as definitions. “Do your best to answer, as
practice for the question about virtue” (75a).
Unfortunately, this does not go well. Socrates is starting to lose Meno
as a student. Meno refuses this practice question about the definition of
shape. He says he wants Socrates to define shape for him instead. He is
back to wanting the experts to do the work of thinking for him! Socrates
reluctantly agrees, since it is for a good cause: getting this young man to
56 J.J. DILLON
think. He can tell that Meno is getting very frustrated with the method
and is at risk of dropping out completely. To get the definitional ball roll-
ing, Socrates offers a very poor definition of shape as “the only thing
which always accompanies color.” He does this as attempt to provoke
Meno to offer an even better definition of shape. Meno takes the bait and
offers a counterexample. This provokes Socrates to offer an even better
definition, “shape is the limit of a solid” (76a). Hopefully, Meno now sees
what it means to give a general definition of something and then can use
this knowledge to give a definition of virtue.
It is now Meno’s turn to try his hand at defining virtue in the general-
ized form Socrates has just demonstrated for him. Note that we are now
seven long pages into the dialogue and Meno still has not even defined his
terms! Recall, Plato is a very careful writer. These seven pages were quite
intentional on Plato’s part and could have easily been left out. Plato wants
us to learn something about the tendencies toward being a bad student
that are present in all of us. He also wants us to see how bad student
behavior should be handled by a skilled teacher. Defining one’s terms is
something that all good students of Socrates must do right away, not take
seven pages of hemming and hawing before getting around to it.
Meno is not lost yet. He offers a definition of virtue by trying to get at
a common quality that the term virtue shares. He says virtue is “to rejoice
in the fine and have power.” This is another terrible definition, but at
least Meno is following the rules of the method. Socrates now offers a few
counterexamples to Meno’s answer which are intended to help him refine
his definition of virtue further. Meno agrees that his prior definition falls
short and abandons it. He is doing great!
It is now Meno’s turn to offer another definition based on Socrates’
counterexamples. But Meno really does not like Socrates’ Dialectical pro-
cess one bit. He is now completely frustrated and close to walking out.
The reader sees that Socrates has gone about as far as he can with this
student. The Dialectic has broken down. All Meno wants to talk about is
what he wanted to talk about at the beginning of the dialogue: whether
virtue is something we are born with or whether we learn it. He will not
seriously engage the rules of the method. He resorts to name-calling
and accuses Socrates of practicing magic and witchcraft on him with his
words! Socrates jokingly answers that the only spell he puts on people is
to infect them with the same level of perplexity about what things mean
as he possesses.
Frustrated and at his wit’s end, Meno presents Socrates with what has
come to be known as Meno’s Paradox, “…how will you look for something
when you don’t in the least know what it is?” (80d). Meno’s point is that
he first needs to “learn” the definition of virtue from Socrates and only
then will he be able to discuss it. This is an extremely compelling idea
which we must explore further. Most of us will respond in a similar fashion
if and when our teachers ask us to say what we think rather than appeal to
experts. We all would prefer to have others do our thinking for us.
Socrates rejects Meno’s claim that he cannot define what he hasn’t first
learned from someone else. He believes the answer already lies within
him and so continues to prod Meno for a definition of his own. In doing
so, Socrates inadvertently returns to the notion of the immortal soul he
considered in Phaedo. Since the soul has always existed, Socrates says, it
has already learned the truth about certain things. Socrates believes these
important things in life do not have to be “learned” from someone else
since we already know them and have simply forgotten them due to simple
ignorance or vice. This knowledge need only be recalled in response to
the right types of questions. Socrates provocatively says, “…there is no
such thing as teaching, only recollection” (82a). Meno (and possibly the
reader) is unconvinced. We stop the dialogue here and leave students pro-
voked by Socrates’ bold claim that they do not have to learn the important
things in life, but know them already.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST OF LEARNING

Students then read a small section of the Griggs (2014) text dealing with
what modern psychologists believe about the process of human learning
(141–147; 152–154; 173–176). They read about John Watson, Little
Albert, and the mechanisms of classical conditioning. They read about
B.F. Skinner, his famous box, the mechanisms of operant conditioning,
and the various types of reinforcement. They also read about the biologi-
cal and cognitive aspects of learning. It is important to resist the urge here
to try and “cover” everything under the sun with respect to the psychol-
ogy of learning. Once a basic foundation has been established, the student
can always return to the material later or when the class is over to add
more detail and content.
Classical conditioning is the type of learning where one stimulus
signals the arrival of another one. When Pavlov’s dog “learns” to sali-
vate at the sound of a bell, he has formed an “association” between one
58 J.J. DILLON
stimulus and another, in this case between the bell and the food (see
Pavlov, 1927/1960). On the other hand, with operant conditioning, the
learner associates a behavior with a consequence. In classical condition-
ing, the learning takes place before the response; in operant conditioning,
the learning takes place after the response. For example, when a student
“learns” that making eye contact with the teacher gets him smiles, he does
more of it. He has been operantly conditioned (see Skinner, 1938). One
of the central assumptions in both classical and operant conditioning is
that learning involves a relatively permanent change in thought, feeling,
or behavior brought about by experience. In both cases, associations are
formed and remain that were not there in the beginning. This definition
of learning focuses on the different ways that experience comes to teach us
what we did not know before.
Students also read about various biological and cognitive aspects of
learning. In particular, students learn that humans do not learn everything
equally well. We seem predisposed to be classically or operantly condi-
tioned about certain things. For example, humans learn fears of animals
and heights much easier than to fear toy blocks or curtains. Students also
learn that we seem to be biologically prepared to “learn” certain taste
aversions more easily than other things. There appears to be some evi-
dence for an instinctive predisposition to learn certain things and to learn
these things more easily. In addition, there is a tendency to “drift” back
to our instinctive, pre-learning set point after learning something but
not practicing it sufficiently. Despite these natural constraints, the psy-
chologist’s definition of learning is change by experience. The scope and
power of learning in many psychologists’ accounts of the mind are mas-
sive indeed. Like John Watson, some psychologists follow John Locke’s
claim that at birth, the human mind is tabula rasa, a blank slate. All that
we eventually come to know has been written upon our mind by learning
and experience.

OF LEARNING
After students read the assigned portion of Meno and the Griggs
(2014) text, they complete a fresh Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see
Appendix A) and bring it with them to class. We use this sheet to form our
class meeting agenda. Students will also use these sheets to compose their
summative projects for later Conferences.
The guiding questions of this unit is: What does it mean to learn some-
thing? Can you know something if you haven’t directly experienced it?
Students’ answers for this part of the exercise will vary. I present here my
own analysis of this unit to illustrate how an Interlocutrix might look.
Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding question might be that we
already know the answers to the important questions of life; we just need
to do the hard work of the Dialectic to recover them. The psychologist
of learning might answer that learning is a relatively permanent change in
thought, knowledge, or behavior as a result of experience. An actual dia-
logue between the two parties might further proceed:
Socrates: Hello there, sir. I have just completed the wonderful section of
your psychology textbook dealing with learning. As you answered many
questions, I am left with many more. Before we start to talk about the
different types of learning you discussed, can we step back a bit and talk
about the meaning of the word “learning?”
Psychologist: Well, thank you for your kind words. In answer to your ques-
tion, I’d say that generally, psychologists speak of two types of learning:
classical and operant learning. Classical conditioning involves learning
associations between events in our environment, such as that the smell
of the turkey roasting in the oven signals that a delicious meal will fol-
low. Operant conditioning focuses on learning associations between our
behavior and its environmental consequences, such as that additional
studying usually leads to better grades (Griggs, 2014, p. 141).
Socrates: Yes, thank you. But the question is “What is learning?” Instead
of a general definition, you have given me two examples of learning,
classical and operant conditioning. But could we figure out what is
learning in general before we start talking about all the different types
of learning? Surely it makes sense to proceed this way?
Psychologist: I am not sure it does. But I will try in any case. This will be
a very difficult thing for me to do since there are many different defini-
tions of learning even among the experts.
Socrates: You are the one who has written a chapter in your book entitled
“Learning.” I’d say that you are the expert! Surely you must have some
idea of the purview of this topic to write a whole textbook chapter
introducing students to this process?
Psychologist: Again, my job is to summarize the knowledge that is out
there, not introduce my own views. I am a scientist after all.
60 J.J. DILLON
Socrates: As am I! But how can we study or write about something unless

we first know what it is? Please, work with me sir.
Psychologist: Very well, but I must say this is a highly awkward method
you have. I am not sure that I like it.
Socrates: The pangs of giving birth to a real thought are painful indeed. I
am the midwife here to help.
Psychologist: OK. Well, I suppose I would define learning as a relatively
permanent change in thought, feeling, or behavior brought about by
experience.
Socrates: Splendid! This is exactly what I was looking for. Now we are
doing what I consider real science. It is just that this science is of the
conceptual sphere rather than the empirical. The next step in my method
will be for me to give you a counterexample to your definition of learn-
ing to be sure that you are not leaving anything out in your account.
Psychologist: OK.
Socrates: Excellent. You note in your definition that learning comes to us
“from experience.” Are there any occasions when experience causes us
to forget something that we already know.
Psychologist: Indeed, this is what we call “extinction.”
Socrates: I see, so experience does not always teach us something?
Psychologist: It does. Sometimes it teaches us to forget something.
Socrates: Brilliant! So there are experiences which teach us something
and experiences which cause us to forget things. Are there experiences
which cause us to remember things we forgot?
Psychologist: Of course, we call this “recovery.”
Socrates: Recovery indeed. And would you say that everything we now
know came to us from experience?
Psychologist: Well, apart from a few biological constraints, yes, all learn-
ing is from experience.
Socrates: Are there some things that we know which we cannot ever have
learned from experience? Take the example of beauty. Do we not have
the experience of thinking something is “not beautiful?” Wherever did
we get this idea of beauty to make such a judgment?
Psychologist: That is easy. Someone held something up for us when we
were young and said, “This is beautiful.” We then used that “learning”
to make the kinds of judgments you speak of.
Socrates: Indeed. But our parents may have held up a mutilated flower
and said, “This is beautiful.” They could have held up a smelly old sock
and said, “This is beautiful.” Would saying these things are beautiful
make them beautiful?
Psychologist: Well, that is really not for me to say. As I mentioned before,
I am not in the business of judging, only summarizing. So yes, if they
were taught these things were beautiful, then these things would be
beautiful. As we say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it
would be more accurate to say beauty is in the learning history of the
beholder!
Socrates: This is fascinating. Let us suppose this person who was taught
that a smelly old sock was beautiful encountered someone else later in
life who taught him that a wonderful landscape was beautiful. Would he
not realize that he has been taught the wrong concept of beauty by his
earlier teachers?
Psychologist: He may think that, but it would not necessarily be the case.
All this person has done is replace one learning with another one. It is
not for me to say which one is better or truer.
Socrates: Because that is not your business…
Psychologist: Indeed, that is not my business.
I end the dialogue here. In my experience, one of the first things stu-
dents notice by comparing and contrasting Socrates and the Learning
Psychologist is that in the psychology textbook chapter on “learning,”
the author neglects to first define what learning is!! We are forced to do
that ourselves. Class time is spent using role-play, discussion, and writ-
ing to compare and contrast the relative merits of each view of learning.
One particularly helpful way into this topic is to have students report on
things teachers do that help them learn and those things teachers do that
shut down or inhibit their learning. It is also useful to have students think
about things they do that help them learn and things they do that don’t
help them learn.
In addition to the specific content points that students emphasize in
their own imaginary dialogues, I advise them to pay attention not only to
what Socrates and his interlocutors say about learning, but how they say
it. In Meno, Socrates wants to teach us that his odd method of instruction
only makes sense if we accept his philosophy of learning. Socrates main-
tains that all learning is recollection and that we do not need to be told
things by teachers in lectures in order to think and know. We can “think
for ourselves” because the answers to the important questions are already
62 J.J. DILLON
inside of us. We only need to recollect them in response to the right kinds
of questions. The otherwise bizarre Socratic Method only makes sense if
Socrates’ doctrine of recollection is true. He avoids lectures not because
he can’t lecture or doesn’t like to lecture, but because he doesn’t believe
this is the way students learn. His teaching attempts to guide and prod
students to recall what he believes they already know.

from their text reading and class discussion. When I reflect upon what I
have learned here, I see that my own philosophy of learning and education
are very similar to Socrates’. In this sense, I rather sympathize with the
claims Socrates makes about learning in Meno. In my work with students,
I often try to help them realize knowledge or potential which I see as
already within them. However, I spend much more of my teaching time
on “instruction,” that is, telling students things that I think they should
know which I believe they do not know. Why do I do this? Does it mean
that I have doubts about Socrates’ claims as well as sympathies? Many
students also say that lectures help them learn and that they do not feel
that many good answers are already inside of them. They may be confused
about this, but I do need to take their perspective into account.
The last thing students do in this unit is write down the unanswered
questions they still have about the guiding question. My own questions
are sparked from the inevitable student or two in the room who thinks
that Socrates’ claims about learning are completely crazy. They fully sym-
pathize with the tabula rasa view of the human mind and will strenu-
ously fight Socrates’ doctrine of recollection. I also have some sympathy
for this position. There is a part of me that finds Socrates’ claims very
hard to believe. Could it be that we learn certain things from experience
very quickly and very early and that they only seem like they are “within”
us? I generally believe that we tend to think that experts and experience
will teach us things that we really already know. But I have my doubts.
Many students have even more doubts and questions about Socrates’
claims than I. Working some of these questions out will be the goal of the
upcoming Conference on Psychology and the Body.
REFERENCES
Franklin, L. (2009). Meno’s paradox, the slave-boy interrogation, and the unity of
Platonic recollection. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 47(4), 349–377.
Worth.
Pavlov, I. P. (1960). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activ-
ity of the cerebral cortex (G. V. Anrep, Trans.). New York, NY: Dover. (Original
work published 1927).
Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis.
New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
CHAPTER 8
Teaching Sensation–Perception Psychology

with De Anima
Most of the classical texts discussed in this book are written by Plato. They
recount the figure Socrates and his Dialectical Method of instruction. We
do consider a few texts that are not written by Plato himself, but penned
by his finest student Aristotle. Aristotle’s works are not dialogues and so
can be a bit more complicated to read than Plato. Aristotle is also not as
dramatic and colorful a writer as Plato, so students need to be forewarned.
In fact, most of Aristotle’s texts have not survived in their original form.
What remain are his own (or his students’) lecture notes. Imagine publish-
ing your own class lecture notes as a book! Aristotle thus requires a little
preparation before diving into him (see Cohoe, 2013; Johnston, 2011).
While they are slightly more challenging, we use Aristotle’s texts for
several reasons. First, the Platonic dialogues sometimes do not explore
a particular issue in as much detail as is warranted. Aristotle is nothing if
not detailed and focused. His texts help us to explore particular themes
related to psychology that Socrates either does not explore at all or does
not explore in the level of detail found in Aristotle. Second, we can think
of Aristotle as the ideal student of Socrates, almost the opposite of Meno.
Aristotle was Plato’s student and has received first-hand instruction in
Socrates’ Method. In this sense, we can think of Aristotle’s texts as a writ-
ten conversation with Socrates. His thinking is the product of the Socratic
Method. He is fastidious about doing everything Socrates wants his stu-
dents to do: defining terms, being precise, presenting a coherent, logical
case for a position.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_8
66 J.J. DILLON
Third, Aristotle’s texts help us to become better readers. He helps us

take everything we now know about Socrates’ Method of instruction
and apply it to what he says in the text. We read Aristotle as though we
were Socrates. We produce counterexamples and look for other holes in
Aristotle’s arguments. Most of the time, Aristotle responds to our ques-
tions and objections before we even have a chance to raise them. In this
sense, Aristotle can teach us not only how to be a student, but also how to
think and teach like Socrates.
This chapter on Sensation and Perception springs logically from the
previous chapters on Neuropsychology, Memory, and Learning. In psy-
chology, the brain is typically cast as a processor of information coming
in from the world. Learning is the mechanism through which we respond
to and are changed by this information. Memory is the process of encod-
ing and storing this information. But the center of the action is Sensation
and Perception: the nitty-gritty process of taking information from the
world and bringing it into our psychological system. We explore this sub-
discipline of psychology through Aristotle’s master text on this subject, De
Anima (1986). Students are assigned four “chapters” of Book Two of De
Anima. I note that these “chapters” are just a few pages long and nothing
like our large modern book chapter.
ARISTOTLE, DE ANIMA (BOOK II, CHAPS. 2, 3, 5,

AND 12)
“De anima” is Latin for “on the soul.” The Greek word for soul is
“psuche,” often translated as “psyche,” the base word in our term “psy-
chology.” Aristotle goes to great pains in the beginning of this fascinating
book to define the soul and lay it out as his object of inquiry. He attempts
to offer what he calls an “account” (logos) of the psyche so as to shed light
on what it is. We can read this ancient book as perhaps the first psychol-
ogy textbook. If we return to the case of Meno, it is as if Socrates asked
Aristotle the question, “What is the soul?” and then instead of resisting
as Meno does, Aristotle proceeded to present a coherent definition of the
psyche with vast empirical and logical support.
Aristotle defines the soul as “the form of the body” (p. 157). He says
the soul is what “animates” or enlivens the body. In this sense, all liv-
ing things, even plants, have a soul. Some commentators have suggested
we translate Aristotle’s “soul” into the English word “life force.” This is
TEACHING SENSATION–PERCEPTION PSYCHOLOGY WITH DE ANIMA 67
instructive. De Anima examines the nature and structure of this life force
in plants, animals, and humans.
Aristotle’s first observation about the nature of the soul is that it
appears to be hierarchically organized with more complex functions more
or less grafted on top of the simpler. At the base level, all souls have life
as their defining feature. They are further distinguished by the presence
or absence of different faculties which are responsible for performing dif-
ferent functions. The most basic faculty of the soul is what Aristotle calls
the “nutritive” faculty. The nutritive function involves exchanges between
the organism and the environment that enable the organism to survive
through time. The organism needs to take in non-living nutrients to con-
tinue to live. This aspect of the soul consists of the drive that living organ-
isms have to nourish themselves, to persist, and to heal themselves when
injured. It is what we might call “metabolism” in modern terms. Aristotle
says this nutritive drive is shared by all living things, plants, animals, and
humans, though plants have this faculty only.
The next faculty up the hierarchy of the soul Aristotle refers to as the
“perceptive function.” We focus on this part of the text for the assigned
reading. The information just reviewed about the nutritive function is
briefly presented as background in “lecture” fashion. The perceptive func-
tion of the soul is responsible for what we would today consider “sensation”
and “perception.” Aristotle is thus a pioneering Sensation–Perception
psychologist. The perceptive function is responsible for registering infor-
mation coming from each of the five senses (sensation) as well as organiz-
ing this information into unified percepts (perception). Aristotle believed
that only animals and humans possess this faculty. The final part of the soul
Aristotle calls the “intellective” function. This is responsible for perceiv-
ing wholes, universals, and eternal realities. We will leave the intellective
function for a later chapter on Cognitive Psychology and focus now on the
perceptive faculty alone.
Aristotle goes on in the remainder of the assigned reading to discuss
the specific nature of the perceptive faculty. At its most basic level, he says
the perceptive faculty is responsible for what he calls “sense perception.”
Beings without this part of the soul do not have sense experience. They are
“insentient.” Aristotle conceives of sense perception as a kind of “altera-
tion” or “affection” in which the sensor is moved or affected by the object
in such a way that the sensor becomes like the object sensed. Aristotle says
this process of affection occurs with all the “special senses” of the soul
(e.g., hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch). Each of these sense faculties
68 J.J. DILLON
is “moved” or “affected” by specific types of external objects. Of course,

this affection need not be conscious.
It is important to note here that as Aristotle considers how the process
of sensation works, he explicitly rejects the materialism of Democritus and
Empedocles which holds that sensation is of like by like, that is, a physi-
cal sense organ senses a physical object. This is a logical impossibility for
Aristotle. There can be no registry, no sensation, if things were just bump-
ing into other things. Rather, he says sensation must be of like (physical
thing) by unlike (psychological or ensouled thing).
In addition to the five specific senses, there is also what Aristotle calls
a “primary sense organ” (p. 187) which unifies what comes in from the
five senses into a single percept which is not itself derived from any single
sense. It is the true “sixth sense.” This sense is closely related to what we
today think of as perception.
For Aristotle, perception is a bit more of a higher order process when
compared with sensation. Sensation is the registration (affection) of things
upon the soul. When we perceive something, we take in the “form” of
a thing rather than its matter as we do in sensation (p. 187). One has
the sensation of burning on one’s hand. One has the perception that
the object is a hot one. At the purely physical level, everything is matter
in motion. But this is not what we perceive. We perceive forms, that is,
shapes, wholes, and qualities. While there are these important differences,
sensation and perception are both activities only souls can do. Machines,
things, or even physical bodies cannot sense or perceive.
SENSATION–PERCEPTION PSYCHOLOGY
After the Aristotle selection, students read a section from the Griggs
(2014) text on Sensation and Perception (pp. 104–111; 119–128). We
focus specifically here on what modern psychologists tell us about the
sense of sight and how we see. We use the mechanics of this single sense
as a model for the way the four other senses work. We learn that light-
sensitive receptor cells are located in the retina at the very back of the eye.
No visual processing occurs until these light waves reach the retina. The
text tells us that the retina is made up of three layers of cells—ganglion,
bipolar, and receptor cells (also called rods and cones). The light waves
pass through the ganglion and bipolar cells before reaching the rods and
cones, where visual processing begins.
Light waves are absorbed by light-sensitive chemicals within the recep-

tor cells. This creates patterns of neural impulses that “describe” the visual
image. This neural information is conveyed to the bipolar cells, which then
send it along to the ganglion cells. The optic nerve exits the eye carrying
the information along the visual pathways to the brain. This nerve carries
the visual information to the thalamus of the brain where it will be pro-
cessed in the visual cortex by breaking a visual image down into its basic
parts like angles and diagonal lines. Scientists believe that cortical cells
recognize these discrete features and then reassemble the parts so that a
whole object can be recognized.
Psychologists call the process of gathering and recording information
by sensory structures like the eyes “sensation.” We then explore how this
sensory information is interpreted and used by the brain. This process
is known in psychology as “perception.” Students learn about “bottom-
up” and “top-down” processing, perceptual organization, and constancy.
Bottom-up processing is taking sensory information in as it travels up from
sensory structures to the brain. This processing starts with the translation
of incoming sensory signals into information that the brain can use for
interpretation. Top-down processing is when the brain uses knowledge,
expectations, and beliefs it already has in order to interpret incoming sen-
sory information.
To illustrate the distinction between these two types of processes,
the book uses the example of hearing a language that is foreign to you.
Bottom-up processing enables us to hear the sounds. But we cannot inter-
pret this sensory data because we do not have any means for top-down
processing; that is, we have no prior knowledge or expectations to make
about these sounds. The result is that we essentially hear noise as the other
person speaks the foreign language.
INTERLOCUTRIX: ARISTOTLE MEETS

THE SENSATION–PERCEPTION PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read the assigned portion of De Anima and Griggs (2014),
they complete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A) and
bring it with them to class. The guiding questions of this unit are: How do
sensation and perception work? Are our sensory and perceptual faculties
one thing among other things? Students’ answers here will vary depend-
ing upon their interpretation of the texts. For example, many students
70 J.J. DILLON
are quite taken with the psychologist’s position and see the sensory and
perceptual faculty as a physical process occurring in the brain. Others are
more taken with Aristotle’s position that the sensory and perceptual facul-
ties are ontologically unlike the phenomena they process. Regardless, the
purpose here is to ensure proper understanding of each position and to get
a dialogue going around the guiding question.
I briefly present here a mock-up of my own Interlocutrix sheet to pro-
vide an example of how it might look. Aristotle’s one-sentence answer to
the guiding question might be that sensation and perception are processes
where a human soul conforms itself to the shape and contour of the world.
The psychologist might answer the question by saying that sensation and
perception are processes in which information about the external world
is processed and interpreted by the five senses and the brain. We shall
have Aristotle conduct the dialogue further in the form of the Traditional
Method.
Aristotle: So our purpose today is to answer the question of how the

sensory and perceptual faculties work and whether these faculties are
things among other things or whether they are something else entirely.
Psychologist: Generally speaking, Aristotle, sensory structures are
designed to receive and process specific stimuli from the external
world. These sensory structures are physical entities in the human body
that translate data from the environment into electrical and chemical
impulses that the brain can use and understand.
Aristotle: Fascinating. I have many of my colleagues who take a similar
view as this. Tell me, how is it possible for a physical thing like the brain
to “sense” or “perceive” another physical thing? Wouldn’t it simply be
physically moved by the thing? How do we go from a thing to the realm
of sensation or perception?
Psychologist: Well, this is a problem that has unfortunately confounded
the minds, or I should say brains, of many pre-scientific ancients like you.
Fortunately, science has shed quite a bit of light on this topic since your
time. We now know that sensation is indeed a type of physical move-
ment. We have one physical entity stimulating the beginning of another
physical process which results in a sensory or perceptual experience.
Aristotle: But how could this ever result in a sensation? That is a psycho-
logical experience, an experience of the psyche, not an experience of the
body. It seems there must be a faculty which is unlike the things it senses
which is then “moved” by those things and registers an impression in

the form of a sense.
Psychologist: This is not necessary at all. This is the ancient confusion I
was just speaking of.
Aristotle: Then where is the sense happening? Who or what is having the
experience of the sensation?
Psychologist: The brain.
Aristotle: I see. Perhaps this question can take us into the faculty of per-
ception. How do you understand the process where we have the experi-
ence of whole objects and ideas rather than particular physical senses?
Where is all that happening since these kinds of things are not given to
the senses?
Psychologist: The faculty of perception works in an analogous fashion to
sensation. The brain is composed of various neural structures that trans-
late information coming from the senses into perceptual experiences.
This neuro-perceptual processing can take place in either a “bottom-
up” or “top-down” fashion. But in either case, the perceiving is done
by the brain, a thing among other things.
Aristotle: This claim confounds me even more than the previous one on
sensation. I see that you are saying this brain fires off different nerves in
response to incoming sensory information, but how is this all brought
together into a single percept, say of a round object? And where in the
brain is one having this experience of a percept. Doesn’t there need to
be a “screen” as it were upon which all of this information is projected?
I call this screen the soul.
Psychologist: There is no need for dualistic terms or entities like that,
sir. On this point, you are a product of your pre-scientific time. We can
explain these processes in purely physical terms. This is the genius of
modern scientific thinking. The model we prefer to use is the computer.
Information is “taken in” by the computer through the keyboard (sen-
sation). It is then sorted out by a micro-processor and organized into
shapes and images (perception). The whole computer is a physical sys-
tem. There is no “screen” or soul inside the computer and yet it is able to
register a great deal of complex information. We don’t need a little man
in the computer who is sorting everything out. The parts of the com-
puter each do their part to create the whole experience of perception.
Aristotle: I need to learn more about this computer of yours. It seems like
a huge upgrade from the papyrus we Greeks have to use. But it seems to
me that when we perceive something, we take in the “form” of a thing
72 J.J. DILLON
rather than its matter. I do not see how matter (a thing) can abstract form
from matter. It is matter! You can’t get form from matter; matter only
bumps up against matter. It has no ability to sense or register. Sensation
and perception are activities only souls (which draw out forms) can do.
Machines, things, or even physical bodies cannot sense or perceive.
Psychologist: I suppose we might just need to agree to disagree here.
Aristotle: Perhaps we can conclude with where we agree. I agree with
much of your characterization of sensation and perception. In particu-
lar, you seem to be correct about the specificity that exists within the
sensory and perceptual faculties.
Psychologist: Indeed, materially structured “receptors” respond to spe-
cific stimuli (brightness, sharpness, etc.) and send messages separately
to specifically designated areas of the cortex. The retina in each eye,
for example, contains about 132 million photoreceptor cells—rods
and cones—which convert light into specific nerve impulses. The rods
respond only to very low levels of illumination and the cones respond
to higher levels of illumination.
Aristotle: Brilliant! Yes. Where I differ is in the notion that sensation or
perception is something that physical bodies can do. It seems you need
a soul to sense and perceive. In your view, stimulation of these specific
areas of the visual cortex of the brain leads us to have the particularized
and specific perceptions that we do. If the various and specific sensations
which are projected onto the retina or stimulate the ear, or the nose,
and so on, are then translated into physical nerve impulses in the brain,
then no “screen” exists in the brain for all of this information to be
projected upon and perceived.
Psychologist: Exactly.
Aristotle: Then how is it that we see whole scenes before us rather than
discrete bits of sensory information? How are all these specific nerve
impulses translated into the actual perceptions we have? Who/What
perceives all the information that arrives at the cortex? Rocks cannot
sense or perceive, can they? I argue that the presence of the soul makes
certain beings “sentient” and capable of registering information from
the external world in the first place.
When students get to class, they work in small groups to share the dia-
logues from their Interlocutrix sheets and then put their heads together
to construct a group dialogue which they enact for the class in a role-play.
After recreating this small group dialogue in class, students are directed
to write on their Interlocutrix forms what they actually believe about the
guiding question: How do sensation and perception work? Is our sensory
and perceptual faculty one thing among other things?

from their reading and dialogue exchanges. I will give an example of some-
thing I might write myself as an illustration of this portion: Students can
see that the modern psychological approach to sensation and perception
is structurally similar to the view of Democritus and Empedocles wherein
perception is of like (physical thing) by like (physical sensory/perceptual
apparatus). It is here where Aristotle differs most from the modern con-
ception of perception. For him, something which is unlike what is being
perceived is doing the perceiving. Aristotle offers the challenging idea that
perception is the reception of the form of the object without its matter.
Since the perceptual apparatus deals with forms, it cannot itself be matter.
I think it is this idea that the moderns misunderstand most.
I am very sympathetic to the idea that sensation and perception are
things that only souls can do. Along with Schumacher (1977), I believe
that modern people are very confused about what the ancients thought
of as the Great Chain of Being. This idea sees the universe as composed
of different levels of reality, some physical and some incorporeal. For the
modern, only the empirical level is seen as real and valid. From this point
of view, the intangible realm of reality contains the forms or essences of
things. Aristotle is arguing that the human soul is the faculty which is
capable of drawing out or perceiving this level of reality. For him, only
souls can draw out essences and forms, not bodies. Bodies occupy the
material level of reality. Souls have experiences of objects. Bodies do not
have experiences of objects. But I find the psychologist’s “ghost in the
machine” critique of views like Aristotle’s very compelling as well. Do we
need a separate ontological entity like the soul to make sense of what is
going on with sensation and perception?
The last thing students do is write down the unanswered questions they
still have about the guiding questions. For me, I find the notion that “the
brain” is the entity which interprets, experiences, and understands a little
confused. The textbook defines perception as “The interpretation by the
brain of sensory information” (Griggs, 2014, p. 120, emphasis added).
How does this work? I do not fully understand how successive layers of
74 J.J. DILLON
physical processing result in the unified, perceptual experience that char-

acterizes the lived human world. Surely, brains are required for this to
happen and they are part of the equation, I just struggle with the idea that
brains “interpret” or “understand” anything. I recognize in myself the
need to more clearly understand the close relationship between the body/
brain and the soul/mind. The upcoming Conference on Psychology and
the Body will perhaps be an ideal forum for me to do that.
REFERENCES
Aristotle. (1986). De anima (H. Lawson-Tancred, Trans.). New York: Penguin.
(Original work published 350 B.C.E.).
Cohoe, C. (2013). Why the intellect cannot have a bodily organ: De Anima 3.4.
Phronesis, 58(4), 347–377. doi:10.1163/15685284-12341253.
Worth.
Johnston, R. (2011). Aristotle’s De Anima: On why the soul is not a set of capaci-
ties. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19(2), 185–200. doi:10.1080
/09608788.2011.555158.
Schumacher, E. F. (1977). A guide for the perplexed. New York, NY: Harper-Perennial.
CHAPTER 9
Teaching Cognitive Psychology

with De Anima
In this chapter, we pick up Aristotle’s De Anima (1986) again, but move

our discussion a little farther up the psychic hierarchy. In the previous chap-
ter, we looked at the nutritive and perceptive functions of the psyche. We
turn now to what Aristotle calls the “intellective” function. The equivalent
modern term for “intellective” is “cognitive.” Beginning in the 1950s,
psychology and many other social sciences witnessed what has come to
be known as the “Cognitive Revolution” (see Miller, 1956; Broadbent,
1958; Neisser, 1967). This revolution involved a blending of psychology,
anthropology, and linguistics with artificial intelligence, computer science,
and neuroscience. The Cognitive Revolution cast the higher mental func-
tions as part of a complex, biological system modeled upon the computer
and information processing.
The contemporary influence of the Cognitive Revolution in psychol-
ogy cannot be overstated. But long before these twentieth-century figures
came upon the scene, Aristotle provided a bedrock account of the cogni-
tive functions in ancient Greece. Indeed, it is difficult to think beyond
many of Aristotle’s claims about cognitive functions. His work is thus a
“touchstone” that leaves us very different than when we first picked him
up. He provides an indispensible way to introduce modern students to
Cognitive Psychology.

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76 J.J. DILLON
ARISTOTLE (DE ANIMA, BOOK III, CHAPS. 4, 7, AND 8)

At a general level, Aristotle says that intellectual activity, or thinking, is like
perceiving. In both, the sense faculty is “affected” or moved by the sense
object. With cognition, the intellect operates not on things as it does in
sensation, but upon the images and forms of things, “[f]or in the think-
ing soul, images play the part of percepts…” (p. 208). Objects of sense
are actual things in the world; objects of thought are ideas and images.
Images, Aristotle says, are like sense data but do not have any matter to
them (p. 210). The intellect enables us to perceive not things, but what
things are, their nature, or Form. The intellect also performs other opera-
tions that enable us to know how things are similar to or different from
other things, to make judgments, evaluations, comparisons, and contrasts.
As was the case with perception, the faculty of the intellect is simi-
larly unlike the objects it thinks about. Thus, the intellect cannot be an
idea or image itself, but something which stands apart from and receives
the impression of ideas and images. The intellect is the knower; images
and ideas are the known. Because everything can potentially come to be
known by the intellect, the intellect cannot therefore be a natural thing
like other objects. An object is just not transcendent enough from other
objects in order to know all other objects which can be known.
Aristotle characterizes intellect as “pure potentiality” (vs. actuality). It
is a faculty which stands ready to become like any other thing which could
actually be known. Intellect therefore cannot be “mixed” with the body.
He writes, “That part of the soul then that is called intellect is before it
thinks in actuality none of the things that exist. This makes it unreasonable
that it be mixed with the body—for, if so, it would have to have some qual-
ity, being either hot or cold, or indeed have some organ like the perceptive
faculty [e.g., eyes, ears], whereas it in fact has none” (p. 202). This will
be a large area of contention between him and the modern psychologist.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
In addition to Aristotle, students also read a small section of the Griggs
(2014) text on Cognitive Psychology (pp. 233–237; 251–259). Recall,
this reading is typically done for a separate class meeting. Cognitive
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of “mental functions,” includ-
ing memory, learning, perception, thinking, language, concept develop-
ment, and decision making. This modern task of specifying the various
TEACHING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY WITH DE ANIMA 77
“higher” psychological faculties is the same one Aristotle undertakes in

De Anima. As they read, students will begin to recognize the important
similarities as well as the differences between the two accounts.
Griggs (2014) notes that the modern study of cognition rests on the
premise that cognitive processes mirror brain processes and that the brain
can be understood as a complex computing system which principally solves
problems. Griggs (2014) defines thinking as “the processing of informa-
tion to solve problems and make judgments and decisions” (p. 229).
Griggs (2014) defines a problem as “…a situation in which there is a goal,
but it is not clear how to reach the goal” (p. 229). Thinking thus helps
us marshal resources to reach intended goals. These resources are called
“strategies” in psychology.
Students read a section from the text on the two dominant strategies
we use to solve problems: algorithms and heuristics. An algorithm is a
step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct answer to a problem
(p. 233). For example, when we solve a math problem with long division,
we are using an algorithm. If we perform the steps properly, we will get
the correct answer. For many problems in life however, we may not know
an algorithm or it is the type of problem where an algorithm simply does
not exist. In such cases, we have to use a “heuristic,” that is, “…a solu-
tion strategy that seems reasonable given our past experiences with solving
problems, especially similar problems” (p. 234). A heuristic is like an edu-
cated guess. For example, while bird watching, I have found birds in the
past at the border places between thick woods and open fields. So when I
come to a new bird watching area, my “heuristic” is to first look for open
fields and then walk back to wooded areas and wait.
Students learn from reading the psychology text that what Aristotle calls
“intellect” psychologists now call “intelligence.” In the final section of
text reading, students learn about various modern theories of intelligence.
Psychologists define intelligence as the ability to solve problems efficiently
and effectively. Higher degrees of intelligence enable me to solve many
complex problems with the correct answers and to do so with a minimum
of wasted solution time. Controversy swirls in psychology over whether
intelligence is a single ability (e.g., Spearman’s g-factor) or a collection
of specific abilities (e.g., factor analysis and Gardner’s theory of multiple
intelligences). We also consider issues of how to measure intelligence val-
idly by looking at such batteries as the Stanford–Binet and Weschler scales
(WAIS and WISC).
78 J.J. DILLON
INTERLOCUTRIX: ARISTOTLE MEETS THE COGNITIVE

PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read the assigned portion of De Anima and Griggs (2014),
bring it with them to class. The guiding questions of this unit are: What
does it mean to think? What is the relationship between thinking and
the body? I present my own analysis to illustrate how this part of the
Interlocutrix might look. Aristotle’s one-sentence answer to this ques-
tion is that thinking is a deeply contemplative function, unmixed with
the body, wherein we perceive what things are in their Being, as well as
make judgments, evaluations, comparisons, and contrasts. The Cognitive
Psychologist’s one-sentence answer to this question is that cognitive
processes mirror brain processes and principally involve, “the processing
of information to solve problems and make judgments and decisions”
(p. 229). Here is how a further dialogue between the two might proceed:
Aristotle: I enjoyed your chapter on sensation and perception. I am curi-

ous to know your views on the “higher” psychological functions like
thinking and judging.
Psychologist: Well, this is a complicated question, but like you, we believe
thinking is related to sensation and perception. Thinking is when the
brain processes the information coming to us from sensation and per-
ception in order to solve problems, as well as make judgments and
decisions.
Aristotle: I see. And tell me about these judgments and decisions the
brain makes.
Psychologist: Well, in the course of our attempts to solve the many
problems that confront us in everyday life, we often must think about
whether one course would be preferable to another and then commit
ourselves to our choice.
Aristotle: So the thinking function is primarily dedicated to solving
problems?
Psychologist: It is. This is what thinking has evolved in the brain to
enable us to do. It is what endows creatures that have it with a survival
advantage.
Aristotle: But does the mind not also seek to know and discover things
for their own sake, apart from any particular problems we may have to
TEACHING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY WITH DE ANIMA 79
solve? Surely there is an “active” component to the intellect which you

speak of very well, but what of the “contemplative” aspect? Don’t you
think this way when you conduct your psychological investigations and
experiments?
Psychologist: I am not sure what you mean, but when we seek knowledge
in science, it is to solve the problem that our hypothesis presents. We
want to know why cancer happens, for example, but we do not know
how. That is a problem and we seek to solve it by doing science.
Aristotle: I see. And when you say that “cognitive processes mirror brain
processes,” what do you mean by that?
Psychologist: Well, we mean that anything that we describe as taking
place at the so-called psychological or cognitive level is really a process
which is also taking place at the neurological level. We just cannot see it.
Aristotle: I see. But isn’t the cognitive function something entirely differ-
ent from the body?
Psychologist: It is not. They are one and the same, just different levels of
the same physical system. Since we can describe them as different levels,
we make the mistake of thinking the two are different in fact.
Aristotle: It seems to me that everything can potentially come to be
known by the intellect. The intellect must therefore be transcendent
enough from other objects in order to be able to know them. The intel-
lect is the knower; images and ideas are the known.
Psychologist: I do not follow. The eye can perceive other things going on
within the eye. Why can’t the intellect (part of the body) know other
parts of its own body (ideas and images) as well as the physical bodies
in the world outside? We are back to the “ghost in the machine” I am
trying to avoid.
Aristotle: Indeed we are. I cannot logically understand how the brain
would ever be able to get enough distance from the body to turn back
on itself like that. It is just a body after all.
When students get to class, they work in small groups to share their
individual dialogues and put their heads together to construct a single
small group dialogue which they enact for the class in a role-play. After
recreating and performing their small group dialogues in class, students
are directed to write on their Interlocutrix forms what they now actually
believe about the guiding questions: What does it mean to think? What is
the relationship between thinking and the body?
80 J.J. DILLON

During the last few minutes of class, students write down what they have
learned from their readings and dialogue exchanges. When I do this, I can
see that Aristotle and the Cognitive Psychologist are on the same page on
many of these issues. They seem to be trying to characterize the same phe-
nomena. The psychologist is focused a bit more on the problem-solving
aspect of cognition than Aristotle and also makes an attempt to link intel-
lectual functions with the body and the computer in a way which Aristotle
cannot accept. I learned that Cognitive Psychology heavily relies upon the
computer metaphor of the mind in order to do its work.
The last thing students do is write down the questions they still have
about the guiding questions of the unit. For me, I can agree that we use
the intellect to make judgments about things and solve problems, but it
seems like this ability is based upon perceiving into the forms of things as
Aristotle says. I wonder whether a brain can do this. It is becoming more
and more apparent to me that psychology is a science “without a soul”
(Barrett, 1987). Psychology has literally banished the classical notion
of the psyche from many of its most important endeavors. Further, this
removal is seen as a scientific advance over a better banished past. This
makes me skeptical whether psychology will ever be able to correct this
problem. The upcoming Conference on Psychology and the Body will
hopefully help to sort out these and any other remaining questions.
REFERENCES
Barrett, W. (1987). Death of the soul. New York, NY: Anchor.
Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and communication. London, UK: Pergamon
Press.
Worth.
Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits
on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97.
doi:10.1037/h0043158.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
CHAPTER 10
First Academic Conference on Psychology

and the Body
At this point, we have considered five very weighty issues in philosophy

and psychology: the brain, memory, learning, sensation–perception, and
cognition. Students have done a lot of good reading, writing, role-play,
and class discussion. They have learned a great deal about the various sub-
disciplines in psychology. They have answered several guiding questions
and listed the questions they still have about these matters. The Academic
Conference provides an opportunity to summarize all the material we
have learned and make some headway on addressing the remaining ques-
tions we have collected.
At Academic Conferences, students have the opportunity to com-
plete larger writing, role-play, and discussion assignments in which they
respond to assigned questions which call on them to create and enact
higher-order dialogues between Socrates and a larger strain of thought
in the discipline of psychology. Previous chapters have focused on spe-
cific sub-disciplines of psychology. The texts considered at a Conference
enable students to integrate all the ideas they have just explored in rela-
tion to a single Conference theme. Students can now stand back from
their prior work and summarize things, take a stand on certain issues. This
also provides the professor with an opportunity to do some grading and
other forms of summative evaluation. Conferences have proven to be an
excellent way to solidify coursework by having students process and more
deeply reflect upon two- to three-week sections of the course. They are
also quite entertaining!

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82 J.J. DILLON
Prior to the Conference meeting, students do a Conference reading at

home. This text is chosen because it encompasses the larger themes and
questions that have arisen in the units preceding the Conference. In this
case, prior themes and questions all relate to the soul’s relationship to the
body. This is why the Conference is entitled “Psychology and the Body.”
Before Conference day, I randomly assign students to small groups.
Each group is assigned one of several Conference questions which they
answer at home after doing the reading. In these questions, students com-
pose imaginative dialogue between Socrates and a representative of psy-
chology (see the full list of questions at the end of this chapter). When we
meet on Conference day, the small groups gather together, consider their
answers to their common question, and then jump right into the task of
composing a role-play to enact for the whole class. Eight to ten minutes
of question and discussion time is allotted to each group after each per-
formance to help students digest what they have just seen. I turn to the
reading for the first Academic Conference now.
SOCRATES, PHAEDO (90E–95A; 100B–102D; 105B–105E;

78C–79D)
For this Conference reading, students go back to the dialogue Phaedo
and look at a new section of the text. We left the dialogue in Chap. 4
with Simmias’ provocative “attunement” argument for the idea that the
soul ceases to exist at death (85c–102d). The dialogue continues from
this point when the character Echecrates interrupts Phaedo’s recollection
of these events in Socrates’ prison cell with his own present tense ques-
tions. We here remember that this whole dialogue is being narrated by
Phaedo to his friend Echecrates who asked to tell him about Socrates’
last days. Phaedo tells Echecrates that at this point, the people witnessing
the dialogue began to get very depressed. They thought Simmias’ attun-
ement argument would be hard to beat, that when we die our souls simply
disperse and we are no more. They worried that Socrates might become
depressed as well and lose the impressive courage he has hitherto demon-
strated in the face of his imminent death.
But, Phaedo tells Echecrates this did not happen at all. Phaedo says that
Socrates proudly stood up and made an impassioned plea for logic and
the need to avoid what he called the vice of “misologic.” This concept of
misologic is an extremely important one for this book. Misologic, Socrates
FIRST ACADEMIC CONFERENCE ON PSYCHOLOGY AND THE BODY 83
says, is akin to misanthropy. With misanthropy, we develop a hatred of

mankind. This hatred springs from disappointment and hurt feelings.
Socrates says, “Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or
skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether
truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds
him to be wicked and unreliable…in the end, after many blows, one comes
to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all” (89d).
With misologic, we have the experience of putting great belief in an
argument, working hard for our position, and believing it to be quite
sound and true. But then someone comes along and pokes a few holes
in it, exposing it as deficient. As a consequence, we lose faith not just in
our argument, but with logic and the Dialectic altogether. We may come
to believe that when it comes to important questions which are abstract
and non-empirical in nature, nobody can ever resolve them in the end. We
think it is all a matter of personal taste and opinion, that logic and argu-
ment cannot save us.
Socrates admonishes his audience to take great pains to ignore this ten-
dency toward misologic in their own thinking. We simply cannot allow
the important realities of the intelligible realm to be relegated to taste or
personal opinion, for example, “Who’s to say?” or “It’s up to the indi-
vidual to decide.” I add as an aside that the misologic Socrates speaks of is
endemic to the modern classroom. Students are loath to wade into philo-
sophical and political issues out of fear of offending someone or coming
into conflict with someone who has a different view. The modern student
tries to put his or her head down, listen to the teacher, and hopefully get
along with everyone. Only the “hard sciences,” they say, have the answers.
When it comes to matters of philosophy and religion on the other hand,
who’s to say? Many see these things as matters of opinion and personal
preference. Discussion and Dialectic, they conclude, cannot illuminate
these issues.
Rather than succumb to misologic, Socrates squarely considers Simmias’
fine objections to the arguments he’s made thus far, trusts in the Dialectical
process, and attempts to offer a revised account. Phaedo says that the audi-
ence starts to feel their spirits rise with Socrates’ resolve. Socrates reviews
Cebes’ and Simmias’ objections to Socrates’ claim the soul is immortal.
He summarizes, “Simmias, I believe, is troubled with doubts. He is afraid
that, even if the soul is more divine and a higher thing than the body, it
may nevertheless be destroyed first, as being a kind of attunement” (91d).
Socrates continues, “Cebes on the other hand appeared to agree with me
84 J.J. DILLON
that soul is more enduring than body, but to maintain that no one can be
sure that, after repeatedly wearing out a great many bodies, it does not at
last perish itself, leaving the last body behind” (91d).
In responding to these two arguments, Socrates returns to the theory
of recollection he alluded to earlier in the dialogue. This was discussed in
detail in Chap. 6. This time though, Socrates provides a much more logi-
cal rationale as to why this theory is worth holding. He starts to dialogue
with Simmias to establish what they each agree on. Simmias agrees that
the soul pre-exists the body and that learning is recollection. He is just
not certain that the soul continues to exist forever. Socrates notes that if
all of this is so, then Simmias cannot also logically believe that the soul
is attunement. The reason, Socrates says, is that for attunement to work,
the instrument, strings, and untuned notes must all come first. Any attun-
ement that eventually arises springs from these parts. Attunement is thus
the last of all to be constituted and the first to be destroyed. But the soul,
Socrates says, seems to enter the body with an absolute standard of real-
ity from somewhere other than the body. We do not attain this absolute
standard from the body or through experience in a body. Further, Socrates
notes, no soul is any more or less than just a soul, so it cannot be either
more or less “in tune.” It is simply a soul. It cannot attain a greater pro-
portion of attunement or discord. So attunement cannot be an essential
property of the soul.
Simmias agrees with Socrates and surprisingly abandons his argument
that the soul is attunement. Socrates follows this up with even more rea-
sons to abandon it. He asks him, does any other part of a person govern
him but the soul? Simmias says, no, it is only the soul that governs. Socrates
asks, can the soul oppose the physical body as when we fight the urge to
drink or eat? Simmias answers, yes, of course the soul can resist the urges
of the body. Socrates says that if the soul is attunement, it must always fol-
low what the body demands; it can never sound a note that conflicts with
the condition of its constituent parts. The soul simply reflects whatever is
going on in the body. Socrates notes that in fact, the soul works in just the
opposite fashion, “…sometimes scolding, sometimes encouraging—and
conversing with the desires and passions and fears as though it were quite
separate and distinct from them” (94d). The soul, they all agree, cannot
be an attunement and seems instead to be a governing force of the body.
We then skip to (100b) in the dialogue where Socrates tries to develop
what he regards as a “truer” theory of causation than the attunement view.
With attunement, the parts of the body cause what goes on in the soul.
Socrates believes this view to be mistaken. He says that if he can prove

his own theory of causation, he can finally prove to them that the soul is
immortal. Socrates’ view of causation begins with the “innate ideas” we
spoke of in Chap. 7. From this perspective, we have an “absolute” account
of certain concepts in our minds which we then use to make comparisons
to the actual things we observe in the world. Recall the previous example
of when we say that two things are “not equal.” In order to be able to
say this, we must have some understanding in our minds of what absolute
equality is which we use to compare the particular cases we see.
Socrates gives another example and argues that when we determine
that some particular thing is “beautiful,” it is only so because it partakes
in absolute beauty, what he calls the “universal,” the Form of Beauty.
He says, “…it is by [universal] beauty that beautiful things are beautiful”
(100d). In other words, the Form of Beauty “causes” the particular thing
to be beautiful by enveloping the thing within itself. The beautiful thing
now “participates” in Beauty (see Pepper, 1942). Socrates says that this is
a truer account of causation than the attunement view.
In the next section of the assigned reading (105b–105e), Socrates
extends this theory of causation to the soul. He asks Cebes, what must
be present in a body to make it alive? The soul, he answers. So, Socrates
reasons, the defining feature of the soul must be life. And what, Socrates
asks, is the opposite of life? Death, Cebes answers. Socrates then reasons
that the soul must be caused by life. The soul “participates” in the Form
of life. Socrates reasons that since the essence of the soul is life and since
life cannot admit its opposite, the soul must therefore be immortal. All
who are present agree with this reasoning. Socrates says rather than being
depressed about dying, we should see it as a cause for joy and courage.
In the final section of the assigned reading (78c–79d), Socrates defines
what he means by knowledge or “wisdom.” He explores this question by
considering the idea of universals and particulars we have just seen. He
asks Cebes, are the concrete instances of the universal beauty visible? Yes,
Cebes says, they are. And are they changeable, Socrates asks? Yes, Cebes
answers. And what about the universals, Socrates asks, can we see absolute
beauty? No, Cebes answers, we conceive beauty. We do not perceive it.
And does absolute beauty ever change? It does not, Cebes says. So they
stipulate that on the one hand, there are particular, visible things which
change. On the other hand, there are universal, invisible things which
do not change. Socrates then turns to human beings. Are we not part
body and part soul? Yes, Cebes agrees. Socrates wonders if the body is
86 J.J. DILLON
closer to the changeable or to the unchanging? His interlocutors agree

that the body seems closer to the particular, the visible, and the changing.
The soul, they argue, seems closer to the universal, the invisible, and the
eternal.
Socrates then reasons that when it comes to knowledge, when we use
our body or any sense of the body to know something, our soul is “drawn
away by the body into the realm of the variable, and loses its way and
becomes confused and dizzy…” (79c). But when the soul passes into the
realm of the immortal and changeless, since it is of a kindred nature, it
wants to remain “in that realm of the absolute, constant and invariable,
through contact with beings of a similar nature” (79d). Socrates calls this
state where a soul is positioned beneath the universal “knowledge” or
“wisdom” (79d). It is an immensely important concept for understanding
the entire Socratic project and the ideas developed in this book.
The idea guiding this book is that teaching with the Socratic Method
offers students the possibility of “real knowledge in a virtual age.” For
me to make a case for this claim contained in the subtitle of my book, I
need to first establish what “real knowledge” is. In short, real knowledge
is wisdom. It is the enduring knowledge Socrates speaks of where the soul
passes into the realm of the immortal and the changeless. The goal of the
Socratic Method (and of all good teaching for that matter) is the achieve-
ment of this state of wisdom in students. We know our work as teachers is
done when our students’ souls become wise, when they pass beyond fad
and fashion into the immortal and the changeless and reside beneath the
Forms of things rather than in the things themselves. For the first time
in the course, students see Socrates’ theory of Forms. Students begin to
understand how this theory guides Socrates in all he says and does in his
life. It makes his behavior in the dialogues we have read thus far much
more intelligible. They see too that this theory gives Socrates the immense
courage and equanimity he displays in the face of death.
Let us now consider the various guiding questions we have pondered at
this point in our work with Socrates:
Neuropsychology: What is the soul (psyche)? Does the soul depend upon
the working of the body’s physical parts?
Psychology of Memory: What does it mean to remember something?
Why do we forget?
Psychology of Learning: What does it mean to learn something? Can
you know something if you haven’t experienced it?
Sensation and Perception: How do sensation and perception work? Is

our sensory and perceptual faculty one thing among other things?
Cognitive Psychology: What does it mean to think? What is the relation-
ship between thinking and the body?
We can see from our various imaginary Interlocutrix dialogues that

Socrates frequently claims that psychology is much too quick to dispense
with the immaterial soul, too quick to see the psyche as just one thing
among other things, too quick to invoke physical processes to explain
psychological ones. We see that this question of the relationship between
psychology and the body needs to be further explored.
The guiding questions for this Conference are: Is the soul a body like
other bodies? What does psychology study? Is psychology a “science of
the soul” (logos of the psyche)? Students read the assigned selections from
Phaedo at home. As previously mentioned, they are also randomly assigned
one of the five Conference questions below. After reading the text, stu-
dents prepare a formal, typewritten answer to their assigned question at
home. They use their completed Interlocutrix sheets from prior units to
help them compose their Conference responses.
CONFERENCE QUESTIONS (DONE AT HOME)

“No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing
a dislike for argument [making a case for why you think what you do]”
(Phaedo, 89c).
…we would be right to place the inquiry into the soul among the first kinds
of knowledge. But knowledge of the soul is also held to make a great con-
tribution to the complete understanding of the truth and especially towards
that of nature… We seek to contemplate and know its nature and substance
and then the things that are accidental to it (Aristotle, 1986, p. 126)
1. Neuropsychology: In De Anima, Aristotle presents a critique of

materialism: “But while one philosopher will say that the house is
composed of stones, bricks and beams, another will say that it is the
form in these things for the given purpose. Who, then, is the natural
philosopher among these? Is he the one who defines the house in
88 J.J. DILLON
terms of its matter and knows nothing of its rationale, or the one
who defines it only in terms of its rationale?” How does Aristotle
define the soul (one sentence)? Is it “the bricks?” “The rationale/
form?” How does neuropsychology see what Aristotle calls the soul
(one sentence)? Is it “the bricks?” “The rationale/form?” What is
crux of Simmias’ “attunement” critique of the immortality of the
soul in Phaedo? How does this critique relate to neuropsychology?
Bring in the section of Phaedo we read for our Conference reading
to articulate your answer. Construct a dialogue of at least 300 words
between Socrates and a neuropsychologist that addresses the ques-
tion: What is the soul? Have Socrates do the questioning using the
Traditional Method. Be sure this dialogue compares and contrasts
their two approaches. After this exchange, be sure to indicate how
you define the soul.
2. Memory Psychology: Recall our discussion in class of the “pre-
Socratic” philosophers such as Thales. Socrates refers to them in the
Conference reading from Phaedo where he discusses his younger
years and his enchantment with a “materialist” theory of causality,
for example, “Is it with the blood that we think or with the air or the
fire that is in us?” What is Socrates’ problem with this view of causal-
ity, and which view does Socrates find to be better? That is, what
does Socrates think causes things? In this context, where do our
“memories” of absolute things come from? The world? Experience?
Then construct a dialogue of at least 300 words between Socrates
and a Psychologist of Memory that addresses the question: What
does it mean to remember something? Have Socrates do the ques-
tioning using the Traditional Method. Be sure this dialogue com-
pares and contrasts their two approaches. After this exchange, be
sure to indicate in a single sentence what you think it means to
remember something.
3. The Psychology of Learning: Think of Socrates as Meno’s
“teacher.” What would you say is Socrates “philosophy of learning”
as presented in Meno? What are the major things that Socrates tries
to get Meno to do as the dialogue unfolds? Relate this theory of
learning to the section of Phaedo you just read in preparation for the
Conference. Construct a dialogue of at least 300 words between
Socrates and B.F. Skinner that addresses the question: How do
human beings learn? Have Socrates do the questioning of Skinner
using the Traditional Method. Be sure this dialogue compares and

contrasts their two approaches. After this exchange, be sure to indi-
cate what you think about Socrates’ method of teaching. What does
this method assume about human learning? Do you agree with these
assumptions? Why or why not.
4. Sensation–Perception Psychology: With reference to the text,
explain the distinction between “sensing” and “thinking/knowl-
edge” that is presented in the Phaedo. Which does Socrates find
more reliable (refer to text)? Why does he believe this? How does
Socrates believe we acquire knowledge? What role does “the soul”
play in this process? What role does the body play? Construct a dia-
logue of at least 300 words between Socrates and a sensation–
perception psychologist that addresses the question: How do we
acquire knowledge? Be sure to base this dialogue on the Phaedo and
De Anima. Have Socrates do the questioning using the Traditional
Method. After this exchange, be sure to indicate in a single sentence
how you believe we acquire knowledge.
5. Cognitive Psychology: With reference to the text, explain the dis-
tinction between “sensing” and “thinking/knowledge” as presented
in the Phaedo. Which does Socrates find more reliable (refer to text)?
Why does he believe this? How does Socrates believe we acquire
knowledge? What role does “the soul” play in this process? What
role does the body play? What does Aristotle say the “intellect” is in
De Anima? What does it do for us? How is this view of thinking
similar to and different from the view coming from Cognitive
Psychology (one sentence)? Construct a dialogue of at least 300
words between Aristotle and a cognitive psychologist that addresses
the question: What is thinking and how does it work? Be sure to
base the dialogue on the Phaedo and De Anima. Have Aristotle do
the questioning using the Traditional Method. At the end of this
exchange, be sure to indicate what you believe thinking is and how
you think it works.
ON CONFERENCE DAY
It is worth some effort to establish a relaxed, festive, but serious atmo-
sphere for the Conference. We gather to celebrate the intellectual work
we have done and to “confer” so as to delve deeper into our guiding
90 J.J. DILLON
questions. I like to have refreshments, desserts, coffee, and tea available.

Sometimes students will want to cater the Conference by “pot luck.”
The room needs to have tables for small group work and a central
podium or stage area at the front of the room where students will enact
their scripted role-plays and field questions from the audience. Instructors
may wish to record these performances for later viewing and discussion.
They can post them online as a link for students to ponder further or offer
each other formal feedback. Some instructors require students to post
feedback to each group’s presentation. It is a good idea to take a bit of
time in the classes leading up to a Conference to make these preparations
and to discuss how we want the Conference to go. It goes without saying
that certain ground rules need to be established that will regulate when we
are silent and give presenters our attention and when we talk and discuss.
After a few minutes of gathering refreshments, the instructor will want
to begin the Conference with a brief convocation and introduction. Part
of the introduction would briefly set the stage with the questions that
are still on the table and will hopefully be addressed by the Conference.
Students work in small groups with other students who have been assigned
the same Conference question. They take about ten minutes to prepare a
dialogue script and then jump into the small group role-plays. Each group
stands before the class and enacts its dialogue. Students have Conference
Feedback Forms (see Appendix B) on which they write their immediate
impressions and remaining questions in response to each role-play. They
hand these forms in at the end. I allow five to ten minutes after each skit
for students to ask questions of the presenters and give their feedback. As
an alternative to this, instructors may wish to randomly select one student
from each group to stand and deliver the prepared written answers as a
conference paper. Students could then ask the presenter targeted ques-
tions afterward.
In the last two or three minutes of the Conference, students complete
the latter part of their feedback forms. Here they answer the questions:
What are ideas that I learned today that are new to me? What are ideas
that I previously had but they have been deepened or stimulated by this
Conference? What do I still not know, or what am I still not sure about?
What am I still chewing on? After helping to clean up, students turn these
forms in as their “ticket out the door.” While we will not have addressed all
remaining questions, we have hopefully integrated our many prior learn-
ings and made some headway on the remaining questions. Instructors
may want to take two or more class periods for the Academic Conference
depending upon the needs and nature of the group. I turn now to a new
unit which will commence in the class immediately following the Academic
Conference.
REFERENCES
Pepper, S. (1942). World hypotheses: A study in evidence. Berkeley, CA: University
of California.
CHAPTER 11
Teaching Developmental Psychology

with Republic
We have just enjoyed a significant academic event in our first Conference.

Now that we have the articulated theory of Forms, we are able to delve
more deeply into the Socratic Method and use it to explore new questions
relating to new sub-disciplines in psychology. We begin this work by turn-
ing to Plato’s Republic, a book regarded by some as among the greatest
and most influential ever written (Seymour-Smith, 2004; Sherman, 2013).
For more on the Republic, see Barney, Brennan, and Brittain (2014).
Though often studied in political science circles, the Republic is really
a book about education. Socrates provides a blueprint for how he believes
the “rulers” of society should be educated. In this work, he builds upon
the distinction between sensation and knowledge we just explored in
Phaedo. In the Republic, we learn that Socratic education involves mov-
ing a student from the senses to “knowledge,” from a less developed to
a more developed state, from lower to higher, from darkness to light.
This “higher-lower” scheme has been immensely influential to the way
the Western world understands children, development, education, and
growth. This classic text is thus an excellent vehicle for teaching modern
developmental psychology. For more on the Republic, see Allott (2011)
and Annas (1981).

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_11
94 J.J. DILLON
REPUBLIC (VI, 509E–VII, 518C)

I first provide a bit of background about the Republic that will put the
assigned portion of the text in a more intelligible context. On the sur-
face, the interlocutors in Republic are discussing the meaning of justice.
Socrates works with a character named Adeimantus in the beginning of
the dialogue to define this important virtue. In this sense, the Republic is
similar to Meno, in that the dialogue is devoted to exploring the meaning
of a particular term. But unlike Meno, where Socrates uses the Traditional
Method to probe his interlocutor, Socrates here uses what I call the Essay
Method and the Method of Myth to work with his interlocutors. The
actual interlocutor Socrates speaks with in the text is not his main focus;
we the readers are.
At the beginning of the Republic, Socrates offers a view of the just soci-
ety as one in which each person does what his or her type of soul intends
for them to do. Socrates argues that in each soul there are three parts: (a)
Reason, which calculates and makes wise decisions; (b) Spirit, which is
ambitious, enterprising, pugnacious, and self-assertive; and (c) Appetite,
the irrational cravings and legitimate needs of the body. Of course, there
are many ways to organize these three parts of the individual soul. For
Socrates, the best way to order the soul for Reason to rule and organize
the other parts. While human beings have each of these three parts in
them, some have soul parts in greater measure than others. They would
thus be more inclined to naturally engage in certain activities, would have
natural aptitudes for certain tasks. For example, some souls are appetitive
types, some spirited types, still others reasoned types.
By analogy with the individual soul, society can be divided into three
parts as well: Rulers, Auxiliaries, and Producers. Producers are appetitive
types who are governed by desire. They make great merchants, workers,
businesspeople, salespeople, and so on. Auxiliaries are spirited types. They
make excellent soldiers who defend the city from invaders or police officers
who keep order and peace at home. Rulers or “philosophers” are reasoned
types. Just as the “best” way to organize the individual soul is for reason to
rule, the best way to organize society is for philosophers to be the Rulers.
Based on their soul type, certain individuals are meant to perform one of
these three tasks in society. So we can talk about a “Ruler soul,” “Auxiliary
soul,” and a “Producer soul” (Burnyeat, 2006). Justice in the individual
soul is when reason rules; justice in society is when philosophers rule and
when other types of soul do what they are meant to be doing.
TEACHING DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY WITH REPUBLIC 95
The philosopher, Socrates says, is by nature a lover of “wisdom.” Recall

the definition of wisdom given in Phaedo as the condition wherein a soul
apprehends the Form of things rather than the things themselves. The
philosopher uses this wisdom he or she obtains from philosophical inquiry
to make wise decisions about the conduct of life and political affairs.
Conversely, other types of souls make decisions in ways that are unin-
formed by true knowledge. They are swayed by appearances, desire, and
opinion. This last point marks the end of the background I present on the
Republic. I turn now to the portions of the text assigned to students.
To explore the unique position which the philosopher should occupy
in society, Socrates uses an analogy. I should note, there are times in the
Platonic dialogues where it seems that discursive language will not enable
Socrates to adequately discuss certain larger truths and so he must switch
to the use of metaphor and analogy to make his points. In these moments,
Socrates dispenses with the back and forth of the question and answer
method and instead embarks on larger, more speculative monologues of
ten pages or longer. Myth, metaphor, and analogy are the perfect linguis-
tic vehicles for Socrates to discuss larger Forms like Justice, Goodness,
Beauty, and Truth. It is the closest to the lecture method of instruction
we will see from Socrates.
To discuss the philosopher, Socrates begins by inviting us to represent
the universe by a horizontal line which is divided into two unequal sec-
tions. Picture the sun, he says, to the far left of the line. The two sections
of the line represent what Socrates calls the “visible” and the “intelligi-
ble” order. Recall from Phaedo, the visible is the realm of the body and
material; the intelligible is the realm of form, eternity, and the changeless.
Picture the visible order on the farthest right, he continues, away from the
sun. Then cut each section of the line again in the same ratio as the previ-
ous sections. Now we have a line divided into four parts.
Socrates calls the section of the line farthest from the sun the “realm
of shadows and images.” We apprehend the realm of shadows and images
through a form of knowing which Socrates calls “illusion.” Illusion con-
sists of secondhand impressions and opinions. This form of knowing is so
far removed from true knowledge, we don’t even derive these impressions
and opinions ourselves; we hear them second or third hand. Socrates calls
the next part of the visible order a little closer to the sun the “realm of
physical things.” The way we apprehend this part of the universe is through
what he calls “opinion” or “belief.” This form of knowing consists of the
96 J.J. DILLON
practical, commonsense notions we have about moral and physical matters

that are culturally sanctioned and not typically thought out or examined.
The “divide” in the divided line separates the visible and the intelli-
gible realms. We have just discussed the two sections of the visible realm.
What is the nature of this intelligible realm, the realm residing closer to
the sun? In the first section of the intelligible realm (to the very left of
the midpoint of the line), Socrates places the truths we derive from math-
ematical reasoning and deduction. We apprehend this part of the universe
through what he calls “reasoning.” This includes the knowledge we gain
from geometry and mathematical study.
The section of the line closest to the sun includes truths derived from
philosophical insight and Socrates’ own Dialectical Method of instruc-
tion. We apprehend this part of the universe through what he calls “intel-
ligence.” While both reasoning and intelligence deal with Forms in the
intelligible realm, knowledge derived through mathematical and deductive
reasoning is not the “highest” form of knowledge for Socrates because it
still relies on images. Socrates says of the knowledge derived from math-
ematics and deductive reasoning, “…the soul is compelled to investigate
by treating as images the things imitated in the former division [physical
things], and by means of assumptions from which it proceeds not up to a
first principle but down to a conclusion…” (510 b). In the section clos-
est to the sun, Socrates says, “…it makes no use of the images employed
in the other section, relying on ideas only and progressing systematically
through ideas” (510 b). It is “true knowledge.”
The divided line demarcates two modes of apprehension: doxa (opinion
or belief) and true knowledge (episteme). When we confine our modes of
knowing to the visible realm, we know by opinion (doxa); when we turn
to the intelligible order, we obtain true knowledge (episteme). Socrates
then uses the famous simile of the cave to further illustrate the process of
education and development whereby a person moves from these “lower”
stages of knowing to the “highest” vision of ultimate reality.
Socrates says for a person to be able to obtain this vision, the phi-
losopher’s natural capacity for thought must be honed from childhood
through decades of education. This process of development is one where
the philosopher’s mind is “turned around” from the shadows on the wall
to face the light itself. Socrates notes that there is a special art (techne) of
affecting this conversion of the soul: his own Dialectical Method of phi-
losophy, which we now call the “Socratic Method.” Socrates is careful to
say that his art does not put light into the soul, but assumes that the
soul already possesses the light but is not looking where it should (518d).
The teacher helps the student to look in the right places by engaging the
Dialectic.
We stop our reading here with the analogy of the cave and leave out
the specific program of education Socrates offers to develop good philoso-
phers. In the assigned section of the Republic, Socrates offers a distinct
model of development which is built on nature, but requires education,
habit, practice, and culture to ultimately achieve. It is an excellent vehicle
with which to explore modern developmental psychology.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Students also read a small section of the Griggs (2014) text about the
developmental theorists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky (pp. 282–291).
They learn Piaget’s four stages of intellectual development: the senso-
rimotor stage, preoperations, concrete operations, and formal operations.
They see that for Piaget, human development moves from “less devel-
oped” stages which are centered on the body and images to “more devel-
oped” stages which are concerned with abstract forms and processes. They
note the debt to Plato in Piaget’s naming the highest stages in his schema
“formal” operations, that is, the state having to do with form rather than
concrete matter. Students also learn about Piaget’s idea of “cognitive
schemes” and how the mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation
move the process of development along. They learn the various details
and abilities inherent in each of the stages including: object permanence,
egocentrism, conservation, reversibility, and centration.
Students also learn Vygotsky’s “sociocultural” approach to human
development. Vygotsky stresses the idea that cognitive abilities develop
through interactions with others and with larger social and cultural prac-
tices. From this point of view, the culture impacts both the content and
the process of cognitive development. For Vygotsky, development is an
inherently social one (Crain, 2010, p. 202). Unlike the egocentricity of
infants and young children observed by Piaget, for Vygotsky, the child
does not exist in a private and deeply personal state, but is “social” from
the very beginnings of life. The child’s thought is first social, and only later
becomes personal and private (see inner speech vs. egocentric speech in
Crain, 2010, p. 198).
For Piaget, the child’s trial-and-error explorations of the world move
the process of development along via the mechanisms of assimilation and
98 J.J. DILLON
accommodation. For Vygotsky, the “higher” mental functions like abstract

thinking, memory, and logical reasoning are determined by language.
Language provides the “cultural tools” which will become part and parcel
of the child’s way of thinking. In this context, students also learn Vygotsky’s
“zone of proximal development” and the notion of “scaffolding.” Given
the strong role of language and culture, Vygotsky sees vast cultural differ-
ences in development, most notably between cultures with formal school-
ing and cultures without formal schooling (Crain, 2010, p. 199).
Other developmental theorists have taken this linguistic/cultural angle
and run with it. For example, Morss (1995) argues that the problem
with developmental psychology is quite simple, it is “too developmental”
(p. 1). He goes on, “We should be on our guard against the implications
of the developmental attitude to people’s lives and hopes. It treats others
as behind or below ourselves, but destined to follow the same path. The
search for anti-developmental alternatives must therefore be seen as an
emancipatory project” (p. 1). From this standpoint, the notion of higher
and lower, form and content, developed and undeveloped are seen as
simply value judgments that individuals make rather than true judgments
which reflect actual states of affairs. Many others have followed suit argu-
ing that the notion of development itself is a culturally constructed (and
potentially dangerous) one with no basis in reality (see Gergen, 1985;
Harter, 2012; Walkerdine, 1984). We leave the readings here with the
possibility of the cultural construction of development.
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE DEVELOPMENTAL

PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read the assigned portion of the Republic, Griggs (2014),
and some small supplements from Crain (2010) and Morss (1995), they
complete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A) and bring
it with them to class. Typically it would take at least two classes to fin-
ish this work. The guiding question of this unit is: What does it mean to
develop? Students’ answers for this part of the exercise will vary depending
upon their philosophical positions. Given that students read three differ-
ent theories of development in psychology, I typically assign one-third of
the class to do the Interlocutrix with Piaget, another one-third to do it
with Vygotsky, and the final third to do with Morss (students read a small
section of his article). I offer a write-up here with Piaget as an example of
how an Interlocutrix sheet might look.
Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding question is that develop-

ment is a process wherein our souls become turned toward the light, the
true Forms, and move in stages from the concrete realm of illusion and
opinion to the abstract realm of knowledge and intelligence. Piaget’s one-
sentence answer to the guiding question is that development is a process
of stage-wise movement from modes of thought which are primarily ego-
centric and centered on the body to modes of thought which are formal,
abstract, and universal. Here is how a further dialogue might proceed:
Piaget: This is a question that is very close to my heart. I see development

as a process that works something like this: through assimilation and
accommodation, the child moves by a process of trial and error through
a series of four stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete opera-
tional, and formal operational.
Socrates: I see, so development moves from the concrete to the abstract,
from the sensuous to the intelligible?
Piaget: Indeed.
Socrates: Fascinating. And how does this process move along?
Piaget: It is motivated by the child’s own curiosity and desire to know
and explore. As the child seeks to understand, he or she must adjust and
accommodate to reality which causes him or her to develop.
Socrates: I see. And is this how the process moves along at all stages?
Piaget: It does.
Socrates: I think you are correct about this movement at the lower stages
of sensorimotor and preoperations, but I am not sure about the higher
stages. It seems that curiosity is not enough. It is a start, but it seems
like more is needed, a special method to follow perhaps? What is the
role of the teacher in your model of development?
Piaget: Very minimal. The teacher’s job is to engage and support the
child’s innate curiosity. The world will teach the child the truth.
Socrates: Again, I think this is true at lower stages, but it seems to me that
when it comes to developing knowledge and intelligence, the student
needs to engage the wits of a skilled teacher who will subject him to the
rigors of the Dialectic. It is only this which will enable the mind to pro-
ceed to higher stages. There is no more sensory support for trial and error
at higher stages. There is logical trial and error, but these logical errors of
thought need to be pointed out to the learner from someone else.
Piaget: I am not sure about this. You are starting to sound like Vygotsky.
100 J.J. DILLON
Socrates: Perhaps I am! Would that be so bad? I have even more questions
about his theory which I will get to when I talk with him sometime.
We are talking about your theory now. What of these “highest” stages
you speak of? Tell me more about this “formal operational” level. I am
intrigued.
Piaget: This is a very complicated question, but beginning at about the
age of seven, instead of the impulsive behavior of the small child accom-
panied by unquestioned beliefs and intellectual egocentricity, the child
of seven or eight thinks before acting and thus begins to conquer the
difficult process of reflection. Reflection is nothing other than internal
deliberation, that is to say, a discussion which is conducted with oneself
just as it might be conducted with real interlocutors or opponents.
Socrates: I see, go on.
Piaget: The child’s thought becomes “operational” when two men-
tal actions of the same kind can be composed into a third action of
the same kind and when these various actions can be compensated or
annulled. Thus the action of combining (logical or arithmetic addition)
is an “operation,” because several successive combinations are equiva-
lent to a single combination (composition of additions) and because the
combinations can be annulled by dissociations (subtractions).
I believe there are logical operations which underlie a class concepts

and relations, arithmetic operations (addition, multiplication, etc., and
their inverses), geometric operations (sections, displacements), temporal
operations (seriation of events, i.e., the successive ordering of events and
the nesting of intervals between them), mechanical operations, and physi-
cal operations.
Socrates: Fascinating! So if I were to simplify, operations are a kind of log-

ical or rule-governed mental action. What makes them “formal” rather
than concrete operations?
Piaget: This difference is subtle, but important. At both stages, the child
is engaging in logical operations. With concrete operations, the child
can perform these operations on objects only if the objects are imme-
diately present or easily imagined. He or she cannot engage in abstrac-
tions of abstractions. With formal operations, the child can perform
operations on abstract concepts where no imagistic or empirical support
is necessary.
Socrates: I see! This is very similar to my analogy of the cave.
Piaget: Indeed it is.

Socrates: If I may say, the highest stages of your scheme of development
seem similar to what I call “mathematical reasoning.” What you leave
out in your theory is what I see as the very highest level of develop-
ment at all: true knowledge. Here I would include the truths we derive
from philosophical insight, particularly the insights we derive from the
Dialectical mode of discussion. Mathematics, geometry, and formal rea-
soning can take us only so far. The highest levels involve actual visions of
the truth: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful which come through
philosophical discussion.
Piaget: We seem to have drifted from psychology to philosophy and reli-
gion. All I can describe is how the mind works when it operates at the
highest levels of which you speak.
Socrates: As do I. You are failing to appreciate the role of true discussion,
that at the highest levels, the soul moves beyond logic to a direct illumi-
nation by the Forms. I call this state “wisdom.”
When students get to class, they work in small groups to share their indi-
vidual dialogues and confer with one another to construct a group dialogue
which they enact for the class in a role-play. Alternatively, we may simply
have a seminar discussion about the text. After recreating the small-group
Interlocutrix dialogues in class, students are directed to briefly write what
their answer to the guiding question would now be. In this case, students
speak about what they think it means to “develop” as a human being.

from their readings and role-play exchanges. I here present some things
I have learned as an example of what this part of the exercise might look
like. I have learned that the notion of “higher” and “lower” are concepts
which hold a great deal of practical consequences for people. These con-
sequences can be positive or negative. For example, in a school setting,
if a child is identified as less advanced, he or she may be able to get the
special help and stimulation needed to really move him or her to the next
level. On the other hand, this designation could function as a limiting
label which will accompany the student like an albatross for a lifetime,
sapping his or her confidence and energy. I am particularly concerned
about the negative consequences that result if you fall in the “lower” end
102 J.J. DILLON
of the spectrum. Given these very real and tangible effects coupled with
the intangible notions of “higher” and “lower,” I think many people have
understandably decided it is better to err on the side of not causing any
negative effects. They have therefore dispensed with the idea of develop-
ment entirely, declaring it a matter of subjective judgment rather than
objective reality. I think they are understandably trying to protect people.
In many cases, it seems like the safe and even humane course is to assume
that the entire notion of development is simply the arbitrary imposition of
one person’s value scheme upon another.
While I understand this sentiment, I worry that we are ignoring real
ontological distinctions that exist between higher and lower, and we may
lose sight of what knowledge really means. I have learned that it is indeed
a politically sensitive issue to maintain that developmental distinctions are
real. If we want to maintain the idea of development—as I do—some
work needs to be done to not only make the case that these are important
distinctions to make, but that this endeavor is not about hurting or “label-
ing” people. On the contrary, it is about getting people the special help
they may need, making sure that more “advanced” students are appro-
priately challenged, and that people are doing tasks and ultimately jobs
that are appropriate to their developmental abilities. Still, we need to be
very sensitive to the issue of the practical consequences of these kinds of
judgments.
With respect to the course thus far, I have learned that these ideas
about knowledge, education, and development in the Republic help us
to make sense of everything Socrates has been trying to do to his inter-
locutors with his Method of instruction. He is trying to lift their minds
through Dialectic from the realm of opinion and illusion to a vision of the
truth of things. The scale of development he presents in the form of the
“divided line” and the simile of the cave are very active in Socrates’ mind
and these concepts help him to structure and organize what he does with
his students. He tries to move them “up” the line toward the light.
The last thing students do is write down any unresolved issues they have
pertaining to the guiding questions. Personally, I have not yet devised a
way to allay the fears of development’s critics. It is something I am still
thinking through. I also wonder about how we handle disagreements in
judgment about development. Do we refer to tests, data, or some other
type of student performance to resolve disputes? I struggle too with the
notion that some whole cultures may be seen as “less developed” than
others. This may be the case, but I wonder whether we could be missing
something important with these kinds of judgments. At the same time,
I do think there are even more serious practical consequences when we
reject the idea of development and try to see everyone and everything as
equally able. I wonder whether there are actually more negative conse-
quences than when we maintain the idea of development. But we will need
to put these questions to the side for now and deal with them at the next
upcoming Conference on “Good, Better, Best” in Psychology. For now,
we turn to the related issue of moral development.
REFERENCES
Allott, P. (2011). On first understanding Plato’s Republic. European Journal of
International Law, 22(4), 1165–1173.
Annas, J. (1981). An introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University.
Barney, R., Brennan, T., & Brittain, C. (2014). Plato and the divided self.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burnyeat, M. F. (2006). The truth of tripartition. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 106, 1–23.
Crain, W. (2010). Theories of development: Concepts and applications (6th ed.).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modern psychology.
American Psychologist, 40(3), 266–275.
Worth.
Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: A developmental perspective.
New York, NY: Guilford.
Morss, J. (1995). Growing critical: Alternatives to developmental psychology.
London, UK: Routledge.
Seymour-Smith, M. (2004). One hundred most influential books ever written.
New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books.
Sherman, D. (2013). Soul, world and idea: An interpretation of Plato’s Republic
and Phaedo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Walkerdine, V. (1984). Developmental psychology and the child-centered peda-
gogy: The insertion of Piaget’s theory into primary school practice. In
J. Henriques, W. Holloway, & C. Erwin (Eds.), Changing the subject: Psychology,
social regulation and subjectivity. London, UK: Methuen.
CHAPTER 12
Teaching Moral Development

with Theaetetus
For Socrates, the most important thing in life is not living, but living a
good life. The good life is one in which we regularly embody the virtues,
spend our time discussing goodness, and examine the truth of our beliefs
with the Dialectical Method. Socrates says in the Apology, “Life without
this sort of examination is not worth living” (38a). The greatest purpose
of “higher learning” in college and university is to introduce students to
the alternative visions of the good life as presented by the deepest think-
ers our species has known. As we saw in the context of Republic, such a
“liberal arts” education gives us the opportunity to liberate ourselves from
ignorance, prejudice, and opinion. This inspiring vision of higher educa-
tion comes to us very clearly from Socrates and Plato.
Today’s campuses are increasingly turning away from these kinds of
concerns, seeing the “big questions” as too irrelevant to explore. For the
most part, colleges and universities have instead turned to more practical
and vocational pursuits. If you spent just an hour at any college or uni-
versity, you would quickly discover the notion of “the good life” hardly
comes up at all. If it does, it is presented as a highly contested concept.
“Who is to say what is good or bad?” they may ask. “You have your view
of the good life and I have mine.” “Live your life the way you want and I
will live mine the way I want.” “Just tell me what you want me to know
or the important facts for a course and I will learn them. Questions of
good are opinion.” “Hopefully this will get me a job or into law, medical,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_12
106 J.J. DILLON
or graduate school.” As Jencks and Riesman (1968) note, when it comes

to visions of the good life, modern universities tend to see these things as
matters of taste and preference. Modern universities have become “…less
certain than they once were as to what students ought to be or become,
and are reluctant to go to the mat with the young for principles in which
they themselves only half believe” (Jencks & Riesman, 1968, p. 39). On
the big questions explored by Socrates, moral relativism and openness to
everything now reign in our colleges and universities (see Bloom, 1987).
The only arena where this is not the case is the “hard sciences.” Here one
may find true and false, but these truths are seen to pertain to empirical
matters, not conceptual ones.
If Socrates is to be believed that living “the good life” is the only one
worth living, then today’s students are in desperate need of a compass.
They are spending a lot of time in their classes thinking and reading about
things Socrates would have considered far less important than questions of
goodness, truth, and beauty. As Schumacher (1977) notes, many people
in the modern world are “perplexed” about who they are and what the
universe is all about. Their teachers should have helped them with these
fundamental questions, but as Bloom (1987) charges, they have instead
offered students relativism of all kinds. Socrates can possibly help this situ-
ation. The dialogue Theaetetus is all about getting through to a stubbornly
relativistic student (see Becker, 2006; Gronroos, 2013). Many students
have not read this dialogue and are surprised at how relevant and easy to
understand it is. This dialogue can really change students’ lives. I have
seen it with my own eyes. As we open the pages of this strange dialogue,
Socrates will challenge where most modern students presently reside in
their moral reasoning.
THEAETETUS (146A–154A; 157B–158E; 160E–162;

166D–168C)
To fully understand this dialogue, it is necessary to know a bit about
the social and historical context in which Socrates lived. The so-called
Sophists were mainly foreign, itinerant teachers during Socrates’ time who
sold their intellectual wares wherever there was a market. They had no
particular allegiance to a country or philosophy. They questioned deep-
seated assumptions about life and were concerned mainly with techniques
of effective argumentation (see O’Grady, 2008). Though Socrates often
offers (feigned) praise for the many Sophists who peppered his own city of
TEACHING MORAL DEVELOPMENT WITH THEAETETUS 107
Athens, he also regularly bristles at their methods, ethics, and teachings.

For him, they do not appear concerned with the truth of things, but only
to win arguments and speak in ways that dazzle the public (see Sidgwick,
1872). Since Socrates believes teaching is a sacred and high calling, he
thinks teachers should not accept fees for their services as the Sophists do,
but perform them for the good of the souls concerned.
As wide travelers, the Sophists witnessed many different cultural prac-
tices. To them, cultures varied so much as to make determining “truth”
almost impossible. “Who’s to say?” they would ask. One could speak of
“truth” for an Egyptian, a Phrygian, or an Athenian, but not “Truth”
with a capital “T.” Two men named Protagoras and Gorgias were the
most famous Sophists of Socrates’ time. From seeing Socrates in other
dialogues, it is safe to say that he absolutely loathes these two men and
the effect they have on society. He seems however to have compassion for
their students and is willing to engage them in the Dialectic. Perhaps he
thinks it is possible to save them while he sees their teachers as too old and
set in their ways to engage his Method at all.
Theaetetus opens with a conversation between the Sophist Theodorus
(Theaetetus’ teacher) and Socrates. Theodorus sings Theaetetus’ praises
to Socrates. Socrates is impressed and so calls the boy over to converse
with him to see if Theodorus’ glowing assessment is correct. Socrates tells
Theaetetus of his occupation as an intellectual midwife and requests for
Theaetetus to allow him to apply his art [the Dialectic] to see if Theaetetus
will give birth to anything of value. The boy responds eagerly and respect-
fully. The philosophical portion of the dialogue then gets under way. The
Method in this dialogue is the Traditional one. Socrates asks the ques-
tions; Theaetetus answers.
The question on the table is: what is knowledge? Like Meno, Theaetetus
initially responds with concrete examples of knowledge instead of with a
general definition. Socrates chides him for not answering his questions and
tells him more firmly what to do. He is easier to work with than Meno
because he proceeds to give Socrates examples from mathematics of what
a definition is. It is clear he knows what Socrates wants, so Socrates then
encourages him to give a definition of knowledge in the same form as
the definitions that are given in mathematics. Theaetetus hems and haws
a bit, but eventually offers the definition that, “…knowledge is nothing
but perception” (151e). Socrates later characterizes this position as, “…
any given thing ‘is to me such as it appears to me, and is to you such as it
appears to you’” (152a).
108 J.J. DILLON
Socrates proceeds to subject this definition to the Dialectical Method

to see if it is worth holding. Socrates hopes his midwific scrutiny will facili-
tate Theaetetus’ giving birth to a true idea, one which can stand up and
walk around on its own. Socrates knows the claim that “knowledge is
perception” is really not Theaetetus’ own answer, but his teachers, par-
ticularly the Sophist Protagoras. Socrates must be very careful here not to
overly offend anyone, but he does want to use this occasion to register his
strong objections to these popular Sophistic ideas like “Truth is as things
appear to me. Your truth will be as things appear to you.” The idea lurk-
ing behind Theaetetus’ response is Protagoras’ dictum that “man is the
measure of all things.” So Socrates proceeds to examine this notion that
man is the measure of all things, that reality is the way we perceive it to be,
that we decide what is true and what is false.
Socrates’ first objection to Theaetetus’ argument is that there must be
some “thing” that is then perceived differently by you and by me. Socrates
tries to show that it is just this independent existence of the thing that is
ruled out in Protagoras’ ontology which holds that things are as I perceive
them to be. He tells Theaetetus that his view “…declares that nothing is
one thing just by itself, nor can you rightly call it by some definite name…
all the things we are pleased to say ‘are,’ really are in process of becoming,
as a result of movement and change and of blending one with another”
(152d). For Theaetetus’ claims to be true, there really can be no things
standing apart from our perceptions. All reality must therefore be in a state
of perpetual change. Socrates argues that if what Theaetetus says is true,
at one moment, things may appear thus; at another moment, they appear
differently. The things we see are the product of the meeting of our eyes in
a definite moment with some motion or flux. He says, “…black or white
or any color you choose is a thing that has arisen out of the meeting of our
eyes with the appropriate motion” (153e). It cannot be a thing in itself,
and we cannot know anything distinctly about “it.” It just arises and passes
away from moment to moment. Socrates asks the boy if this is what he
means to say. Theaetetus agrees with this claim that reality is constant flux.
Socrates leaves this reality-is-flux argument to the side for the moment
and shifts to another line in his examination of Theaetetus’ “knowledge is
perception” answer. He asks Theaetetus, if it is true that knowledge is per-
ception, is the perception we have while we are dreaming of equal value to
that which we have while awake? Is the perception of a madman the same
as a sane person? Surely, Socrates says, people have different perceptions.
But are all these perceptions of equal value?
Socrates notes that Theaetetus’ (and Protagoras’) position not only

calls into question the independent existence of the world, but also claims
that there is no real way to judge anything, even whether Protagoras’
own account is true! How would we be able to say whether “knowledge
is perception” was a better one than “knowledge is not perception?” So
the claim that “Man is the measure of all things” must only be true for
Protagoras, since he is the one who is seeing it that way and it must only
be true in the single moment he says it. Afterward, things will change and
the statement will no longer apply.
Socrates sarcastically asks, instead of “man is the measure of all things,”
why not “pig is the measure of all things?” Why should man be the one
in the position to decide what is true or false? Why shouldn’t the pig’s
perception be treated as valid? And if one person is in no better position
to know something compared to someone else, then why do you buy
Protagoras’ books and attend his lectures? What right does he or anyone
have to teach others? If everyone has equal access to the truth, why is
Protagoras the one getting paid for dispensing his so-called knowledge? If
knowledge is perception, couldn’t anyone be a teacher? Everyone has per-
ceptions, so everyone must have knowledge. And why would there be any
need to teach or have schools since nobody knows anything better than
anyone else? Is there no real difference between an expert and a novice?
But Theaetetus does not want to go this far. He doesn’t believe things
are as up in the air as Protagoras would have us believe. Does the reader?
We leave the dialogue here with the “who is to judge?” question. Is there
any way for us to evaluate different claims to knowledge? Can anyone
judge right and wrong, truth from error? Is there any independent world
at all which we can know? These are very provocative ideas for the stu-
dents to consider. We turn now to the modern psychological study of right
and wrong called Moral Development.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Students read the small section of the Griggs (2014) text on moral devel-
opment (pp. 295–298). This will often be done for a second class meet-
ing. They first explore the work of the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg
(1927–1987). Kohlberg proposes a series of stages of moral development
derived from his study of children of different ages. Kohlberg reads chil-
dren a moral dilemma in which a man named Heinz has a wife who is
dying of cancer. There is only one cure for this type of cancer. A druggist
110 J.J. DILLON
developed a medicine to cure this cancer, but he was selling it for much
more than it cost him to develop and for much more than Heinz could
ever afford to pay. Heinz could only come up with about half the money
for the drug. So Heinz went to the druggist in desperation, told him about
his ailing wife, and asked if there was any way the druggist could sell Heinz
the drug for less money. Heinz promised to pay it back, but time was run-
ning out. The druggist still refused to sell it to him for less. Desperate,
Heinz broke into the druggist’s store and robbed the drug for his wife.
After reading the story, Kohlberg asked the children whether Heinz
should have stolen the drug or not. Kohlberg is not interested in the
child’s answer per se, but with the reasoning he or she uses to formu-
late it. Based upon his analyses of their responses, Kohlberg derived three
levels of moral reasoning with six separate stages. The three levels are:
pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional reasoning. These
three levels are hierarchically organized in terms of the universality of the
principles the child employs while reasoning about the Heinz dilemma.
“Lower” levels of reasoning at the pre-conventional level focus on direct
consequences of right and wrong; that is, Heinz shouldn’t have stolen the
drug because he will get in trouble. “Higher” levels of moral reasoning
at post-conventional levels focus on abstract, universal ethical principles;
for example, Heinz was right to steal the drug because saving another
human being is always the right thing to do. Conventional moral reason-
ing concerns the use of norms and rules established by the culture to
make moral decisions; for example, stealing is wrong because it is against
the law. Research indicates that most people from most cultures reach the
conventional level by adulthood, but attainment of the post-conventional
level is not so clear (Snarey, 1985).
Students then read a section of the Griggs (2014) text dealing with
Kohlberg’s critics, many of whom make the charge that Kohlberg’s theory
is biased toward Western values and/or against women and primitive cul-
tures. Most middle-class adults in the USA reach stage 4 of Kohlberg’s
sequence. But in isolated villages and more tribal communities, most
adults do not move beyond stage 3 of Kohlberg’s sequence (Edwards,
1980). In some tests of moral reasoning, boys score higher than girls (see
Holstein, 1976). Based on these and similar data, Gilligan (1982) criticized
Kohlberg for not adequately representing the psychology of women. She
argues that feminine moral reasoning is more concerned with a “morality
of care” that focuses on interpersonal relationships and the needs of others
than a morality of abstract principles and justice. Each of these critiques
advances the argument that reasoning about right and wrong depends
either on the culture or the particular person doing the reasoning. It is
a species of the knowledge-is-perception argument we saw in Theaetetus.

OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
After students read the assigned portion of Theaetetus and Griggs (2014),
bring it with them to class. The guiding question of this unit is: what is
moral knowledge? Students’ answers for this part of the form will vary
depending upon their own ideas. I here present my own mock dialogue
with the psychologist Carol Gilligan to illustrate how a completed form
might look. Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding question might
be that moral knowledge is the most valued knowledge of all and occurs
when the soul of the philosopher stands beneath the ultimate Form,
the Good, and beholds its nature. Gilligan might say that moral knowl-
edge depends upon the knower: for men and boys, moral knowledge is
beholding moral principles in an abstract way; for women and girls, moral
knowledge is carefully responding to the demands of an interpersonal rela-
tionship. Here is how a dialogue between the two might proceed further:
Socrates: This is an interesting position, Ms. Gilligan. I see that you are
worried that women and girls tend to be seen as “less developed” mor-
ally when we use the schemes devised by your teacher and colleague
Lawrence Kohlberg. This is admirable. You know, I argued that women
should be admitted to the Academy more than 2500 years ago. But I
fear your claims come down to saying that moral reasoning depends
upon the individual or at least depends upon the gender of the indi-
vidual. Is there no way to specify what moral reasoning is, regardless
of culture or gender? That would be true moral knowledge from my
standpoint.
Gilligan: Well, yes, I suppose there would be a way of doing that, but that
way would be to engage the type of reasoning preferred by men! You
are a man after all. Women are not as prone as men to articulate their
concepts of right and wrong in terms of abstract principles that apply
always and everywhere. We are much more prone to what I call the
“morality of care,” in which our moral reasoning is bound up within a
web of relationships.
112 J.J. DILLON
Socrates: I see. This is a compelling idea, but aren’t we all prone to allow
our own personal feelings, connections, and biases to cloud our judg-
ment. I think of the famous Antigone here. The job of true reasoning
is to discipline ourselves and become free from these encumbrances as
much as possible so we can see the truth of things. With all due respect,
you seem to make a virtue out of the vice of bias in reasoning.
Gilligan: This is just my point. Men are able to abstract from their rela-
tionships and reason with abstract principles. Women have a harder time
with this. My claim is that women’s minds are not built to reason in the
way you proscribe. It is not nearly so easy for us to bracket and tran-
scend our personal relationships.
Socrates: Maybe this is a moral flaw which needs attention? I would say
that these girls just need more training and practice in order to reason
properly, just like we all do. Don’t accommodate yourself to their faulty
reasoning. We teachers need to hold all students—boys and girls—to
the same high standards.
Gilligan: Spoken again like a true man. Perhaps I might discuss this with
Xanthippe, your wife.
Socrates: Ha! Fair enough. Allow me to go get her. But in the meantime, let
me say that I believe the Good is the truest and highest Form. It is like the
Sun in my Allegory of the Cave. The Good illuminates the other Forms.
All other knowledge is connected to the Good. We do not know the good
with our senses or with our bodies. So it does not matter whether we are
a male or a female. The point is that all of us, males and females, have this
knowledge of the Form of the Good already in our minds if we could just
access it with the right questions. When we see or consider behavior in
our daily life, we use this Form to judge whether what we are seeing or
thinking about is “good” or “bad.” This has to do with the innate Form
of the Good in all human minds, boys and girls. But here comes my wife
now. We will see if you enjoy talking to her better than me.
individual dialogues. They work together in small groups to compose a
single dialogue which they enact for the class in a role-play. As an alterna-
tive, the whole group might engage in a seminar discussion about these
texts. After all the scripts have been enacted, students are directed to write
on their forms what they actually now believe about the guiding question.
In this case, students must say what they actually believe moral knowl-
edge is. Some will resist taking a position, saying that moral knowledge
“depends on the individual.”

from their reading of Theaetetus, Moral Psychology, and the exchange
between the two. Here are a few of my own learnings. I see once again
just how important that section from Phaedo (79c) on the definition of
wisdom really is. Socrates believes that it is possible for the human soul
to stand beneath the Forms (or essences) of things and really know them.
Many psychologists and even more modern students seem to have given
up on this idea altogether. Many theories of knowledge in psychology and
philosophy are devoted to dismantling Socrates’ theory of knowledge and
explicitly reject the idea that essences exist or that we can ever come to
know them.
I have also been intrigued with the notion of “the Good” in Plato’s
philosophy for a long time. I still do not fully understand what this con-
cept is, though I can see there is something very important going on here.
I have learned that the Good is like the Sun in the divided line and the
simile of the cave. It illuminates and interconnects all the other Forms and
everything that exists. For Socrates, all knowledge, even the most techni-
cal type of knowledge, is tied up with the Good, with morality. I find this
idea very compelling. Morality is not just a set of values or preferences we
impose upon the world after the fact, but it is woven into the very struc-
ture of being at the most minute levels.
I have also learned that we have never seen, with our senses, any exam-
ples of perfect goodness, but we have seen plenty of particular examples
which approximate goodness, and I think we recognize them as “good”
when we see them because of the way in which they correspond to an
innate concept of the Form of the Good we have tucked somewhere deep
in our minds.
I also see from this exchange that Kohlberg believes moral knowledge
is something put in universal form. For Kohlberg, knowledge involves
grasping abstract, universal principles of human rights. Kohlberg’s scheme
is similar to Socrates’ in the sense that it moves from concrete to abstract,
but Kohlberg stops with universal abstract principles of justice and human
rights that apply to everyone. He is not concerned with the truth or falsity
of particular moral claims or behaviors, just whether they are abstract and
universal. In this sense, Kohlberg really hasn’t gone beyond the realm of
opinion we saw in the Republic. Socrates would likely try to push him
farther.
114 J.J. DILLON
Gilligan and the cultural constructivists are another matter entirely.

They are very similar to Theaetetus in their claim that knowledge depends
upon the person who is doing the knowing, that right and wrong depend
upon the perspective of the individual or the group. For them, there really
is no “moral knowledge” per se. One could easily level Socrates’ “pig is
the measure of all things” quip at their position, only it would be: women
are the measure; Kwakiutl Indians are the measure; the oral cultures of
Southern Serbia are the measure of all things. Arguments like these have
come to be very respected and popular approaches to morality in the mod-
ern academy. But they have really not made their way much farther than
Theaetetus in this ancient dialogue. Their heroes are not Protagoras and
Gorias, but Foucault (1980), Derrida (1976), Lacan (1977), and Butler
(1993). This moral relativism is perhaps the greatest intellectual vice of
our time.
The last things students do is write down the questions they still have
about the guiding question. These responses will vary greatly. For my
part, I see the problem with the moral relativism Socrates describes. It is
rampant in almost all of the professional and social circles within which
I walk. I frankly have not figured out a way of engaging this argument
in quite the elegant way that Socrates does. Perhaps this is because my
interlocutors might not engage the Dialectic. I struggle with learning how
to make moral determinations without coming across as judgmental and
intolerant. I wonder how we might respond to this question of modern
moral relativism in a way that is effective and does not cause people to
tune it out immediately. But I will need to put this issue on hold for now
and hopefully address it at the upcoming Academic Conference Good,
Better, Best. For now, I turn to a new sub-discipline in psychology and a
new Platonic dialogue.
REFERENCES
Becker, A. (2006). The structure of knowledge and Theaetetus’ third definition.
Ordia Prima, 5, 37–53.
Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind: How higher education has
failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: Johns

Hopkins University.
Edwards, C. P. (1980). The development of moral reasoning in cross-cultural per-
spective. In R. H. Munroe, R. L. Munroe, & B. B. Whiting (Eds.), Handbook
of cross-cultural human development (pp. 501–528). New York, NY: Garland.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge (C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, &
K. Soper, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s develop-
ment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Worth.
Gronroos, G. (2013). Two kinds of belief in Plato. Journal of the History of
Philosophy, 51(1), 1–19.
Holstein, C. (1976). Development of moral judgment: A longitudinal study of
males and females. Child Development, 47, 51–61.
Jencks, C., & Riesman, D. (1968). The academic revolution. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.
Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: W. W.
Norton.
O’Grady, P. (2008). The Sophists: An introduction. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Schumacher, E. F. (1977). A guide for the perplexed. New York, NY:
Harper-Perennial.
Sidgwick, H. (1872). The Sophists. Journal of Philology, 4, 288–307.
Snarey, J. R. (1985). Cross-cultural universality of social-moral development: A
critical review of Kohlbergian research. Psychological Bulletin, 97(2), 202–232.
CHAPTER 13
Teaching Abnormal Psychology

with Nicomachean Ethics
In the Capstone Seminar I teach for senior undergraduate psychology

majors, I try to help them integrate what they have learned in their under-
graduate studies and prepare them for the next steps in their careers after
graduation. One assignment has them compose an “intellectual autobiog-
raphy.” In it, students narrate the history of their relationship to school and
learning from preschool up to now. They tell their story of what initially
attracted them to psychology and why they decided to become a major.
They talk about the careers they hope to have in the field. From over 15
years of teaching this class, I have found that 80 % or more of these narra-
tives discuss “abnormal” psychological phenomena as what first attracted
students to psychology. This may have come from popular TV shows or
movies, or even a personal or family experience with a counselor, psy-
chologist, or psychiatrist. An even higher percentage of students hopes to
have a career in one of the “helping” fields working with individuals who
are suffering from problems ranging from the most criminal and bizarre
to the mundane and everyday. Nearly half of American households have
had someone seek mental health treatment in a given year according to a
recent national poll by the American Psychological Association’s Practice
Directorate (American Psychological Association, 2004). Abnormal
Psychology remains an immensely popular sub-discipline of psychology
for both college students and the lay public.

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118 J.J. DILLON
I link this chapter to the previous two on development and morality.

With development, we are interested in a positive trajectory of growth
from “lower” to “higher,” less to more advanced. With morality, we are
interested in the notions of “good” and “bad,” “better” and “worse.” I
use these two concepts of development and morality to introduce the con-
cept of the abnormal. Abnormality is essentially when development goes
wrong. In Abnormal Psychology, we are essentially dealing with the oppo-
site of development, where people feel they are in a less advanced state, one
which that they regard as a “bad” place to be and would like to be out of.
I argue that the heart of the study of abnormal psychological phenom-
ena is the question of will and control. Why do people persistently act and
feel in ways they do not want? They do not want to get angry or overeat or
be anxious, and yet they do. Why? Further, why do people do things that
are harmful or bad, particularly when they know they are harmful or bad
and try hard not to do them? For example, a man starts off the day resolv-
ing not to look at pornography on the internet or a woman promises her-
self not to drink alcohol. A few hours later, they find themselves doing the
very things they resolved not to do. Why do human beings do these sorts
of things? This present-day concern is one which Socrates and Aristotle
share as well. They have some insights which can inform our modern
thinking on these matters. For this unit, we read The Nichomachean Ethics
(1998) from Aristotle rather than a text from Plato because Aristotle treats
the matter of good versus bad behavior with a level of detail and focus that
is not present in any of the Platonic dialogues. Let me turn to the text now
(for more on this work, see Maher, 2012).
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (BOOK VII, 1–5, 8, 10)

Aristotle wrote many beloved works during his lifetime. Unfortunately,
not a single one has survived intact to this day. The works which comprise
what we refer to as “Aristotle’s texts” are really his lecture notes from
the courses he taught at the Lyceum (or worse, the lecture notes of his
students). Aristotle never intended for these lecture notes to be published
as books since they are very cursory, brief, abstract, and at times difficult
to read. The Nicomachean Ethics is no exception, though this work is
much easier to follow than some of Aristotle’s others. Scholars believe the
Ethics, as it is called for short, was edited by or dedicated to Aristotle’s
son, Nicomachus. This is why we refer to the work as the Nichomachean
Ethics today.
TEACHING ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY WITH NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 119
A bit of background will help set the stage for the assigned reading.
Aristotle presents what he regards as the ideal sequence of human devel-
opment in the first part of the Ethics. Students unfortunately do not have
time to read this section of the text, so it should be presented in class.
Aristotle argues in this section that all human beings seek some form of
happiness through their actions and their lives. Happiness is what ulti-
mately motivates us all. But what we don’t realize is that happiness depends
upon the stability of one’s character structure and the regular exercise of
the virtues in daily life. Thus, because of our ignorance, happiness eludes
most of us. This is one of the reasons why Aristotle writes the book: so his
son and the reader can be happy.
Character and virtue are essential ingredients to happiness. What does
Aristotle mean by these two terms? Everyone has “character.” Some char-
acters are poorly developed and some are noble. Technically speaking,
character is the set of inner habits and tendencies that unconsciously influ-
ence our minds to think, feel, want, hope, remember, and act in certain
ways. If I have a “stable character,” it inclines me to think good thoughts,
have healthy feelings, want the right things, to be optimistic, live in the
present tense, and choose the right course of action given the circum-
stances I am in. But if I have a weak character, I am inclined to think bad
thoughts, have unhealthy feelings, to want things that are bad for me, to
be pessimistic about the future, preoccupied with the past, and to choose
the wrong course of action in my circumstances.
Think of something like an addiction as an extreme example of a char-
acter flaw. The addiction is not some isolated problem, but a crack in the
very foundation of the personality that affects everything that the addict
thinks about, feels, wants, remembers, and does. The addict’s thoughts,
feelings, desires, memories, and actions will be completely different from
a person without this same character deficiency.
Our character structure is like a bin with many slots. Inside each
“slot” of our character structure sits various “virtues.” Virtues are specific
strengths and tendencies that pertain to particular types of actions. For
example, there are actions pertaining to giving and taking, regulating our
appetites and desires, acting in the face of fear, or making practical deci-
sions. Aristotle calls the virtue pertaining to giving and taking “justice”;
the virtue pertaining to regulating appetites and desires “temperance”; the
virtue pertaining to taking action in the face of fear “courage”; and the
virtue of knowing the right thing to do in the right circumstance “pru-
dence.” These are the “cardinal” virtues, or the virtues upon which all the
120 J.J. DILLON
others depend. Aristotle believed that the way to obtain happiness in life
is to improve character and virtue through education, habit, and practice.
This ends the brief background of the first part of the text which is
provided to students before they read the assigned portion. For class, stu-
dents read part of Book VII of the Ethics where Aristotle turns from the
ideal sequence of development to discuss what happens when things go
off course and people do not develop good character and fail to cultivate
the virtues. This is an ancient version of Abnormal Psychology. The guid-
ing question Aristotle addresses here is: Why do people persistently act
in ways they do not want or which make them unhappy? Why do people
do things that are harmful or bad, particularly when they know they are
harmful or bad?
In answering these questions, Aristotle first catalogues the various
abnormalities or bad states of character in ascending order of seriousness.
He calls these states: incontinence, vice, and brutishness. He also discusses
the various negative psychological and social consequences that stem from
these three bad states of character. To begin, Aristotle defines inconti-
nence by contrasting it with vice and brutishness. Incontinence is a sort of
mean between the extremes of brutishness and vice on either side. Vice is
the opposite of virtue. Like virtue, vice is a settled disposition to behave in
a certain way. A person with the virtue of temperance is disposed to behave
consistently with a great measure of control of his or her desires. A person
with the vice of self-indulgence, on the other hand, is disposed to behave
in a consistently licentious way, and will think of this self-indulgence as the
correct form of behavior.
A vice like self-indulgence is closely connected to incontinence but has
important differences. While the viciously self-indulgent person acts out
of choice, the incontinent person gives in to desire and lacks sufficient
self-control. He or she is trying to be virtuous, but lacks the strength or
ability to do it. Aristotle writes, “The self-indulgent man [vice], as was
said, has no regrets; for he stands by his choice; but any incontinent man
is subject to regrets” (p. 178). Incontinence is thus a less serious condi-
tion than a vice like self-indulgence. Aristotle writes, “…the self-indulgent
[vicious] man is incurable and the incontinent man curable; for wicked-
ness is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is
like epilepsy; the former is permanent, the latter an intermittent badness”
(p. 178). The incontinent person has the virtue and can be reasoned with,
but at times lacks the ability to conform their behavior to their own desires
and expectations; the vicious person does not have the virtue and will turn
any helpful reasoning on its head to serve and maintain his or her vice.
The vicious person is “diseased” in the mind; his or her reasoning is thor-
oughly infected by the vice. The incontinent person, on the other hand,
is “…like a city which passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but
makes no use of them” (p. 182). The vicious person, on the other hand,
is like a city with bad laws who thinks they are good.
Brutishness is the third category of abnormality Aristotle considers.
Brutishness is as ingrained and extreme as vice, but the brute, Aristotle
says, lacks the capacity for rational thought altogether and so has no sense
of what is right or wrong. He here considers the brute in the context of
inhuman types of wrongdoing like wanton slaughters and genocides.
The incontinent person is the mean between the extremes of brutish-
ness and vice. The incontinent person differs from the vicious person in
the sense that the incontinent knows what is good but does wrong anyway.
An incontinent person might have the virtue of temperance and know that
licentious behavior is blameworthy, but still lacks the self-control to resist
licentious behavior. They “give in” as it were. The incontinent differs from
the brute, in that they can consider options and rationally deliberate a
course of action (it’s just that they are weak in terms of carrying out their
own decisions). The brute does not rationally deliberate at all.
Aristotle is particularly interested in providing an account of inconti-
nence. He says it is perhaps the most common type of abnormality from
which we suffer: doing harmful or bad things even while knowing they
are harmful or bad. This issue makes for a very fruitful class discussion.
Aristotle proposes four answers to this question.
First, he says it is possible that a person knows what is wrong but does
not deliberate and properly reflect upon what he or she already knows.
This person does wrong without sufficiently thinking it through. We often
speak here of “acting impulsively.” For example, one may stay out late with
one’s friends and wind up feeling terrible in the morning. “You know that
wasn’t a good idea?” we may ask. The person responds, “I know, I didn’t
really think about it before I did it.” Second, Aristotle says the incontinent
person may make a false inference when deliberating due to ignorance of
the facts. For example, many people get fat from drinking sugared soft
drinks, not really knowing about all the carbohydrates in them. They are
just drinks, they reason, and so nothing to worry about.
Third, the incontinent person may be emotionally excited or mentally
disturbed and therefore unable to think clearly. An example here would
122 J.J. DILLON
be a person who smokes cigarettes or drinks when under stress. Fourth,

Aristotle says desire may cause a person to act hastily without self-restraint
or more careful reasoning. An example here would be when people engage
in unsafe sex in the heat of passion (and later regret it).
Aristotle offers these different types of incontinence and says it is the
job of the diagnostician to determine which one applies to a given case.
Students are often surprised and impressed by Aristotle’s psychological
acumen. Recently, Aristotle’s focus on virtue and character in happi-
ness has been rediscovered by a movement in psychology called Positive
Psychology (see Seligman, 2004; Haidt, 2006).
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
In addition to the assigned Aristotle reading, students read a small section
from the Griggs (2014) text on Abnormal Psychology (pp. 397–415).
The first part of this reading deals with the four criteria psychologists use
to determine if a behavior is “abnormal” or not. First, psychologists ask if
what they are observing is statistically infrequent. If so, there is a chance
the behavior is abnormal. Second, psychologists ask if the behavior in
question is “maladaptive”; that is, does it keep the person from being able
to adequately meet their needs and the demands of daily life? If so, the
behavior may be abnormal. Third, the psychologist asks whether the per-
son or other people are upset or distressed by the behavior in question. If
so, the behavior may be abnormal. Fourth, the psychologist asks whether
the behavior is irrational. In other words, is there rational basis for the
behavior? If not, the behavior may be abnormal. Of course, there are many
exceptions to these criteria, but they do provide a fair representation for
how modern psychologists “diagnose” or determine whether something
has crossed the line into abnormality.
The reading then explores the six different categories of mental disorder
which modern psychologists have developed to classify behavior which has
been judged to be abnormal. These include: anxiety disorders, obsessive
compulsive disorders, depressive disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophre-
nia, and personality disorders. Basically, mental disorders have to do with
one of four primary dimensions: anxiety, mood, thought, or personality.
In other words, mental disorders differ in terms of whether at base they
revolve around symptoms having to do with the experience of excessive
anxiety, radical fluctuations or inappropriate mood, the organization of
thought, or the structure of the personality. When making a “diagnosis,”
the clinician will listen to the reported symptoms and/or observe the per-
son’s behavior to determine the “central crux” of their difficulties. If this
crux involves anxiety, the next step is to determine which specific anxiety
disorder the behavior falls into. If person’s struggles have to do with mood
(too low, too high, or swings), then the clinician makes a further determi-
nation as to which type of disturbance in mood the person is dealing with.
This type of determination is similarly made when symptoms are clustered
around the organization of thought or the structure of the personality. In
each case, this step will help the clinician determine which mental disorder
the individual is suffering from. Students can see that both Aristotle and
the modern clinical psychologist are engaged in a similar endeavor: clas-
sifying abnormal mental phenomena.
INTERLOCUTRIX: ARISTOTLE MEETS THE ABNORMAL

PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read the assigned portion of the Ethics and Griggs (2014),
bring it with them to class. The guiding question of this unit is: why do
people do harmful things, particularly things they know are harmful or
bad? Students’ answers for this part of the form will vary depending upon
their perspective. I present a mock-up between Aristotle and an Abnormal
Psychologist to illustrate how a completed form might look. Aristotle’s
one-sentence answer to the guiding question might be that most people
do harmful things or things they know are bad due to “incontinence,” a
disorder in character structure in which people are in their right minds,
have the virtue to help them do the right thing, can be reasoned with, but
lack the ability to conform their behavior to their own desires and expecta-
tions. The psychologist’s one-sentence answer might be that people tend
to do these sorts of things when they are in the grips of one of the six
major types of mental disorder. Here is how the dialogue might proceed
further:
Aristotle: I have studied your six categories of mental disorder as well

as your four criteria of abnormality. I must say, I was fascinated! You
may know that I have written on these topics myself. With respect to
the question of why people do harmful things, particularly things they
know are harmful or bad, I would say it is either that the person has
124 J.J. DILLON
what I call a “vice” or they are “incontinent.” Of course, they could

be brutes, but brutes are not even thinking in terms of good or bad,
right or wrong. The vice seems very much like what you call a “mental
disorder.” The person here persistently does the bad or harmful thing,
sometimes against their own will. Incontinence seems like the phenom-
ena you psychologists deal with in what you call “counseling,” painful
struggles people have in their daily lives that are not due to the presence
of an underlying mental disorder.
Abnormal Psychologist: This is an interesting point, sir, though we
psychologists have tried to get out of the morality business where we
characterize abnormal behavior in moral terms like “virtue” and “vice,”
“good” and “bad.” We live in a modern era where these kinds of moral
and religious trappings are anathema to true science. Why do we need
them? We prefer to speak of “adaptive” or “maladaptive” behavior or
behavior which makes people “happy” versus “distressed.” But yes,
with regard to persistent behaviors which harm self or others, we may
be dealing with a mental disorder. Our first step will be to use our four
criteria of abnormality to decide whether the behavior in question is
abnormal in the first place. If it is, we then need to decide whether
the person has a true mental disorder or, as you say, whether they are
simply struggling with the kinds of difficulties which could be treated
through more direct, psycho-educational methods like counseling. If
we suspect that it may be a mental disorder, the clinician’s job would be
to determine which of the six categories of mental disorder the behavior
belonged to and which specific mental disorder the person had. It may
take an hour or more for us to accurately make this determination
Aristotle: I see. And I have read your Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
It is hard to keep up to date on it since it changes so often! You have far
more disorders in your book than I ever discovered. How do you psy-
chologists understand the root of an abnormality? That is, where does it
come from? I see it as rooted in the character structure and the presence
or absence of the virtues.
Abnormal Psychologist: Again, most psychologists prefer not to speak
of character or virtue as etiological factors. There are a group of psy-
chologists called Positive Psychologists who are trying to bring these
ideas back into fashion, but their influence has been small to date.
Psychologists vary in opinion about the question of the basis of mental
disorder. Many see the root as in an underlying disturbance in brain
function or chemistry. This may be further rooted in their genetic
endowment. Other psychologists see the problem as one stemming

from one’s learning history.
Aristotle: And how about you? Where do you see the root?
Abnormal Psychologist: I must say, as a practitioner, I am somewhat
agnostic on this question. Most of us are trained to be “eclectic” in ori-
entation and to be open to a number of different lines of explanation. I
do see some basis for mental disorders in the brain, but I focus mainly
in my work on ideas and talking, so I do not subscribe to physical or
medical treatments. The disorder for me is in the mind.
Aristotle: You mean the psyche?
Abnormal Psychologist: We don’t call it that anymore. We just say mind.
Aristotle: I see. Well, wouldn’t you agree that in order to treat these
“disorders of the mind” as you call them, you need to know where
they come from? If the problem is in the brain or the body, you treat
the brain or the body to make it better. If it is in the learning history,
you treat that. If it is in the character structure or virtues, you focus on
developing those. How can you be an agnostic on such an important
question?
When students get to class, they work in small groups to share their own
individual dialogues. They work together to compose a single, small group
dialogue which they enact as a role-play for the class. After recreating these
dialogues in class, students are directed to write down on their Interlocutrix
forms what they now actually think about the guiding question. An alterna-
tive activity would be to have a whole group seminar on this text.

from reading these texts and observing these imaginary exchanges. For
me, I have learned that the Abnormal Psychologist and Aristotle are
engaged in a very similar endeavor. Each is attempting to establish criteria
of abnormality and develop practical categories for the classification of
abnormal behavior. There does seem to be a strong parallel between what
Aristotle calls a “vice” and what psychologists call a “mental disorder,”
though the psychologist might reject this equation. I can also see that
there is a great variety of opinion in psychology on the question of the
origin of abnormality, with some psychologists seeing abnormal behavior
as a “disease” springing from biological factors and others emphasizing
126 J.J. DILLON
learning, early childhood, or cognitive factors. I learned that there have

been some small efforts to incorporate character and virtue into modern
Abnormal Psychology (see Vehmas, 2011). I have learned too that psy-
chology makes a great effort to rid itself of categories and terms like soul,
character, and virtue, which it sees as part of a less scientific past.
The last thing students do is write down the questions they still have
about this topic which have not been fully addressed by the readings or
class discussions. We pick these “remaining questions” up when we later
engage in our periodic Academic Conferences. For me, I still wonder
about the lack of a unified view about matters of etiology in psychology.
We seem to have no clear way of answering these questions of origin other
than by presenting the great range of opinion on these matters. I won-
der whether this simply confuses our students (and future practitioners).
The range of opinion in psychology is quite large and often philosophi-
cally incommensurate. I wonder about whether this massive explanatory
diversity is a sign of strength or whether it is more of a weakness, a sign
the discipline has really not developed very far in its history. I also won-
der what we lose when we remove things like “soul,” “character,” and
“virtue” from psychology. I surely understand what we gain: we make
our inquiry much more precise, rational, and scientific. But to completely
rule certain concepts out of the equation runs the risk of missing the
moral dimension of abnormal behavior. Are people victims of disorders
and abnormal behaviors, or do they have some choice in the matter? I
think Aristotle believes that many things that psychologists call disorders
are really defects of character which can be repaired through developing
a plan to develop and exercise certain deficient virtues (see Menninger,
1988; Rieff, 2006/1966).
How we characterize abnormal behavior matters for a number of rea-
sons. We want our descriptions of reality to be correct in a scientific sense.
But at a practical level, the way we understand abnormal behavior will have
huge practical implications as well. If we understand abnormal behavior to
be a biological “disease,” then the treatments we embrace will be biologi-
cal in nature as well. If we understand abnormal behavior to be the result
of learning, then our treatments will focus on unlearning maladaptive
behaviors and relearning newer, more desired behaviors. In other words,
our “diagnosis” of abnormal behavior structures the “prescriptions” we
will embrace to correct or cure it. But I will need to put these questions to
the side for the moment and revisit them when we arrive at our upcoming
Academic Conference on Good, Better, Best in Psychology. For now, I
turn to psychology’s prescription: psychotherapy.
REFERENCES
American Psychological Association. (2004). More Americans are seeking mental
health treatment. Monitor on Psychology, 35(7), 17.
Aristotle. (1998). The Nichomachean ethics (D. Ross, Trans.). New York: Oxford.
Worth.
Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom.
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Maher, D. P. (2012). Contemplative friendship in Nichomachean Ethics. Review
of Metaphysics, 65(4), 765–794.
Menninger, K. (1988). Whatever became of sin? New York, NY: Bantam.
Rieff, P. (2006). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud.
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. (Original work published 1966).
Seligman, M. (2004). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to real-
ize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York, NY: Atria Books.
Vehmas, S. (2011). Disability and moral responsibility. Trames: A Journal of the
Humanities & Social Sciences, 15(2), 156–167. doi:10.3176/tr.2011.2.04.
CHAPTER 14
Teaching Psychotherapy with Phaedrus
We often tell our children, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but
words can never hurt me.” We usually say this in the face of a child who
has already been hurt by someone’s words. We tell them to try not to let
those words—which really, really hurt—bother them. But they do hurt!
Surely, we don’t want our children to be hurt by all cross words. They can
and should learn to ignore some. But words from the people we value and
love are immensely powerful things. There is a proverbt from the Bible
which states, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (18:21).
Words can bring death or life. We know that words can hurt, but how can
they help? How can words bring life?
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, about 83 % of my under-
graduate students decide to major in psychology in the hope of some-
day having a career in a “helping” field as a social worker, mental health
counselor, psychiatrist, or psychotherapist. The psychotherapeutic profes-
sion is a firmly established segment of the US economy. According to the
US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are roughly
552,000 “mental health professionals” practicing in the USA today. To
be licensed by a given state, applicants must complete a graduate degree
program from an accredited school. In such programs, students learn a
common set of concepts and practices which will equip them to become
competent psychotherapists. What are students taught in these programs?
What are the recognized ways of using words to help people with their

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_14
130 J.J. DILLON
problems? Socrates is also very interested in the healing power of words.

His ideas are thus an excellent way to introduce students to this fascinating
sub-discipline (for more on Phaedrus, see Brook, 2010).
PHAEDRUS (266D–274B; 276A–277A)

Students skip the first three quarters of this magnificent dialogue and read
only the last section. Some context must therefore be briefly set to make
the reading more intelligible. The dialogue begins at “high noon” with
Socrates walking “outside the city walls” with a bright and handsome
young man in the beautiful countryside of Athens. There are vivid and
colorful descriptions of the stunning landscape. It is important to note
that Socrates never leaves the civilized confines of Athens in the Platonic
dialogues, so the departure is quite significant. Plato tells us what is to fol-
low in this dialogue will deal with wild and untamed matters. The fact that
the temperature is so hot and the scene so sensually beautiful signals that
the topic is passion and love.
Sure enough, we learn the man Socrates walks with, the handsome
Phaedrus, is fresh from a rousing speech on the subject of love given by
his teacher, the Sophist Lysias. Phaedrus is obviously bewitched by Lysias’
words and effusively sings his praises to Socrates as they walk together
in the heat of the day. Given Socrates’ previously expressed disdain for
the Sophists, he is not as prone as Phaedrus to praise Lysias. Of course,
Socrates does not openly share his doubts with the young man; only the
reader is aware of them. Instead of condemning Lysias, Socrates simply
asks Phaedrus to recite his speech back to him so he can hear these wise
words for himself. A bit bashful, Phaedrus reluctantly agrees and delivers
Lysias’ speech from memory.
We learn that Lysias makes an argument in this speech that love is
an irrational passion that is so all-consuming that it seeks to enslave the
beloved. Given the absolute wildfire that is love, Lysias says it is therefore
better to have sex with a man who doesn’t love you (like me) than to have
sex with a man who does. His position is that someone who just wants a
casual fling is better for you than someone who actually loves you. Casual
sex won’t seek to dominate you; real love will.
Socrates is quite angered by Lysias’ speech, though his disgust is only
clear to the reader. Socrates believes that the older Lysias is attracted to
the handsome Phaedrus. He thinks Lysias is using his words not to speak
the truth about love, but to persuade the young Phaedrus to have sex
TEACHING PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH PHAEDRUS 131
with him, a much older and uglier man. For Socrates, Lysias’ complex and
seemingly intelligent speech is nothing but a giant pick-up line designed
to manipulate the impressionable Phaedrus into giving Lysias what he
wants. Lysias is using his words to control rather than to teach or help.
Socrates warns Phaedrus of Lysias’ designs. Through the Role-Reversal
Method, Socrates allows Phaedrus to examine him on the question of love.
This enables Socrates to eventually articulate a view of love and language
that is starkly opposed to Lysias and the other Sophists like Protagoras and
Gorgias. Socrates believes that while love can indeed make a person insane
and controlling, it doesn’t have to be that way. If handled properly, love
and sexual attraction can lift the souls of the two people involved to better
places than before they fell in love. With this point, we mark the end of
the background information provided to students and turn to the assigned
portion of the text.
Despite what I have just said, Phaedrus is not really a dialogue about
love. It is about speech, specifically the nature and purpose of words. In
the section of Phaedrus that students read for class, they pick up Socrates’
argument where he tries to get Phaedrus to understand the true nature
of speech and to distinguish good speech (Socrates’) from bad speech
(Lysias’). The guiding questions here are: What are words for? What is
“good” speech? Socrates suggests to Phaedrus that the Sophists seem to
be under the impression that good speech is simply effective speech and
that learning how to speak well involves simply mastering different rhe-
torical techniques designed to produce particular results on the hearer, for
example, winning an argument, successfully acquitting or prosecuting a
client, getting a young boy to sleep with you, and so on. The Sophists also
seem to believe that being a good teacher of rhetoric is to simply teach
students these techniques so they can be effective speakers too.
Socrates does not come out and say all of this directly. He knows that
Phaedrus will not listen to him or believe him if he does. Phaedrus will
need to discover these truths on his own through the Dialectic. So in this
dialogue, Socrates “plays the boob.” He adopts the role of the ignorant
student and allows Phaedrus to play the role of the learned teacher. The
question on the table is: what is good speech? Socrates’ job now is to give
an answer to this question. Socrates lays out the basic elements of speech
in a fairly rote fashion, almost like he is reading a list one would find
in an Introduction to Rhetoric textbook. He says good speeches have a
preamble, exposition with evidence, refutation, supplementary refutation,
and so on.
132 J.J. DILLON
Socrates presents these decontextualized and pedestrian elements of

rhetoric to Phaedrus in the hopes that he will see on his own that when a
teacher merely presents these skills to a student as if they were the whole
of rhetoric, something important is missing. He even prompts Phaedrus
after giving this list, “But have a look at it, my good sir, and see whether
you discern some holes in the fabric, as I do” (268a). What a thing to say
to your own answer in a Socratic Dialectic!
Of course, Phaedrus does not see any holes in what Socrates has said
since he is so strongly under the sway of the Sophists and their utterly prag-
matic view of rhetoric. Socrates has essentially repeated the way Phaedrus
has been taught rhetoric by the Sophists. So Socrates prods Phaedrus to
think further. He draws an analogy from medicine. Suppose, Socrates says,
someone goes up to a doctor and says, “I know how to apply such treat-
ment to a patient’s body as will induce warmth or coolness, as I choose;
I can make him vomit, if I see fit, or go to stool, and so on and so forth”
(268b). Would the doctor say that such a person is a competent physician?
“Surely not,” Phaedrus answers. That person would not only need to know
the range of effective medical techniques, but would also need to know
which patients ought to be given which treatments, when, for how long,
and so on. In other words, a good doctor would need to be able to make
a diagnosis based upon the specific needs of the patient and then apply the
techniques to produce a desired result (which in this case is health). So
good speech, Phaedrus reasons, aims not just to produce any result in a
hearer, but a good result based upon his or her initial condition. Phaedrus
has finally seen the holes in the Sophists’ position and he has come to it
through his own efforts rather than being lectured at or argued with.
Socrates seizes the moment and says that it seems the Sophists are just
like the confused physician described above. The Sophists say that all they
need to do as teachers is teach their students the different techniques of
speech which will produce powerful effects on their audiences and help
them win arguments in court and the public square. It is not our responsi-
bility, they say, to train our students to discern what is true and false, what
audiences really need, why to use certain techniques, and to what end.
The Sophists’ approach to teaching is thus technique-without-telos. It is
irresponsible at best, reckless at worst.
Socrates then prods Phaedrus to help him develop this argument fur-
ther. Socrates reveals that what is missing in Lysias’ approach to teaching
is real knowledge: knowledge of the souls of his audience and knowledge of
the subjects he speaks about (wisdom). Phaedrus (and the reader) begins
to see that what the Sophist really knows are tricks and parlor games which
he applies in a way that is utterly without scruples. To return to the anal-

ogy of the physician, the doctor needs to know the nature of the situation
he is treating before he can treat it. He cannot apply techniques willy-nilly.
So too, the speaker must know the soul of the person he is speaking with.
He or she cannot simply speak the same way to everyone.
So before speaking, Socrates reasons, the good speaker will need to
classify the different types of souls he is dealing with. Based on this knowl-
edge, he will make a determination of which kinds of speech will produce
the desired effects on these souls based upon who they are, where they
are starting from, and what they need to hear to learn and grow. Socrates
says, “Since the function of oratory is in fact to influence men’s souls, the
intending orator must know what types of soul there are…To the types of
soul thus discriminated there corresponds a determinate number of types
of discourse” (271d). But the good orator will not use the knowledge of
people’s souls and types of speech to produce just any effect on his listener.
He won’t just try to manipulate things to go his way (as Lysias has in his
speech on love). Instead, he will always attempt to lead the individual
soul of his interlocutor to the truth. And what is this method of speak-
ing, Socrates asks? It is the Dialectic, the Socratic Method. Contrary to
the Sophist, the Dialectician selects a soul of a given type, “…and in it he
plants and sows his words founded on knowledge…words which instead
of remaining barren contain a seed whence new words grow up in new
characters, whereby the seed is vouchsafed immortality, and its possessor
the fullest measure of blessedness that man can attain unto” (277a). This
is a very different matter from trying to win arguments, dazzle audiences,
or get your interlocutor to do or believe what you want. In Dialectic,
words function to lift and heal souls, to bring them to the light.
THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST
In addition to Phaedrus, students also read sections from the Griggs (2014)
text where they learn about various modern techniques for using words
to help others (pp. 420–425; 429–435). They will often do this during
a separate class meeting. Students focus on five psychotherapeutic tech-
niques in particular: (a) client-centered therapy, (b) behavioral therapy, (c)
cognitive therapy, (d) cognitive-behavioral therapy, and (e) psychoanalytic
psychotherapy. As a point of contrast, students also briefly explore the
so-called biomedical therapies, which do not use words at all, but instead
rely on biomedical remedies such as drugs to alleviate people’s suffering.
134 J.J. DILLON
Each of the five methods of psychotherapy differs in terms of its “object

of concern.” The object of concern is what a therapeutic technique seeks
to change. In psychoanalysis, the object of concern is unconscious and
unresolved feelings of aggression and attraction to one’s primary caregiv-
ers. Psychoanalysts believe that current psychological suffering is caused
by the interplay of these old unconscious dynamics. Healing words in
psychotherapy thus seek to help the client make bring the unconscious
into consciousness. In client-centered therapy, the object of concern is the
alignment between a client’s experience, awareness, and communication.
Client-centered therapists believe that if there is not a congruence between
these three dimensions in a person’s life, psychological suffering will result.
Healing words in client-centered therapy seek to affect congruence in the
client through unconditional positive regard and active listening.
In behavioral therapy, the object of concern is the web of associations
that the client has made between behaviors and responses from the envi-
ronment. Behavioral therapists believe that clients have learned to engage
in certain maladaptive behaviors based on their learning history. Healing
words in behavioral therapy seek to help the client unlearn undesirable
behaviors and relearn new ones. In cognitive therapy, the object of concern
is the chain of ideas and beliefs the client has about certain important mat-
ters in their life, for example, “If someone is mad, it is probably my fault,”
“I must be a perfect wife.” Healing words in cognitive therapy seek to
challenge the client’s erroneous beliefs and help replace them with realistic
and logical ones. In cognitive-behavioral therapy, the object of concern is
a mixture of cognitive and behavioral therapies. The therapist focuses on
the relationship between the beliefs the client has about the world, how
he or she uses those beliefs to predict events in their life, and how events
in life have come to reinforce these beliefs. Healing words in cognitive-
behavioral therapy seek to challenge erroneous and negative beliefs so that
the client can make accurate predictions and learn to interpret events in a
way that will reinforce adaptive and realistic belief structures.
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE MODERN

PSYCHOTHERAPIST
After students read the assigned portion of Phaedrus and Griggs (2014),
they complete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A)
and bring it with them to class. The guiding questions of this unit are:
what are words for? What is good speech? How can words help and heal?
We use the Traditional Method to have Socrates question the modern
psychotherapist on the nature and purpose of words. I randomly assign

students to one of four psychotherapy groups. Each student conducts a
dialogue with Socrates and their assigned psychotherapeutic technique
rather than having students try to incorporate them all into a single role-
play. I have found that students at this point do not fully understand the
distinction between cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapy, so I skip
cognitive-behavioral therapy for this exercise.
I present here a mock-up of a dialogue between Socrates and a behav-
ioral therapist to provide an example of where this exercise might lead.
Student work will vary greatly in terms of the issues raised and concepts
stressed. Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding questions might be
that words are for describing reality and for helping people see the truth of
things more clearly. They can help in the sense that through the Dialectic,
words can liberate an intellect which is mired down in ignorance, suffer-
ing, and error. The behavioral therapist might say that words are simply
one of many reinforcements present in the environment which can serve
to teach a person to continue doing something or cause a person to desist
from doing something. Words “help” in the sense that they can be used to
teach people to do things they want to do and to stop doing things they
don’t want to do. Here is how the dialogue might proceed further:
Behavioral Therapist: I have read your interesting dialogue with

Phaedrus, Socrates. I found it all very entertaining, but I must say,
you seem very confused about the nature and purpose of words. With
respect, I think Lysias may have had a more accurate view of language
than you (though he had some prurient interests of his own to advance
to which I do not subscribe).
Socrates: I am always happy to dialogue with smart people on the pro-
found questions, sir. What better way is there to spend one’s day? What
better way is there to live life? So tell me, what are words for?
Behavioral Therapist: I am not sure I am comfortable with the vast,
philosophical scope of your question, but I saw what you did to Meno,
so I will play along with your little method.
Socrates: Excellent!
Behavioral Therapist: I would say that words are really no different from
any other type of what we call “reinforcement” present in the environ-
ment. Sometimes, a smile will reinforce a particular behavior and so
the smile will persist. Other times, food will be the reinforcement or a
pleasant feeling. In some cases, words can be used to provide the rein-
forcement to a behavior to enable it to persist through time. It might be
136 J.J. DILLON
an “atta boy,” or in some cases, even harsh words can serve to reinforce
a behavior.
Socrates: Very interesting! This sounds a bit like animal training to me.
Don’t mistake me, I love my animals, but I thought we were talking
about human beings? So you say that words are not to be seen as differ-
ent from a treat for a dog or any other reward we use to train or teach
certain behaviors? Would you agree that if an infant and a grown man
are both in a room listening to someone speaking, they hear the words
differently?
Behavioral Therapist: I do.
Socrates: And would you agree that what the infant hears are simply
sounds, whereas the adult hears not only the sounds, but the meanings
those sounds symbolize?
Behavioral Therapist: Perhaps, yes. But I don’t know whether this is of
any consequence for helping people solve their problems.
Socrates: Hear me out first before you come to any conclusions. When a
therapist uses words to help, he or she is not simply providing reinforce-
ment with sounds as would happen with an infant, but using sounds to
stand for larger ideas. When the client goes from the sound to the idea,
his soul is liberated from error and misunderstanding. His soul is filled
with truth. Being in the dark does not feel good. It leads to suffering.
Being in the light is a blessed state that feels good. So I would argue
that the therapist helps the client with his words by bringing him to the
light. The words are vehicles which help free the client’s soul from error.
Behavioral Therapist: I do not see it this way at all. I am not sure what
this “light” is anyway, much less “truth.” All the therapist’s words do is
to help the client learn to engage in behavior that is more adaptive or
desired. What is truth? Why make it more complicated than that?
Socrates: Well, because the situation is more complicated for us. Most of
what you say applies to animal training, but I think you are missing the
realm of the intelligible, of the Forms, which words help people gain
access to. Words are not just tools we use to get people to do things
what we want. Words can lift the soul.
Behavioral Therapist: Now I think I may be the one in the dark!
individual dialogues with each other and develop a single small group dia-
logue which they enact for the class in a role play. After listening to various
dialogues in class, students are directed to write down how they would
currently answer the guiding question.

from their reading, role-play, and classroom exchanges. I have learned that
though helpful for millions of people, modern psychotherapy does seem
to run the risk of adopting a thoroughly pragmatic and results-driven
approach to words. In this sense, words are used to help people feel better,
period. Questions of truth, wisdom, and virtuous conduct are often left to
the side save for a few schools of psychotherapy (see Overholser, 2015).
Socrates’ warnings to Phaedrus about the Sophists are very instructive
for me. Modern psychotherapy would have a lot to learn from seriously
considering the question: What are words for? At the same time, I am
aware that part of the current and historical appeal of psychotherapy is that
people did not feel comfortable going to the clergy about their personal
problems because they feel the clergy always put things in the context of
morality and truth. So from a marketing perspective, Socrates might not
have that many clients on his appointment list!
The last thing students do before they leave is write down the questions
they have about this material which are still unresolved for them. My own
view is that both Socrates and the modern approach to psychotherapy
have something important to offer people who are striving to achieve
some sort of happiness in their lives. I still wonder about how to offer
the critiques Socrates makes of the Sophists in a way that modern psycho-
therapists would really hear and accept. Modern practitioners are often
quite resistant to questions of wisdom, morality, and truth. They prefer
instead to focus on more practical and expedient matters like making a
person feel better. I will need to put these questions to the side for now
and revisit them during the Academic Conference on Good, Better, and
Best in Psychology which will take place during the next class meeting.
REFERENCES
Brook, T. (2010). The language of love and learning: Connecting eros, rhetoric,
and knowledge in the Phaedrus. The Midwest Quarterly, 3, 254–270.
Worth.
Overholser, J. (2015). Positive psychotherapy according to the Socratic method.
Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 45(2), 137–142. doi:10.1007/
s10879-014-9279-7.
CHAPTER 15
Conference 2: Good, Better, and Best

in Psychology
We have now considered another four weighty topics since the last
Academic Conference: human development, moral development, psy-
chological abnormality, and psychotherapy. Students have done a lot of
intense reading, writing, role-play, and discussion. They have learned a
great deal about these four sub-disciplines in psychology and have even
begun to catalogue their learnings in writing. They have also listed the var-
ious burning questions they still have about the topics we have addressed.
This Academic Conference provides students with the opportunity to fur-
ther integrate their learnings and hopefully make some headway toward
resolving some of their remaining questions.
Prior to the Conference meeting, students do an assigned reading at
home. This text is chosen to encompass the themes and questions that
have arisen in the four units immediately prior to the Conference. In this
case, prior themes and questions relate to questions of value, or “good,
better, and best” in psychology. The guiding questions of the present
Conference are: What is the Good? Are some ways of living, thinking, act-
ing, or speaking “better” than others?
Before Conference day, I randomly assign students to small groups
where they are assigned one of four Conference questions, which they
answer at home after doing the reading. I allot bits of time in class meet-
ings prior to the Conference for students to work together and with me
on thinking through their Conference question and ask any clarification

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_15
140 J.J. DILLON
questions. The Conference questions all ask students to compose an imag-

inative dialogue between Socrates and a representative of psychologist (see
list of questions at the end of this chapter). When we meet on Conference
day, small groups gather, consider their answers to their shared question,
and then jump right into the task of composing a role-play to enact for
the whole class. Eight to ten minutes of question and discussion time
is allotted to each group after each performance to help students digest
what they have just seen. Instead of group role-plays, the instructor may
wish to select a subset of students to deliver their paper individually and
answer questions afterward. I turn to the reading for the second Academic
Conference now.
SOCRATES, PHAEDRUS (245D–253C) AND REPUBLIC

(505A–509C)
For this Conference reading, students pick up the Phaedrus again and look
at a new section of text. They also return to a brief section of Republic
just before the section on the divided line of knowledge which they read
for the chapter on Developmental Psychology. These two pieces of text
contain all the themes we have been working on since the last Conference:
the scale of development, the vision of the good, diagnosing wrongdoing
and abnormality, and how to use words to set things right. They provide
an excellent vehicle to help students synthesize and further articulate their
learnings.
We left the Phaedrus with Socrates talking with Phaedrus about the
elements of good speech. He emphasized the notion that a good speaker
needs to first get to know the souls of his or her interlocutor so as to deter-
mine what they might need and then choose words in such a way that will
“fit” with the particular type of soul they are and take them where they
need to go to learn and grow. We continue this discussion in the assigned
Conference reading. In making this case to Phaedrus about good speech,
Socrates presents a new picture of the soul. As we saw in Phaedo, Socrates
believes the human soul is immortal. We learn in the Republic that not
only is it immortal, but Socrates believes the soul has three different parts
and functions—rational, appetitive, and spirited. Socrates further develops
these ideas here in Phaedrus by using the Method of Myth. He does not
frequently use this Method and will only use it when he is talking about
matters of such depth and importance that everyday discursive speech will
CONFERENCE 2: GOOD, BETTER, AND BEST IN PSYCHOLOGY 141
just not suffice. He needs to resort to myth, metaphor, and story in order
to represent the largeness of what he wants to say.
Using an analogy, Socrates says the soul is like “the union of powers in a
team of winged steeds and their charioteers” (246a). The horses and char-
ioteers of the gods are all of good and perfect stock, but human beings
unfortunately possess a hybrid: one good horse and one bad horse. This
makes it painful for the human being to drive the chariot around, that is,
to live well. The souls of the gods have wings and can fly through heaven
without impediment. But a human soul has no wings, comes to earth,
fastens “on something solid, and settling there it takes to itself an earthy
body which seems by reason of the soul’s power to move itself” (246c).
In Socrates’ story, being born as a human being involves a “loss of one’s
wings.” Each soul, he says, lives out a 10,000-year cycle before “dying”
and being reborn in another body. It is important to keep in mind that
Socrates is telling a story here and not making empirical claims about his-
tory or the literal passage of time. Based on the way that person lived their
life during their cycle, Socrates continues, they either move “up” the hier-
archy of being, drawing closer to the gods, or they move “down” closer
to the body and the material order than they were before. Socrates says
that only the soul which has beheld truth will ever enter the human form
in the first place. All human beings thus begin life from a very noble place.
But because of the “bad steed” in us, we struggle to recollect “…those
things which our souls beheld aforetime as they journeyed with their god
looking down upon the things which now we suppose to be, and gazing
up to that which truly is” (249c). This is why the philosopher on earth will
never be appreciated or understood because the human lot is so deep in
ignorance and forgetfulness. Most philosophers will be “…rebuked by the
multitude as being out of his wits, for they know not that he is possessed
by a deity” (249d).
Socrates takes the “abstract-concrete” developmental scale we con-
sidered in Chapter 11 and uses it here in Phaedrus to order the differ-
ent types of human souls. At the top of this hierarchy of the soul are
(1) philosophers, or lovers of wisdom who dwell with the Forms. Then
come (2) kings or commanders who are filled with wisdom and use this
knowledge to make good political decisions. Then come (3) statesmen,
businessmen, or traders; (4) athletes, trainers, and doctors; (5) prophets or
priests; (6) poets and other imitational artists like rhapsodes; (7) artisans
or farmers; (8) sophists and demagogues; and finally, (9) tyrants.
142 J.J. DILLON
The philosopher’s soul is placed at the top of Socrates’ hierarchy because

it stays closest to the reality beyond heaven. Socrates says, “It is there that
true being dwells, without color or shape, that cannot be touched; reason
alone, the soul’s pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowl-
edge thereof” (247c). The philosopher will constantly attempt to speak
the truth of this “place beyond heaven.” The position of the philosopher’s
soul is thus one of wisdom spoken of in Phaedo (79c) in which he or
she stands poised beneath the Forms. The philosopher’s soul habitually
resides in the intelligible realm which is a place without color, shape, and
solidity. The philosopher sees the subject of all true knowledge which is
visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman (247c–d).
Beyond heaven, in other words, lies the Reality of such transcendent
forms as Justice, Self-control, Knowledge, and Beauty. Socrates tells us
in this small section of Republic that on top of all of these other Forms
resides the “Form of Forms”: the Good. Glaucon, Socrates’ interlocutor,
begs Socrates to tell him more about this Form, to speak in words that
even a child could understand of what the Good is in itself. Socrates says
that the Good is what we all seek to know and be close to. It is “…the
end of all endeavour, the object on which every heart is set” (505e). But
it is quite difficult to grasp and know the Good in itself. The Good is like
the light that illumines the objects that we see. We often see the objects,
but not the light behind them. Socrates continues, “Then what gives the
objects of knowledge their truth and the knower’s mind the power of
knowing is the form of the good…The good therefore may be said to be
the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but
also of their being and reality; yet it is not itself that reality, but is beyond
it, and superior to it in dignity and power” (508e; 509b). The Good is the
light that makes knowledge and truth possible at all.
This vision of the Good is the highest form of human knowledge and
is what sets the philosopher apart from other souls. Most of us are lost in
things, or if we are lucky, the Forms of things. But when we contemplate
the Good, we stand back and consider the condition for the possibility
of knowledge and being itself. Why is there something rather than noth-
ing at all? The answer, for Socrates, is the Good. We can see further that
for Socrates, knowledge and morality are not separate domains. We don’t
impose or project our “values” upon brute reality. The Good suffuses
every other thing which can be known. It is perhaps only the philosopher
who has beheld the vision of the Good who knows this.
One way this journey to the vision of the Good begins is with the beauty
and love we experience on earth. Recall that in the Phaedrus, Socrates
tries to offer a different view of love, beauty, and sexual attraction than is
offered to Phaedrus by his teacher Lysias. Socrates tells Phaedrus that the
soul’s wing-buds are nourished by the Forms, by “beauty, wisdom, good-
ness, and everything of that sort,” which can lift it high up in heaven. For
example, the vision of beauty on earth in sexual attraction evokes a fear
for the divine, followed by a deep reverence. Memories will return to us.
It is as if the beautiful person reminds the good soul of what true beauty
is. Socrates says, “…the roots of the wings are melted, which for long had
been so hardened and closed up that nothing could grow; then as the
nourishment is poured in, the stump of the wing swells and hastens to
grow from the root over the whole substance of the soul” (251b). Beauty
and love lift the lovers up. We do not seek to dominate the beloved, as
Lysias says, but just the opposite. We seek the beloved’s liberation.
An analogous type of soul elevation can occur when true speech is used.
In the Dialectic, the careful steps followed by the teacher help the learner
to recall the wisdom and knowledge he or she has forgotten and thus lift
his or her soul from the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth. This
reading on the scale of souls and the Good helps us to appreciate Socrates’
entire career as a teacher and his strange method of education. We instruc-
tors are reminded of who we are as teachers and what should be happen-
ing to students as we educate them. It is not skills, but wisdom that we are
after. Notions of “higher” and “lower” should matter very much to the
teacher. If we do not believe in the possibility of a “higher” and a “lower,”
of a Good, Better, and Best, Socrates’ method and taking souls higher will
appear arbitrary, even silly.
This Conference reading also helps us to carefully consider the set of
dialogues we have worked with in the past several chapters. Let us con-
sider the various guiding questions we have pondered at this point in our
work with Socrates since the last Academic Conference:
Developmental Psychology: What does it mean to develop?

Moral Development: What is moral knowledge?
Abnormal Psychology: Why do people persistently act in ways they do
not want or which make them unhappy? Why do people do things that
are harmful or bad, particularly when they know they are harmful or
bad?
Psychotherapy: What are words for? What is good speech?
144 J.J. DILLON
We can see that many of the themes and lingering questions in these
units have to do with the difficulty psychology sometimes has with making
moral and developmental distinctions, with issues of Good, Better, and
Best. The modern academy is rife with a particularly crude form of moral
relativism which seeks to avoid making moral distinctions of any kind
and sees morality as being relative to culture, gender, race, or ethnicity.
Further, there is an approach to language which runs through modernity
which sees words as powerful cultural forces which shape, control, and
“construct” people rather than being vehicles to lift their souls “higher.”
The question of psychology’s relationship to issues of the Good, Better,
and Best will thus need to be further resolved.
Students read the sections I just discussed from Phaedrus and Republic
at home. As mentioned previously, they are also randomly assigned one of
the Conference questions below. After reading the text, they prepare their
formal answers to these questions by using not only the texts, but their
class notes and completed Interlocutrix sheets.

Quote to keep in mind: “And just as it was right to think of light and sight
as being like the sun, but wrong to think of them as being the sun itself,
so here again it is right to think of knowledge and truth as being like the
good, but wrong to think of either of them as being the good, whose posi-
tion must be ranked still higher” (Republic, 509a).
1. Developmental Psychology: What is the basic difference Socrates

sees between “knowledge” and “opinion” in Republic? Describe
Socrates’ simile of the divided line. What is the ultimate object of
knowledge in this simile? Use the “hierarchy of souls” from Phaedrus
and the divided line from Republic to discuss what it means for
Socrates to “develop” as a human being? What do you think about
this way of seeing development? Construct a dialogue of at least 300
words between Socrates and either (a) Piaget, (b) Vygotsky, or (c)
Morss. Be sure to base your dialogue on Phaedrus and Republic.
Have Socrates do the questioning using the Traditional Method. At
the end of your dialogue, write a single sentence in which you give
your own personal answer to this guiding question.
2. The Psychology of Moral Development: Based on your reading of
Theaetetus, what, for Socrates, is knowledge? How does he suggest we
to judge between different accounts of right and wrong? What stands

in the way of knowledge? With examples from the text, what are
Socrates’ arguments against the idea that knowledge is perception?
Where on the divided line of knowledge (Republic) would Socrates
place someone who thought this? From the small selection from
Republic (505a–509c), what does Socrates think is the relationship
between knowledge and morality (the Good)? What do you think
about Socrates’ claims here? Construct a dialogue of at least 300
words between Socrates and (a) Kohlberg, (b) Gilligan, or (c) Gergen.
Be sure to base your dialogue on Theaetetus and Republic (505a–509c).
Have the psychologist do the questioning using the Role-Reversal
Method. At the end of your dialogue, write a single sentence in which
you give your own personal answer to this guiding question.
3. Abnormal Psychology: What is Aristotle’s definition of virtue in
the Ethics? What are the cardinal virtues? Do you agree with the
Aristotle’s claim that without the cultivation and regular exercise of
the virtues, human beings cannot be happy? Why or why not? Why
does Aristotle believe people persistently act in ways they do not
want (incontinence)? Which types of psychological problems from
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in psychology might be asso-
ciated with either not having, or having in poor measure, each of the
four cardinal virtues? Compare and contrast the six categories of
mental disorder in psychology with Aristotle’s three categories: vice,
incontinence, and brutishness. Where on the “hierarchy of souls”
from Phaedrus would Socrates place those who are suffering from
abnormal psychological phenomena? Construct a dialogue of at
least 300 words between Aristotle and an Abnormal Psychologist on
the topic of why people do things they do not want to do. Be sure
to base your dialogue on the Ethics and the Phaedrus (245d–253c).
Have Aristotle do the questioning using the Traditional Method. At
the end of your dialogue, write a single sentence in which you give
your own personal answer to this same question.
4. Psychotherapy: With reference to Phaedrus, what does Socrates say
is the function of oratory or “good speech”? Following from this,
what kinds of things must a good orator be able to do and know?
Why does Socrates say that the orator must also be a philosopher?
Can you think of any modern day examples of people who are good
orators, but “bad philosophers” as Socrates defines them? Consider
the five major psychotherapies. What are words designed to do in
146 J.J. DILLON
each of them? What are any similarities and differences you see
between the modern psychotherapists and the Sophists? Construct a
dialogue of at least 300 words between Socrates and (a) Albert Ellis,
(b) Sigmund Freud, (c) Carl Rogers, or (d) B.F. Skinner on the
question of how words can help people. Be sure to base your dia-
logue upon Phaedrus. Have Socrates do the questioning using the
Traditional Method. At the end of this imaginary dialogue, write
one sentence saying what you personally believe words are for.
ON CONFERENCE DAY
As noted in the chapter on the first Conference, after a few minutes of
gathering and refreshments, the instructor may want to begin with a brief
convocation and introduction to the work we will do together this day.
This would include a brief review of some questions that are still on the
table for students and which will hopefully be addressed by the attendees
of the Conference. Students then work in small groups with other stu-
dents who have been assigned the same Conference question. Students
take about ten minutes to prepare a dialogue script and then we jump
into the role-play. Each group stands before the group and enacts its
dialogue. Alternatively, instructors may wish to have individual students
deliver their papers to the group for comment and discussion. Students
have Conference Feedback Forms on which they write their immediate
impressions and remaining questions in response to the role-play (see
Appendix B). They hand this in at the end of the Conference. I allow five
to ten minutes after each presentation for students to ask questions of
the presenters and give their feedback.
In the last two to three minutes of the Conference, students complete
the latter part of their Feedback Forms. Here they answer the questions:
What are ideas that I learned today that are new to me? What are ideas
that I previously had but they have been deepened or stimulated by this
Conference? What do I still not know, or what am I still not sure about?
What am I still chewing on? After helping to clean up, students turn these
forms in as their “ticket out the door.”
CHAPTER 16
Teaching Personality Psychology

with Apology
Personality psychology is yet another sub-discipline of psychology to

which students bring an intense amount of prior interest. They do not
need to be persuaded to prick up their ears for these topics. The English
suffix “ality” comes from the Latin -alitas, through the French -alité. It
is a common ending for nouns of Latin origin and denotes having to do
with the nature of something, a state, or condition. Personality pertains to
the nature (or Form) of the person, what it means to be a person. Many
students decided to major in psychology because of their interest in learn-
ing about their own and others’ “personalities.” What does it mean to be
a person? We are talking here about nothing less than who we are, how to
know ourselves, and how to know others.
Socrates is also very interested in what it means to be a person. Though
he does not spend that much time directly telling us who he is, we learn
a great deal about him by accompanying him on his various teaching dia-
logues. But there is one dialogue where Socrates explicitly discusses who
he is as a person: Apology. This dialogue is a stimulating and provocative
way to introduce students to Personality Psychology (for more on this dia-
logue, see Tucker, 1996). The Apology is worth reading in its entirety and
does not work as well to be chopped up into sections as with the previous
dialogues. Instructors may wish to schedule two classes to discuss this dia-
logue so as not to overload students with text and concepts.

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148 J.J. DILLON
APOLOGY (ENTIRE DIALOGUE)

If people have any prior contact with Plato and Socrates, it usually comes
through the Apology. They may have read it in high school or college.
Like Phaedo, Euthyphro, and Crito, the Apology is one of the “last days”
dialogues of Plato. This dialogue is significant for historical, philosophical,
and even literary reasons. We look at it here because it gives us insight into
the “personality” of this fascinating man as well as his own conception of
what it means to be a person. While he is the main speaker in the other
dialogues, he does not speak of himself in nearly as much detail as he does
in the Apology. He is far more interested in the ideas and development of
his students in his other dialogues. Apology stands out because it presents a
detailed account of the way Socrates has lived his life and the beliefs he has
stood for. It also gives us more clues on his Method and how it logically
springs from his life and personality.
The Apology begins with Socrates’ standing before hundreds of people
in the Athenian Assembly, answering the very serious charges which have
been formally put before him: that he has corrupted the minds of the
young and believes in strange gods not recognized by the state. The entire
dialogue is his attempt to defend himself from these charges. The meaning
of the word apology is “defense.” Socrates is not saying sorry for what he
has done or offering an “apology” in the sense of having regrets.
Some in the Assembly already know Socrates; others do not. Socrates is
convinced that many in the audience who do not know him probably have
preconceived negative opinions about him based on hearsay. He is deter-
mined to first address those prejudices. He begins his defense by letting
everyone know who he is by telling them who he is not. He notes that he
is not a fancy speaker of the law courts (like the Sophists, Meletus, and his
other accusers). He says he prefers to speak the truth plainly and to avoid
flowery language. He is also not a man who will insult their intelligence
by making emotional appeals, dragging his weeping family before them,
or playing on his advanced age. He wants them to consider the facts of his
case and only the facts of his case. He will thus not make “pitiful appeals
to the jury with floods of tears” or have his “infant children produced in
court to excite the maximum of sympathy” (34c). He is confident that the
facts alone presented in a good argument will acquit him.
After telling them who he is not, Socrates proceeds to tell the audience
who he is. He notes that he is now an old man of 70 who stands before
them as a loyal citizen of Athens. He is a man who has served his country
TEACHING PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY WITH APOLOGY 149
in the military, the Assembly, and has devoted his life to the care and edu-
cation of the young. Socrates notes that those who really know him love
him and are loyally devoted to him. Since he assumes that “to know me is
to love me,” he reasons that those who have a negative opinion must have
formed this view from second-hand information.
Socrates surmises that those who have these second-hand negative
views got them in one of two ways. First, since his teachings have always
been very public, many people have enjoyed watching him employ his
Method of teaching in the public square. What happens, Socrates believes,
is that these observers then go back home and lamely employ Socrates’
Methods on their own fathers and teachers. These people are understand-
ably annoyed by this inappropriate application of his Method and so blame
Socrates, rather than their upstart sons, for their disrespect. They conclude
that Socrates must be somehow “corrupting the minds of the young.”
Socrates reminds the Assembly that he cannot control what his audience
members go home and do without his supervision.
Socrates argues that the second reason for his unpopularity springs
directly from his Method of teaching. He relates an account of Chaerephon,
Socrates’ childhood friend, who went to the city of Delphi and asked the
god of the city whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates. The priest-
ess replied that there was no one. Socrates says that he was flummoxed
when Chaerephon returned and told him this news. From this moment
on, Socrates was determined to figure out whether this outrageous state-
ment was true or false. He did this by going out into the city in a desper-
ate attempt to find someone, anyone, who was wiser than he. Only then
would the Oracle of Delphi be proven wrong.
Socrates recounts that he first went to a man with a high reputation
for wisdom. He proceeded to examine this man to determine whether he
was wise. It is here that Socrates’ Method first comes into being. Socrates
carefully examines his beliefs though the process of question and answer.
The man unfortunately failed the test. He says he then went to politicians
to try to prove that they were wise. He examined them and unwittingly
showed them that they only thought they were wise rather than actually
being so. He says he then interviewed one person after another in a furi-
ous attempt to prove the Oracle of Delphi untrue. Socrates notes, “It
seemed to me, as I pursued my investigation at the god’s command, that
the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient,
while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better
qualified in practical intelligence” (22a). Needless to say, Socrates notes,
150 J.J. DILLON
these peregrinations did not endear him to the rich and powerful! These
people prefer instead to be told by others how wise they are. He says these
wounded powerful egos are the main reasons why he stands before them
today accused of terrible crimes.
After addressing his public reputation and the mistaken beliefs and
charges derived from them, Socrates turns to answer the more immedi-
ate charges from Meletus and his other accusers: that he “…is guilty of
corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in deities of his own
invention instead of the gods recognized by the state” (24b). In answering
these specific charges, Socrates turns and employs his Dialectical Method
upon his chief accuser right before the jury and the assembled crowd!
Surely, Socrates reasons, for Meletus to make such serious charges against
me, he must think he knows something about me with some certainty. He
says this is just what his Method is designed to do: examine the minds of
those claiming wisdom or knowledge. So allow me, Socrates asks, to use
my Method to determine whether Meletus’ knowledge is true or not.
Socrates proceeds to ask Meletus a number of questions before the
Assembly and prods him for definitions about what it means to “do harm”
and “corrupt minds.” They have a back-and-forth miniature Socratic dia-
logue in which Socrates tries to show him (and the jury) how false and
illogical the claim of Socrates’ guilt really is. I ignore the substance of their
exchange and focus instead on what we learn about Socrates’ personal-
ity from all this. Socrates reveals who he thinks he is and how his strange
Method is connected to his unique identity and mission in life. In telling
this story, Plato attempts to create a new type of hero, one akin to Achilles.
But Plato fashions Socrates into an intellectual hero rather than a hero of
war and physical strength (28d). Socrates is the first in a long line of intel-
lectual heroes who die for their beliefs.
Socrates notes that his Method of Dialectic is focused on questioning
and examining people who claim to have wisdom and knowledge. Recall
the definition of “wisdom” from Phaedo (79c) is the condition in which a
soul stands beneath the form, apprehending its truth. Given the fact that
our bodily condition always impedes our ability to fully attain this wisdom,
Socrates finds human claims to wisdom to be dubious indeed. The Socratic
Method is devoted to helping people who think they have wisdom appre-
ciate how far they are from it and to help those who know they are not
wise get closer to it. The Oracle of Delphi turns out to be correct: Socrates
is the wisest of men, but he is wise only insofar as he knows how limited
all human beings are with respect to knowledge. Socrates is wise because he
knows that he is not wise. Anyone who claims knowledge must therefore be
pretending. It is this pretention that seems to irk Socrates most of all. For
him, we must always remember to be humble with respect to knowledge.
Socrates set out on a mission to humble the proud and challenge those
who have power rather than true knowledge. Of course, they have not
appreciated this work. Their indignation is the reason Socrates believes he
stands accused before them now.
Socrates already noted that his philosophical mission began very early
in his life as an effort to disprove the Oracle of Delphi. Socrates adds more
to this story as his defense unfolds over the pages of the Apology. He tells
us that he believes that God has especially appointed him to Athens as
though his city were a thoroughbred horse. Because of the horse’s great
size and power, it is inclined to laziness and needs the stimulation of a
stinging fly. Socrates believes himself to be the “gadfly” of Athens. “It
seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office of
such a fly, and all day long I never cease to settle here, there, and every-
where, rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you” (30e). Socrates
admits that not many people like a gadfly, but this is not to say that he
hasn’t done an immense amount of good.
Socrates says he has never wavered in obeying this appointment from
God, even though pursuing it caused him to neglect his own affairs and
finances, as well as endure public humiliation for failing to provide for his
own family. He says he had to obey the higher mission of caring for the
city, seeing to it that people’s thoughts were focused on goodness. He says
that being a father to his city was even more important than being a father
to his own children.
More stunning than this, Socrates tells the audience that from a very
young age he has been accompanied and prodded by the voice of a
“daimon” who speaks with him from time to time. A daimon in the Greek
understanding is the veiled presence of divine activity, a “spirit” we might
say. This daimon never tells Socrates directly what to do, but only dis-
suades him when he is doing the wrong thing. Socrates says that he has
followed the directives of this prophetic voice in all of his public teaching
duties and has always obeyed her signs. As an old man now, Socrates says,
his conscience is therefore clean. What’s more, he tells us, the entire time
he presented this very defense before the jury, his daimon did not utter a
single word against anything he said. So Socrates is convinced that he has
taken the right course both in his defense and with his whole life. For all
these reasons, Socrates says the jury should therefore acquit him. I will
152 J.J. DILLON
explore this remarkable view of the human person which has come to be
known as the “eudaimonic” model of personality (see Norton, 1977; Ryff
& Singer, 1998) toward the end of the chapter. For now, I turn to the
psychological portion of the unit.
PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY
In addition to the Apology, students read a selection from the Griggs (2014)
text on Personality Psychology (pp. 315–321; 325–333; 336–338). I
again recommend doing this unit in two meetings rather than try to get it
all in one. Students might read and discuss Apology for the first class and
the psychology section for the second meeting. The main purpose of the
psychology section is to introduce students to the dominant ways that per-
sonality is understood in psychology. This includes four principal models:
the psychoanalytic, humanistic, social-cognitive, and trait theory.
The psychoanalytic model sees the human personality as composed of
three main parts: the id, ego, and superego. Each part of the personality
performs a different function. The id is primarily concerned with drives
related to pleasure and aggression. These are largely outside of awareness.
The superego is concerned with the demands and standards of others.
Some of this part of the personality is conscious; some is unconscious.
The ego is concerned with reality, with making choices, and navigating
one’s way through the world. The ego also must balance the demands of
the id and superego into some kind of compromise formation. As with the
superego, part of the ego is conscious and part is unconscious. Students
also briefly consider the so-called neo-Freudian theories of Jung, Adler,
and Horney.
Influenced by the work of Aristotle, Maslow developed his humanistic
model of the human person. This view holds that human beings have both
a species-wide and idiosyncratic “nature.” This nature makes us who we
are and comprises our personality. Early in life, much of this nature is in
“potential” form. With time and the help of parents, teachers, and culture,
our nature begins to “actualize” or realize itself. We grow and develop.
Deep within us is a drive to realize our potential called the “actualization
tendency.” Maslow proposes a series of basic and growth needs which are
realized in a step-wise fashion. He calls these the “hierarchy of needs.”
Maslow argues that human beings are happy and healthy when they are
realizing their potential and are frustrated and sick when their potential
is stifled. We also consider Carl Rogers’ amplification of the humanistic
model with his concepts of conditions of worth, unconditional positive

regard, and active listening.
Social-cognitive theorists take issue with the strong role of nature in the
humanistic and psychoanalytic models. They align more with the behav-
ioral view that learning and conditioning build the personality. Unlike the
behaviorists, social-cognitive theorists argue that modeling and cognitive
processes, like perception and thinking, play a large role in the develop-
ment of personality. Students learn Bandura’s self-system theory as well as
his concept of self-efficacy.
The Trait Model of personality understands a “trait” to be an inter-
nal, stable characteristic that defines someone’s personality. Trait theories
argue that there are a relatively small set of traits which make up the dif-
ferent personalities which exist. These traits are typically understood as
polar dimensions around which people vary. For example, everyone pos-
sesses the “introvert–extravert” dimension of personality. People differ in
terms of whether they are high, low, or moderate on these dimensions.
Griggs (2014) notes that trait theorists use factor analysis and other sta-
tistical techniques to derive these basic personality factors as they are
present in each person (p. 336). Students learn the major trait theo-
ries, including Eysenck’s three-factor theory and the five-factor model
of personality.
Eysenck’s three trait dimensions are extraversion–introversion, neuroti-
cism–emotional stability, and psychoticism–impulse control. Extraversion
and introversion pertain to sociability. Extraverts are outgoing people who
derive energy from being with others; introverts are those who are more
introspective and tend to derive energy from solitary pursuits. People who
are high on the neuroticism–emotional stability dimension are anxious
and easily upset; people who are low on this dimension tend to be calm
and collected. The psychoticism–impulse control trait dimension is con-
cerned with the degree of aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and empathy we
exhibit in our dealings with others. People high on this dimension lack
empathy, behave rashly, and aggressively. Eysenck argues that these three
traits are determined largely by heredity.
Griggs (2014) proposes the acronym OCEAN to remember the traits
in the Five Factor Model of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The meanings of extraver-
sion and neuroticism in the Five Factor Model are similar to those used
by Eysenck. Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, orga-
nization, and to prefer planned versus spontaneous behavior. Openness is
154 J.J. DILLON
about person’s degree of intellectual curiosity and preference for novelty.

Agreeableness concerns the tendency to be compassionate and coopera-
tive rather than suspicious and antagonistic toward others. Five Factor
theorists also believe there is a biological basis for the presence or absence
of these traits in each human being.
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE PERSONALITY

PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read the assigned portion of Apology and the Griggs (2014)
text, they complete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A)
and bring it with them to class. The guiding question of this unit is: what
does it mean to be a person? We use the Traditional Method in which
Socrates questions the psychologist on the meaning of personality. I also
randomly assign students to one of four groups: psychoanalysis, human-
istic, social-cognitive, and trait. Based on their assignment, students com-
plete their role-play dialogue with that psychologist. When they get to
class, they work with others who have also been assigned that theory. For
the sake of illustration, I present my own mock dialogue between Socrates
and the social-cognitive personality theorist Albert Bandura.
Socrates’ one-sentence answer to the guiding question might be
that the human personality is consists of the immortal soul along with
the veiled presence of the divine in the form of a daimon. Bandura’s
one-sentence answer might be that the human personality will vary and
depend upon the learning history of the individual and the models of
conduct he or she has had. The dialogue might proceed further in the
following way:
Socrates: Dr. Bandura, I recently read your book Social Learning and
Personality Development (1963) and I was intrigued! I can’t imagine
knowing enough about the human personality to fill up one page much
less a whole book. You must surely know something about this. Perhaps
I can learn from you. Could you tell me, what is this “personality” you
speak of?
Bandura: Well, I think what defines the personality is determined by what
I call the person’s “self-system” (Bandura, 1973). This self-system is
the set of ideas and cognitive processes which a person uses to observe,
evaluate, and regulate his or her own behavior.
Socrates: Excellent! But you are telling me what this personality does, not
what it is. I want to know “what is personality?”
Bandura: Yes, I am getting to that. The self-system is not there by nature
as the humanists, psychoanalysts, trait theorists, and perhaps you mis-
takenly believe. Rather, what happens is that children observe the vari-
ous behaviors of what I call the “models” in their social environment,
especially the behavior of their parents.
Socrates: I see, so the personality is the sum total of our learning, the
impact which the environment and significant people have had upon us?
Bandura: Not exactly. Given what they observe, children then choose at
some later time to imitate these behaviors or not. They will be more
likely to choose to imitate them if they are reinforced or if they believe
the behaviors will be reinforced. If these behaviors continue to be rein-
forced, children then gradually incorporate them into their personality.
Over time, these reinforced models of proper behavior come to com-
prise their self-system.
Socrates: So the personality is what the child has chosen to learn and been
reinforced to do?
Bandura: It is a bit more complicated than that, but yes, that gets to
much of it. But the child’s behavior is not just automatically elicited
by what goes on in the environment. People observe and interpret the
effects not only of their own behavior, but also the behavior of oth-
ers. They then act in accordance with their prediction of whether that
behavior will be reinforced or not. We do not respond mechanically to
the environment; we choose our behaviors based on our expectations of
reinforcement or punishment.
Socrates: I see, so there is no other basis for making these choices other
than the expectation of reward or punishment?
Bandura: No.
Socrates: Then, is that really choice? Would people choose a course even
if it were punished?
Bandura: Probably not.
Socrates: But what about if that were the right thing to do? Would people
do that even though it might mean ridicule or persecution?
Bandura: I am not sure that would happen and I am not sure what you
mean by “the right thing to do.” Perhaps these people find ridicule and
persecution to be reinforcing in some way. By “right course,” do you
mean a course that the person desires?
156 J.J. DILLON
Socrates: No, I mean more than that. It is a course that is right for them
regardless of what they desire. But let’s leave that to the side for now.
What about the daimon, that little voice from God which draws you
higher, who helps you to walk the path in life that is right for you?
Don’t you think we have one of those? It demands that we ask ques-
tions and know things? Don’t you believe that we feel miserable until
we figure things out, until we live in the light?
Bandura: I am confused. This sounds like nonsense to me. The only voice
we have in our heads is the voice of other people (and perhaps our own).
Socrates: Fascinating. Tell me more.
Bandura: I can try. I will tell you why we feel bad. It is not from doing
the “wrong thing,” or not following your “inner voice.” Misery is not
due to acting against our nature, disobeying our daimon, or anything
like that. Here is how it works: once our self-system becomes estab-
lished with development, we are then able to observe our own behav-
ior and determine how well it meets our own standards. Based on this
self-evaluation process, we derive a sense of what I call high or low
“self-efficacy.” When we meet the standards, we feel high self-efficacy.
This feels good. When we do not meet the standards, we feel low self-
efficacy. This feels bad.
Socrates: I see.
Bandura: Meeting our own standards increases our sense of self-efficacy;
failing to do so decreases it. If we are walking around with low self-
efficacy, we tend to feel depressed, anxious, and helpless. These feelings
are not traits or the result of not walking the right path, but the product
of our experience. If we are walking around with high self-efficacy, we
feel positive, confident, and optimistic. We can better deal with setbacks
than those with low self-efficacy.
Socrates: But does it matter to you whether these standards are the stan-
dards people should have in their self-system, whether these are the right
standards to have? I mean, if one’s standard for behavior is to control
and manipulate other people, one would be happy and confident so
long as one was successful in controlling and manipulating people.
Bandura: This is a crude example, but yes, that would be theoretically
possible. There would need to be a great deal of social support and
reinforcement for controlling and manipulative behavior. But if there
were, they would help form the standards of behavior in the person’s
self-system. There would be no objective moral standard in the universe
to use to form these internal standards. That is not my job. I am not in

the business of right and wrong.
Socrates: Eureka! That clears it up I think: you and I are just not in the
same business.
own individual dialogue scripts with each other and construct a single
small-group dialogue together for the whole class. Students might instead
have a whole-group discussion about these issues. After each small group
has performed its role-play, students are directed to write down their own
brief answer to the guiding question of the unit.

from their reading and the series of dialogue exchanges they have wit-
nessed. For me, I can see that there are some rather vast differences
between Socrates and the psychologists on this question of the nature
of the person. Socrates includes not only the immortal and inherently
wise soul in his model, but also the notion that the person is on a divine
mission and is imbued with high purpose in life. Here we see both the
concept of “vocation” and the compulsion to obey one’s call in life. In
Socrates’ case, following his daimon means he must go out into the world
and perform the Dialectical Method on anyone making a claim to knowl-
edge. This is the only kind of life Socrates believes is worth living (38a).
When confronted with the possibility of execution, Socrates tells us that
he even plans to employ his Method in heaven after he is dead (41b-c)!
For Socrates, the primary purpose of the human person is to seek and
help others gain wisdom in life. Much of this drama and high purpose is
absent from the psychologist’s accounts of personality. Their picture is
much more modest and concrete. It is not the hero’s life the psychologist
has in mind by any means. There is something to be said for these care-
ful pictures as well, but I find myself much more persuaded by Socrates’
vision of the person when compared with the psychologists’.
The last thing students do for this unit is write down what is still unre-
solved for them about the guiding question. For me, when there are such
vast differences between Socrates and the psychologists, I am left to won-
der: What is Socrates appreciating that the psychologist is not? What is the
158 J.J. DILLON
psychologist appreciating that Socrates is not? It seems like they are in two
different worlds on this question. Each cannot be all right or all wrong,
after all. I am intrigued by the exchange between Bandura and Socrates.
Both are very smart men. Why do they see things so differently? Who has
the better answers to these questions? What Bandura sees is that the world
around us surely has a massive impact on who we are, and how we act and
feel. But I want to also say, “So what!” Isn’t what the world makes of us
just a very superficial part of our being? Does all of this influence and con-
ditioning really make us who we are? Is this who we are at all? I recall as
a very young child, for example, thinking that most of the people around
me really didn’t understand or appreciate me at all. Where did this sense of
alienation and profound solitude come from? I think Socrates appreciates
that to get to know who we really are, deep down, we may need to unpeel
layer upon layer of learning, culture, and history to get to the quiet voice
which prods us on to walk our own path.
There will be time to attend to these unresolved questions, but not
now. We need to put our unresolved issues on the shelf and take them
out again at the next Academic Conference on The Self. For now, we turn
from this exchange with Albert Bandura, the social-learning theorist, to
the sub-discipline of Social Psychology, whose stated aim is to study the
myriad ways that other people and social forces affect us.
REFERENCES
Bandura, A. (1963). Social learning and personality development. Stamford, CT:
Thomson.
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Worth.
Norton, D. (1977). Personal destinies: A philosophy of ethical individualism.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. H. (1998). The contours of positive human health.
Psychological Inquiry, 9(1), 1–28.
Tucker, J. (1996). Encountering socrates in the apology. Journal of Education,
178(3), 17–31.
CHAPTER 17
Teaching Social Psychology with Crito
Of all the sections one covers for Introduction to Psychology, Social

Psychology is the one that stimulates and intrigues students the most.
Gordon Allport (1985/1954) defined Social Psychology the “…attempt
to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of
individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of
others” (p. 3). Most students of psychology are already amateur social psy-
chologists. They are keenly interested in the influence of actual, imagined,
and implied others upon them. They wonder about the effects advertising,
social media, their parents, and even Western culture have upon them.
They are aware that these forces affect them; they are just not sure how
and to what extent. When my students become seniors and conduct an
original research project, many of them choose to focus on social psycho-
logical questions, for example, “What Is Social Media’s Effect on Body-
Image?” or “What Is the Role of Religion in Self-Esteem?” or “What Are
the Effects of Television Advertising on Childhood Obesity?”
In the democracy that existed in ancient Greece, people had to stand
up in the public square and make a rational case for the policies they
were advancing. Since decisions were made through this process of per-
suasion rather than by tyrannical fiat, the Greeks became very interested
in questions having to do with the effects people have on each other.
Socrates’ opponents, the Sophists, were intensely interested in the best
ways to “sell” people on an argument. They developed dozens of effective

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_17
160 J.J. DILLON
rhetorical strategies that are still used in Social Psychology today. Socrates
was also interested in the question of social influence, but remained very
dubious about the nature of most of the effects we human beings had
on each other. We will use Socrates skepticism about social influence as
it is expressed in the Crito as a counterpoint in our exploration of Social
Psychology (for more on Crito, see Bostock, 1990).
CRITO (ENTIRE DIALOGUE)

Crito is another in the series of dramatic “last days” Platonic dialogues.
Despite Socrates’ impassioned defense in Apology, the jury narrowly found
him guilty of all charges and sentenced him to death. As Crito begins,
Socrates has been sitting in his jail cell on death row for the past month.
The state galley has been delayed on a mission overseas and so could not
conduct the execution in a timely manner. In the meantime, Socrates’
friends have been visiting him each day in prison. As we saw in Phaedo,
Socrates’ friends are crestfallen and astounded by his equanimity in the
face of his impending death. We learn in the first pages of Crito that the
reprieve Socrates has enjoyed is now over. The boat carrying the galley is
on its way. Socrates will be put to death within a day. Socrates’ old and
dear friend Crito comes to him in his cell in the morning and watches him
sleep peacefully for some time. Crito is dumbfounded that a man con-
demned to die can sleep at all, much less so restfully.
With time running out, Crito is at his wit’s end. He hatched a scheme
to bribe the jailer and take Socrates into exile in Thessaly, a neighboring
city state to Athens. Crito presents this plan to Socrates when he wakes up
along with his rationale for accepting it. He knows by now that Socrates
will demand good reasons before accepting any proposition! So Crito
comes armed with an argument. First, Crito says, you must escape because
I will lose a dear friend if you do not leave. Second, Crito argues that he is
very worried that others will think he did not do all he could to save such
a great man. Crito will be publicly disgraced if Socrates is executed.
Still groggy with sleep, Socrates uses this occasion for a final Dialectic!
He employs the Traditional Method at the beginning of the dialogue
where he asks the questions and Crito gives the answers. The question
they first consider is whether it is ever just to escape an unjust punish-
ment which has been lawfully rendered. In posing a counterargument
to Crito’s proffered reasons, Socrates goes right after the second part of
TEACHING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY WITH CRITO 161
the argument Crito offered for escape. Socrates asks him, “…why should
we pay so much attention to what ‘most people think?’” (44c). Crito
responds that it is the opinions of others which landed you in your jail cell
in the first place, so perhaps what other people think is more important
than you realize!
Socrates takes this fair point in stride and enters fully into his Dialectical
questioning. He asks Crito, “should we take all people’s opinions seriously,
or are some people’s opinions more valuable than others?” Crito agrees
that not all opinions are of equal merit. Socrates then uses the analogy
of an athlete in training: Should the athlete pay attention to everyone’s
praise and criticism, or should he listen only to his doctor and trainer?
Crito answers that it would be better for the athlete to listen only to the
“qualified” people who have more expert knowledge and ignore the fans
who don’t know what they are doing.
Surely, Socrates follows, if we ignore the opinion and advice of the
qualified person in athletic training, we would injure our body and fail to
achieve the results we seek? Crito agrees. Socrates asks, so if we ignore the
opinion and advice from the more qualified person with respect to matters
of living, would we not do even more damage to ourselves than ignoring
advice from the expert physical trainer? The latter’s expertise pertains only
to the body, while ignoring the advice of the former jeopardizes our very
soul. Crito agrees.
Socrates believes that acting rightly in all circumstances is what one
should always do, without exception. We should do the right thing not
just when it is expedient and convenient for us, but act rightly regardless
of the circumstances. Socrates says, “…the really important thing is not
to live, but to live well” (48b). Thus, the experts in living tell us that we
should never do wrong even in circumstances in which we are wronged
(as Socrates’ conviction to die is a wrong one). Two wrongs, as the saying
goes, do not make a right. Socrates says to ignore these experts in living
would put our souls in peril. The fact that many in the public square think
otherwise should not concern us. Socrates argues that if he were to escape
as Crito proposes, it would do an injury to the state. He reasons that doing
an injury to the state would be wrong and so should not be committed.
Socrates then dispenses with the questions and answers of the Traditional
Method entirely and moves into the Essay mode of lecturing and expand-
ing upon the rationale for his view in the latter half of the dialogue. Crito
becomes more of a prop in this scenario than an actual interlocutor.
162 J.J. DILLON
In making his case, Socrates personifies the city of Athens and has
Athens engage the remainder of the dialogue with Crito. As in a role-play,
Socrates has the laws and customs of Athens make their case to the pro-
posed escapee: “On what grounds do you injure us?” They ask, “Did we
not give you life in the first place? Was it not through us that your father
married your mother and begot you?” (50d). The laws and customs go on
to argue that since you have been born and educated within our bosom,
you are really our child. And just as it is right for you to obey your father
and mother, even more so is it right for you to obey your real parents, the
state. “Do you not realize that you are even more bound to respect and
placate the anger of your country than your father’s anger?” (51b). Crito
reluctantly agrees.
Socrates continues, not only are we your parents, he has Athens say to
the escapee, but we gave you every opportunity to make the case to your
fellow citizens as to why these laws should be changed. You did not make
that case effectively. And so now you want to disobey us. If you leave
as Crito proposes, the laws argue, it would be disobedient. You will be
returning wrong for wrong, breaking your prior agreements and injuring
those whom you least ought to injure: yourself, your friends, and your
country. Further, they argue, what standing will you have in the afterlife
when you go and undermine all of your principles and credibility like this?
Crito has nothing to say in rebuttal to the laws’ case. Socrates firmly con-
cludes: “Then give it up, Crito, and let us follow this course [to death],
since God points out the way” (54e).
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
After this remarkable dialogue, students read a section of the Griggs
(2014) text on Social Psychology (pp. 353–367; 371–376). Griggs
(2014) defines Social Psychology as “The scientific study of how we
influence one another’s behavior and thinking” (p. 289). Students learn
from this chapter that psychologists believe there are three different types
of social influence: conformity, compliance, and obedience. These three
types differ in terms of the level of awareness we have that we are being
influenced.
Conformity is a very subtle, almost unconscious level of social influ-
ence. Conformity occurs when we change our behavior or attitudes from a
desire to follow the beliefs or standards of others. This desire is not always
conscious. There are three basic types of conformity: informational social

influence, normative social influence, and role conformity. With informa-
tional social influence, the pressure to conform emanates from our assump-
tion that others have knowledge that we lack. For example, I change my
diet when my doctor tells me to because I assume that she knows what she
is doing (and I do not). With normative social influence, there is pressure
to conform that reflects group norms regarding appropriate behavior held
by those belonging to the groups. For example, in certain student groups
on campus, there is an unstated rule that all the members will wear black
clothing, or tie-and-dye, or jeans with holes in them. Students learn here
about the famous conformity experiments conducted by Solomon Asch
and others. Finally, role conformity is when we modify our behavior in a
way we believe will be consistent with a certain role we are performing.
Students here learn about the famous “Prisoner-Guard” experiments con-
ducted by Zimbardo (2008).
Compliance is the second type of social influence Social Psychology
considers. Compliance occurs when we yield to a direct, explicit appeal
that is meant to influence behavior or produce agreement with a particular
point of view. Here, the demand to change our behavior is more explicit,
but the individual may still refuse. Students learn here about various com-
pliance techniques which are very reminiscent of the rhetorical strategies
studied by the Sophists. Some of these include foot-in-the-door, door-
in-the-face, low-balling, pressure tactics, upward appeals, and exchange
tactics (see Cialdini, 2006). Students also explore the factors that influence
compliance, that make it more likely that an individual will say “yes” to
such an appeal.
Obedience is when we change our behavior in response to the direct
commands of others in authority. This is the most explicit form of social
influence. Here, an authority figure is directly telling us to obey and is
not giving us the option to disobey. An example is when a police officer
tells us to get out of our car or a military commander gives an order to
proceed on the battlefield. Students study the famous Milgram (1963)
experiments in this context where they learn that otherwise “good” and
moral people can be influenced under the banner of obeying authority
to do some pretty cruel and even gruesome things. Students explore the
factors psychologists have identified that influence the likelihood that one
will obey authority as well as the factors that make it more likely that one
will disobey authority (see Blass, 1991).
164 J.J. DILLON
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read Crito and the assigned portion of Griggs (2014), they
complete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A) and bring
it with them to class. The guiding questions of this unit are: How much
attention should we pay to what other people think? Is it ever right to
disobey an unjust law? For illustration purposes, I present here my own
mock dialogue between Socrates and a Social Psychologist. Socrates’ ini-
tial answer to the guiding question is that we should only pay attention
to what the wise think; everyone else we should ignore. As for obeying an
unjust law, Socrates would say if the law was produced in a legal, demo-
cratic way, then it is never right to disobey it. The Social Psychologist
might say that though we may not want to pay attention to what other
people think, most of us do and our behavior, thought, and feelings are
immensely influenced if not determined by other people. As for obeying
an unjust law, the Social Psychologist might say it is never right to obey an
unjust law; one must follow what one believes to be the dictates of one’s
conscience. Here is how the dialogue might proceed further:
Socrates: I am intrigued with your discipline, sir. You say you seek to,
“understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of
individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence
of others.” This is fascinating to me. Being a man of dim intellect, I
am influenced by others all the time. Surely I am not alone in this.
People are influenced by others in all sorts of ways. What do you hope
to accomplish by studying all of this?
Social Psychologist: Well, as a scientist, it is my aim to document and
catalogue the range of phenomena that exist pertaining to my subject.
I suppose I hope I can accomplish a description of the full range of
human behaviors on this important matter concerning the ways we
influence each other.
Socrates: Indeed, and what a scientist you are! I could only hope to be so
distinguished. But let us take the athlete. People have all sorts of ideas
about how the game should be played—his parents, his fans, his team-
mates, and so on. Should the athlete listen to all opinions on these mat-
ters, or should he listen to the one who truly knows the game?
Social Psychology: I think I see what you are getting at. You are asking
why not study how to influence people to do “the right thing” rather
than study all the different ways people can be influenced. I read Crito
in college myself, Socrates. I think I have a sense of what you are after.
Socrates: This is precisely what I am after, so do tell me.
Social Psychology: Well, it is really not for me to determine what is
“right” or what is “wrong.” I am a scientist. I seek only to describe. It is
not really my place to dictate to whom others should listen.
Socrates: Yes, but when I read your work on obedience to authority
(Milgram, 1963), you seemed very concerned that people were shock-
ing other people in obedience to what an authority figure told them
to do. You have argued that people should be better at following their
individual consciences.
Social Psychologist: Some of us have advocated this. For myself, I sup-
pose if it is a matter of one person physically hurting another, I would
draw the line there and say that is wrong. But for most other things, it
is very difficult to say.
Socrates: How is it difficult? Is it difficult to arrive at it? Or do you believe
the lines on these things just aren’t that clear?
Social Psychologist: If I had to choose, I would say that the lines aren’t
really all that clear.
Socrates: Indeed they are! What is hard is doing the work to get to the
truth. But this is what my Dialectic is for. You may be shocked to hear
this, but I think my Dialectic is the true Social Psychology.
Social Psychologist: Tell me what you mean.
Socrates: Well, the philosopher looks upon the soul of his student. He
sees how shrouded and lost in ignorance it is. He sees how much his
soul is pushed about by his passions, appetites, and most of all by the
opinions of other people. He has compassion for the student and seeks
to implement the Dialectic to influence him in such a way as he’ll be
able to see the truth of things. Then he will be influenced by the truth
rather than by his body or the world around him. So my science is
all about how to use words to influence others to do the right thing,
to see the truth, to do the good, not just influence them in any old
direction.
Social Psychologist: I have never thought of it this way. It is surely a dif-
ferent method than the one we learned in graduate school. You seem to
violate most of the standards of good scientific practice.
Socrates: Well, my conscience won’t allow me to simply study all the ways
that people are influenced. I must study how to influence them to attain
knowledge. Doesn’t your conscience tell you to do the same thing?
166 J.J. DILLON
When students get to class, they work in small groups and share their
individual scripts. They put their heads together to create a single small
group dialogue and enact it for the class. The instructor may wish instead
to have a whole-group discussion about the relationship betwween the
two texts. After viewing each of the small group dialogues and asking
questions, students are invited to write their own answer to the guiding
questions toward the end of the class.

from their reading and class exchanges. For me, I see that the question
of the Good comes up very strongly in this context of social influence.
Socrates is not at all interested in the different ways individuals are shaped
by others, culture, language. This puts him in stark contrast with many
modern social scientists who often seem singularly preoccupied with
documenting the various influences to which we are subject. I am sure
Socrates would agree that individuals are shaped by social forces in count-
less ways. But Socrates is interested in how to use these forces to shape the
individual to know and be the Good. He is not interested in objectively
standing back and simply cataloguing the range of social influences at play
in a group. The only social influences that matter to Socrates are the influ-
ences that lead people to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Really,
the only forces that seem to matter are the True, the Beautiful, and the
Good.
I am sure Socrates would be puzzled by the modern psychologist’s
complete bracketing of questions of the Good and the restriction of our
observations only to “what happens.” He might see some of these modern
figures as engaged in a form of modern Sophistry. I have learned that this
impasse between Socrates and the Social Psychologist is pretty severe. I am
not sure what it would take to convince the psychologist to come around
to Socrates’ point of view. He or she would likely see Socrates’ interest in
shaping people for “the Good” as an unwarranted imposition of his values.
Ironically, on the question of obeying unjust laws, Socrates ends up
stressing the autonomy of the social sphere even more strongly than the
Social Psychologist. Socrates argues that democratic society is like a parent
and our role as individual citizens is like a child. We are to obey and respect
the laws arrived at lawfully and democratically, period. While Socrates
believes in the individual conscience, he does not think it provides a basis
upon which to engage in any kind of civil disobedience. Most social psy-
chological discussions on these matters stress just the opposite: we must
never violate the principles of ethical conscience. Many Social Psychologists
would be hard pressed to explain the origin of this conscience, particularly
given their “social constructivist” proclivities. In a world shaped and con-
stituted by others, what does “individual conscience” even mean?
The last thing students do for the unit is write down the questions that
are still not resolved for them. For me, I struggle with Socrates’ claim that
the demands of democratic society outweigh the individual conscience,
that civil disobedience is rarely justified. I think he is surely onto some-
thing; I just have serious questions about the practical effects. I also won-
der whether one can be committed to the development of the Good in
individuals and still do science in the way the Social Psychologist describes.
I am trying to find a way to bridge the impasse I see between them. But
I will need to put these questions to the side until the Third Academic
Conference on the Self. For now, we turn to the related question of the
reasons (or “motives”) why people do what they do and the role the emo-
tions play in spurring us to act the way we do.
REFERENCES
Allport, A. (1985). The historical background of social psychology. In G. Lindzey
& E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, 3rd ed., pp. 1–46).
New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1954).
Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment:
The role of personality, situations and their interactions. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 60(3), 398–413.
Bostock, D. (1990). The interpretation of Plato’s Crito. Phronesis, 35(1), 1–20.
Cialdini, R. (2006). Influence: The psychology of persuasion (Rev. ed.). New York:
Harper Business.
Worth.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn
evil. New York, NY: Random House.
CHAPTER 18
Teaching Motivation and Emotion

Psychology with Euthyphro
There is a saying in psychology that “research is me-search.” That is, most

undergraduates who major in psychology and most graduate students who
do theses and dissertations are really interested in their own behavior,
though they outwardly study other people. They seek to make sense of
their own past experience or present difficulty. They are intensely curious
to figure out why they and others do the things they do. If this question
about our own behavior were an easy one, it would not require formal
study. Our own and other people’s behavior is really a mystery to us. We
often do things that we did not want to do or we do things for reasons we
do not fully understand.
“Motivation” in psychology has to with the “…internal and external
factors that energize our behavior and direct it toward goals” (Griggs,
2014, p. 168). The Latin root of words like emotion, motivate, and
motion is motare, a word meaning to shake or stir. With motivation, we
are concerned with what makes a person “move” and move in the way
he or she does. When we have emotions, we are talking about things
which move us “on the inside.” When students come to the important
sub-discipline “Motivation and Emotion” Psychology, they are heartened.
Finally, they say, a division of psychology which promises some answers to
these persistent questions about their own and others’ behaviors.
When most of us do things, we want to do the right thing, to act with
justice. The dialogue Euthyphro forces us to ask, do we really even know

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_18
170 J.J. DILLON
what “the right thing” is? Can we act with injustice all the while believ-
ing we are acting justly? What are the “real” reasons behind our actions?
Ostensibly, the theme of Euthyphro is piety and religion. But our interest
in this chapter focuses on a cluster of questions the dialogue treats at a
deeper level: Why do we do what we do? Do we ever really know the
reasons behind our actions? What role do the emotions play in motivating
us to do what we do? What are the specific emotions associated with par-
ticular behaviors? Euthyphro provides a stimulating segue into Motivation–
Emotion Psychology (for more on Euthyphro, see Futter, 2013).
EUTHYPHRO (ENTIRE DIALOGUE)

Euthyphro begins at the steps of the Athenian law court. As we know,
Socrates has been charged with the serious crime of corrupting the minds
of the young and believing in gods of his own making. This dialogue starts
with Socrates’ arrival to answer these charges. As he makes his way to
the court, Socrates meets a young theologian named Euthyphro and asks
him why he’s at the court rather than at school studying the sacred texts.
Euthyphro tells him he is here to prosecute his own father on the charge
of murder. Apparently his father attempted to subdue an unruly servant
and accidentally killed the man.
Socrates is astonished. Surely the father deserves some kind of punish-
ment for this incident, but murder? And what have we come to where sons
haul their own fathers into court to bring criminal charges against them?
Socrates feigns ignorance and shares none of his indignation. Socrates
notes to Euthyphro that he must really be sure of himself to be bringing
such a serious charge against his own father, “I fancy it is not correct for
any ordinary person to do that, but only for a man already far advanced
in point of wisdom” (4b). Socrates says that since he is in legal trouble
of his own, perhaps Euthyphro can teach him something about how to
handle all these legal matters. So Socrates “plays the boob” and notes that
since he has recently been charged with impiety himself, perhaps he could
become Euthyphro’s pupil and hopefully improve his own defense.
Euthyphro cannot understand what all the fuss is about. He is simply
“doing the right thing” after all. He tells Socrates his only concern is jus-
tice. It shouldn’t matter, he says, that I am a relative of the accused. Others
have obviously told Euthyphro that it is unholy for a son to prosecute his
father. This offends the young theologian since he fashions himself as a
person who knows what is holy and what is not. So Socrates wonders,
TEACHING MOTIVATION AND EMOTION PSYCHOLOGY... 171
“You are not afraid that you yourself are doing an unholy deed?” (4e). Of
course not, Euthyphro confidently answers. Socrates continues by saying
that he has a lot to learn from Euthyphro after all since he hasn’t the fog-
giest idea what holiness is. And so begins the dialogue in the Traditional
Method model with Socrates asking Euthyphro, “How do you define the
holy and the unholy?” In this sense, it is similar to the dialogue that ensues
in Meno. The two boys are equally bad students!
We know by now that Socrates wants an abstract definition of the holy
which transcends the particulars. But Euthyphro responds as Meno does,
with an example. Euthyphro says that what I am doing right now to my
father—prosecuting him for wrongdoing—that is holiness. To fail to pros-
ecute him for this act would be unholy.
We have learned that examples offered as general definitions are unac-
ceptable in a Socratic Dialogue. And a self-serving example like this is even
worse! Socrates works with the lad and tries to help him see that he is after
something a little more abstract than this: “…bear in mind that what I
asked you was not to tell me one or two out of all the numerous actions
that are holy; I wanted you to tell me what is the essential form of holiness
which makes all holy actions holy” (6d).
Euthyphro is now frustrated. He is obviously not accustomed to being
questioned like this. But he relents out of respect for Socrates. He recon-
siders his initial response, and answers, “What is pleasing to the gods is
holy, and what is not pleasing to them is unholy” (7a). Now we are getting
somewhere! Euthyphro’s answer is given in the form Socrates requires. It
is now Socrates’ turn to present a counterexample which will illuminate
something important about the holy which Euthyphro’s definition leaves
out. Socrates’ presentation is fascinating to watch. He reminds Euthyphro
what he well knows: that the gods do not all agree with each other on
these matters and constantly fight among themselves.
This stymies Euthyphro at first. After taking a moment to gather him-
self, he answers that though the gods do disagree on some unimportant
things, the matter of the “holy” concerns only those things upon which all
the gods agree. We now have a second definition and are getting deeper
into the Dialectic. Socrates asks Euthyphro in his second counterexample:
How do you know when all the gods agree? And even assuming the holy
is that upon which all the gods agree is holy, this does not help us decide
what holiness is; it only tells that all the gods like or dislike something.
It does not tell us why they like or dislike it. So he asks Euthyphro to
delve even deeper into his definition: What is it about this “holy” object
172 J.J. DILLON
or action that makes all the gods love it so much? Please, Euthyphro, he
pleads, say what the holy is and never mind whether the gods love it or
not. Socrates poses his now famous question to Euthyphro, “Is what is
holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is
holy?” (10a). Socrates intimates that Euthyphro believes they approve it
because it is holy and tries to get him to say what the holy is.
As Socrates moves deeper into the Dialectic, Euthyphro gets more and
more frustrated. Perhaps he does not know the answers to Socrates’ ques-
tions. Perhaps he does not want to expend the effort to think about them.
Perhaps there are other reasons motivating the prosecution of his father
that Socrates’ questions are beginning to expose. Perhaps Socrates’ ques-
tions are causing Euthyphro to feel a little less cocksure about the right-
ness of his position. Whatever is going on, Euthyphro gets a snippy and
accuses Socrates of running him around in a circle, of playing word games
with him. He tells Socrates he does not want to participate in this silly
dialogue anymore and must make his way to court forthwith.
Socrates is now aware he is at risk of losing the boy for good. He always
wants to go as far into the Dialectic as he can with a student to help them
derive the maximum possible educational benefit. So Socrates makes a
huge exception to the rules of his Method. He offers Euthyphro some
answers to help him, almost like a lifeline. Students should surely do their
own work in the Dialectic, but if they get so frustrated and exhausted by
the process that they refuse to participate, what is gained? So Socrates
proffers the virtue of justice as a concept that may help Euthyphro get
his mind around the holy and articulate a tolerable definition. Perhaps,
Socrates suggests, holiness is a species of justice. “Then see what follows,”
he tells him. “If holiness is a part of justice, it seems to me that we must
find out what part of justice it is” (12d). This is a huge concession on
Socrates’ part intended to keep Euthyphro “in the game” as it were. Will
Euthyphro take the bait?
He does! Recall, justice is the virtue which helps us establish the right
relationship between giving and taking. Euthyphro pauses, considers that
holiness might be a type of justice, and concludes that holiness concerns
the right relationship of giving and taking between the gods and people.
It is giving the gods what they deserve. Holiness is proper service of the
gods. Socrates is thrilled. Euthyphro is still with him and the dialogue can
continue. Socrates then focuses on the notion of “service” in Euthyphro’s
definition and offers Euthyphro a third counterexample: If service is all
about helping the object served, Socrates asks, in what way are the gods
helped by our service? Do the gods need our service at all? Why would
they require something which they do not need?
Euthyphro considers this point and agrees that the gods don’t need our
help or really anything at all from us humans. It’s just that they find our
prayers and sacrifices pleasing and so they require them of us. This is what
makes sacrifices holy, because the gods like them. Socrates remarks that we
have now returned to premises we abandoned earlier in the dialogue: the
holy is what is pleasing to the gods. He chides the boy, “I asked you to tell
me about what makes something holy and you tell me that something is
holy because the gods are pleased with it. Come now, Euthyphro!”
As could be expected, the young man is now completely frustrated and
will have no more of this discussion: “I am in a hurry, and must be off this
minute” (15e). He exits forthwith, leaving Socrates alone at the foot of the
steps of the court. “What are you doing, my friend?” Socrates implores.
The dialogue ends at this point without a satisfying conclusion. This abrupt
ending is actually quite intentional on Plato’s part. We learn a great deal
about the Dialectic from watching it break down like this. And in this dia-
logue, we learn even more about human motivation. We are left to ponder
whether Euthyphro is doing what he is doing for reasons he does not fully
understand, whether his defensiveness is covering over less noble motiva-
tions for prosecuting his father. Perhaps his unreasonable confidence and
self-assurance stem from complex emotions he can scarcely identify.
MOTIVATION AND EMOTION PSYCHOLOGY

In addition to Euthyphro, students read a small section in the Griggs (2014)
text dealing with Motivation and Emotion Psychology (pp. 168–172;
56–60). It is up to the instructor whether this reading is done during a
separate class meeting. We saw earlier that motivation is understood in
psychology as “the set of internal and external factors that energize our
behavior and direct it toward goals” (p. 168). Students learn that there are
a few different theories in psychology as to which internal and external fac-
tors predominantly energize our behavior. There is the “drive reduction
theory” in which a bodily need like thirst creates a state of bodily tension
and correlative psychological experience known as a “drive” (the feeling
of being thirsty). The individual is motivated to reduce the uncomfortable
drive by going out and meeting the need (getting some water).
There is also the so-called incentive theory of motivation which argues
that people are drawn into action by environmental stimuli which are not
174 J.J. DILLON
directly tied to drives (since they are outside the person). Examples of
such incentives are money, esteem, or good grades. The individual is moti-
vated to attain what he or she regards as a valuable incentive. There is also
the important distinction Maslow (1968) introduced between so-called
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. With extrinsic motivation, we pursue
something because it is a means to an end. Drive-reduction motives are
good examples of extrinsic motivators. We pursue a glass of water as a
means of achieving the end of eliminating thirst. But Maslow says there
is another set of motives in which we pursue an action as an “end itself.”
There is no reason the person acts other than for a reason which is intrinsic
to him or herself. The action is done “for its own sake.” Maslow believed
that the absence of any intrinsic motivators in one’s life is responsible for a
great deal of misery and unhappiness which people feel.
Students also explore how psychologists see the relationship between
motivation and emotion. Psychologists define emotion as having three
major components: (a) physiological arousal, (b) an outward behavior
expression, and (c) a cognitive appraisal of the situation to determine the
specific emotion and its intensity (p. 56). Students learn the major theories
in psychology which attempt to account for our emotional states such as
the James–Lange theory and the Schacter–Singer theory. Each of these
theories differs in terms of the relative weight the theorist gives to one or
more of the three components of emotion listed above.
The James–Lange theory holds that our emotions are derived from our
behavior and physiological reactions, which occur first. You see a bear.
Your heart beats and you start to run. You feel afraid, James–Lange say,
because you are running and your heart is beating. The Schacter–Singer
“two-factor” theory of the emotions argues that emotions are determined
by the cognitive interpretation of physiological arousal and the environ-
mental situation. You see a bear. Your heart beats and you start to run.
You decide that you are feeling fear based on your appraisal of what is hap-
pening inside and all around you. For Schacter–Singer, cognitive appraisal
precedes the emotion; for James–Lange, cognitive appraisal is after the
emotion has already occurred.
INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS

THE MOTIVATION–EMOTION PSYCHOLOGIST
After students read Euthyphro and the Griggs (2014) text, they com-
plete an Interlocutrix worksheet at home (see Appendix A) and bring it
with them to class that day. We use this sheet to form our class meeting
agenda and do all subsequent classroom activities. The guiding questions

for this unit are: Why do we do what we do? Why do we feel the way we
feel? Students’ answers here will vary based on the different philosophi-
cal assumptions they bring to these questions. There are also extremely
divergent accounts and theories of motivation and emotion offered by
psychologists, so students must pick one for Socrates to dialogue with. I
present my own script for this unit as an illustration. I have chosen Clark
Hull, the psychologist who first developed the “drive-reduction” theory
of human motivation.
Socrates’ short answer to the guiding questions might be that people
are actually motivated by all sorts of things, but what we should really be
concerned with are the right motivations for our actions. For Socrates,
the Truth is the only worthy motivator compared with all the other rea-
sons competing for our attention. Socrates would also say that our feel-
ings about the rightness of our motives, as Euthyphro clearly shows, are
completely unreliable indicators. The psychologist’s short answer to the
guiding question is that the key to understanding human motivation is
based on two things, one biological and the other psychological. A bio-
logical need like hunger precipitates a psychological state of bodily tension
known as a “drive” (the feeling of being hungry). When individuals act,
they are primarily motivated to reduce or remove the uncomfortable drive
by going out into the world and doing something to meet the need (in
this case, the person would go get something to eat) which will make the
drive go away. Here is how the dialogue might proceed further following
the Traditional Method:
Socrates: Hello there, Dr. Hull. I have wanted to talk with you for a long
time, ever since I first read your fascinating book Essentials of Behavior
(1951). I read there that your account of motivation makes a distinction
between “primary” and “secondary” drives. These, you say, are the two
factors that move us to do what we do. Could you say more about this?
Hull: I would be happy to Dr. Socrates.
Socrates: Oh, I am no doctor. Just Socrates will do.
Hull: Surely, ah, Socrates. Many have misunderstood my theory to say
that all human actions are reduced to meeting biological needs. This
is just not true. “Primary drives” are purely biological needs that we
need to meet for survival. These include hunger, thirst, safety, and sex.
“Secondary drives” are not directly needed for survival and are more
social and psychological. For example, many people are motivated to
seek fame or money in their actions.
176 J.J. DILLON
Socrates: Fascinating. While you make this distinction, I am not sure I see
the difference. The primary drives pertain directly to biological needs,
but couldn’t we say that lurking behind the “secondary drives” are pri-
mary drives? I mean, when an individual is motivated by money, isn’t
this because money can be used to buy food or shelter, which will in
turn meet biological needs?
Hull: If you really want to push it, Socrates, then yes. All human motiva-
tions can ultimately find their root in primary biological needs. This
situation becomes a little more complicated with human beings. We are
motivated by things that are not directly tied to biological needs. This
is important to keep in mind.
Socrates: But that is still the driving factor in understanding why we do
what we do?
Hull: Indeed.
Socrates: I am puzzled. Since I am in a body, I agree that my body has
certain needs and that those needs send my mind strong signals which
disturb and distract me. I cannot obtain relief until I go out and meet
those needs.
Hull: We call that state of disturbance “disequilibrium.” All biological
organisms seek a state of homeostasis or balance in their actions. When
you have a need, it upsets this balance and you are in a state of biologi-
cal disequilibrium. It does not feel good. This disequilibrium is the real
factor in explaining why we do what we do.
Socrates: Of course, but allowing for all of that, couldn’t we also say that
there are “needs” which are of a different order than what pertain to
the body?
Hull: I am not sure what you mean. Yes, I say there are both primary and
secondary drives. They are different orders of a sort: one biological and
the other psychological and social.
Socrates: Yes, but we’ve just established that these secondary drives are
ultimately rooted in the primary drives. What I am getting at is the fact
that we can be motivated to go out and get a glass of water or we can
be motivated to understand justice. One motive is biological; the other
is philosophical. One motive pertains to the body; the other pertains to
the soul.
Hull: Back to the dualism again. My colleagues warned me that you
would try to do that. I do not see this body–soul duality as necessary
to what we do in psychology. In fact, it confuses matters more than
anything else. Why don’t we leave the soul out of the conversation? It
is vague and imprecise.
Socrates: Fair enough. But my question still stands. When a man is
plagued with questions about the nature of justice and spends count-
less hours in study and conversation, how can we tie his motive back to
biology? Isn’t it more the case that what motivates him is the Truth? He
is in a state of disequilibrium, but this imbalance is caused by ignorance,
by not knowing the answers to big questions. Seeking the Truth is the
only thing which will satisfy him. He will even ignore his biological
needs and drives to pursue this end. He will even die to answer these
questions if he must. Would you say that your own scientific career, the
very motives that move you to study human behavior so brilliantly, can
be tied back to biological motives?
Hull: This quest for knowledge you speak of would be yet another exam-
ple of a secondary drive and yes, could ultimately be tied back to some
kind of tangible human need, maybe fame, fortune, something like that.
There is no need to go into the heavens to look for motives. They are
all within us.
Socrates: Indeed they are, I just think that the motives within us move us
to want to be closer to heaven.
When students get to class, they work in small groups to construct a

single, group dialogue script which they enact for the class in group role-
plays. After recreating the dialogues in class, students then take a moment
to think and write what they actually now think about the guiding ques-
tions. In formulating this answer, they would need to seriously consider
Socrates’ claim that there is a difference between actual human motiva-
tions (empirical) and what should motivate our conduct (moral). In other
words, for Socrates, all reasons for acting are not of equal value. Some are
more worth pursuing than others. There is such a thing for Socrates as
a “true” motive, something that should affect our behavior above other
motives. For Socrates, the highest motive is wisdom and the Good. For
me, I see that no such distinction between empirical and moral exists for
the psychologist. I must say I tend to agree with Socrates that the philoso-
pher’s task is not just to catalogue the structure of all the motives which
buffet us each day, but to chart a path toward the motive most worth
pursuing.
178 J.J. DILLON

During the last few minutes of class, students write what they have
learned from their reading and class discussion. I have learned that when
it comes to the important things in life, we are often not fully aware of
why we take the actions we do and hold the beliefs we hold. Socrates
says that the unexamined life is not worth living and I tend to agree with
him. I have also learned that Socrates and the psychologist appear to be
conducting almost two completely different endeavors. On the surface,
they seem to be interested in the same question, but the psychologist is
primarily interested in describing and explaining what people actually do,
what moves them and how they feel things. The psychologist is unin-
terested in questions of “ought,” of what we should do, and confines
himself only to the “is.”
Socrates is just the opposite. He is only interested in the “ought” and
spends no real time investigating the “is.” I think he would largely agree
with many of the “findings” and theories offered by motivation and emo-
tion psychologists. People feel things based on their bodily states, cogni-
tive appraisals, and from following social cues. They act based on a variety
of different motives. What he is really interested in are the right reasons for
acting, in making wise choices about which of the many forces competing
for our attention we will allow to move us. I do not get the sense from
the psychologists that understanding the Truth of the world or doing the
Good should be the only legitimate motivation for any action. It is for
Socrates. In addition, Socrates seems much more skeptical about the emo-
tions than the psychologists do. If the emotions have any role to play in
Socrates’ work, it is very minimal. The emotions seem for him more a
distraction and an impediment to right action, something to be distrusted.
The last thing students do is write down what is still unresolved for
them about the guiding questions. Personally, I wonder how we know
whether what we are doing is right. Are there certain feelings associated
with that state? It seems that for Socrates, the only way would be to lis-
ten to one’s daimon and constantly subject oneself to the rigors of the
Dialectic. This is a compelling answer to me. But how do we learn to
listen? What are the rules to follow in order to listen to the proper voice
rather than the many distractions? Do we all even have a daimon? I also
wonder about the kinds of emotions that are experienced by the philoso-
pher who is pursuing wisdom or the Good, pursuing the Truth. What
does it feel like to do the Dialectic properly? What feelings are associated
with doing the good? Could we use these feelings as guides to help us
pursue the right paths in our life?
In my own life, I often confront people who, like Euthyphro, feel very
strongly that they are right and that they are acting for the right reasons.
I sometimes have my strong doubts about this. I wonder how to reach
people like this, particularly when, like Euthyphro, they are not interested
in engaging in a Socratic dialogue. Many people do not accept the validity
of the Socratic Method and do not wish to follow its procedural rules. So
there seems to be no way to adjudicate competing truth claims in such a
case, other than by a “majority rules” or “might-makes-right” protocol.
We leave this unit with the idea of the strong-willed, highly educated
Euthyphro who is absolutely convinced of the rightness of his actions but
unwilling to really subject himself to rational scrutiny and examination
by others. What do we do with such resistance? Socrates handles it with
humor, sarcasm, and calm resignation. He does all he can do with a person
and then confidently leaves the conversation without any anger or resent-
ment. I am not sure I can do this. But I will need to leave this question
to the side for now. Sorting through this issue and the other unresolved
questions will be the goal of the upcoming Conference on The Self, which
I discuss in the next chapter.
REFERENCES
Futter, D. B. (2013). On irony interpretation: Socratic method in Plato’s
Euthyphro. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 21(6), 1030–1051.
Worth.
Hull, C. (1951). Essentials of behavior. New Haven, CT: Yale University.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. New York, NY: Van Nostrand
Reinhold.
CHAPTER 19
Academic Conference 3: What Is the Self?
Since the last Academic Conference, we have considered another three

issues in philosophy and psychology: personality, society, and motivation
and emotion. Students have done some deep reading, writing, role-play,
and discussion. They have hopefully learned a lot about themselves, psy-
chology, and the Socratic Method. A certain picture of the human per-
son has emerged from both psychology and Socrates. Students have also
articulated a number of unresolved issues in each of these units. This third
Academic Conference provides an opportunity to integrate these learnings
and hopefully answer some of these unresolved questions.
Prior to the Conference meeting, students do an assigned reading at
home. This text contains all the themes which have been explored in the
past three units and will enable students to integrate their learnings and
hopefully make further progress in answering their unresolved questions.
For this Conference, the theme addressed by the reading is the human self
and its relationship to both society and the body.
Before Conference day, I randomly assign students to different groups
and they receive one of several Conference questions to prepare at home
after completing the reading. I try to schedule small bits of time in the
classes prior to the Conference for students to meet their group and to
ask any points of clarification about their assigned question. All of the
Conference questions ask students to compose an imaginative dialogue
between Socrates and a psychologist from a particular camp (see list of
questions at the end of this chapter). When we meet on Conference day,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_19
182 J.J. DILLON
the small groups gather, share their individual answers to the Conference
questions, and then work together to compose a role-play to enact for the
whole class. Alternatively, instructors may wish to have selected students
individually present their papers to the group and answer questions. Eight
to ten minutes of question and discussion time is allotted to each group
after their performance. I turn to the reading for the third Academic
Conference now. It is from the famous Platonic dialogue Symposium (for
more on the Symposium, see Buchbinder, 2014).
SYMPOSIUM (201A–212C)
The Symposium provides not only an excellent vehicle for integrating the
prior three units on personality, social psychology, and motivation–emo-
tion, it also helps us summarize crucial aspects of the Socratic Method
we have been elucidating in this entire book. The Symposium is basically a
drinking party where the men assembled pass a bowl of wine around the
table and take turns delivering speeches. Socrates arrives to the party late.
He was standing outside on the porch of a neighboring house deep in
thought, talking to himself (or so it seems) for quite some time.
After Socrates and the other men finish dinner, a man named
Eryximachus suggests that each person assembled should take turns mak-
ing a speech in praise of the god of Love. The dialogue proceeds with each
person stepping forward to deliver a small talk on the nature of love. As
these speeches unfold, we see that each speaker reveals a different aspect of
love which Socrates will eventually attempt to weave together into a single
account at the end of the dialogue.
Phaedrus stands and goes first. He stresses the divine aspect of love in
his speech, believing it to be one of the oldest gods who does the most to
promote the development of virtue in people. Pausanias follows Phaedrus
and draws further distinctions about love. He distinguishes between so-
called Common Love, a sort of lustful desire, and Heavenly Love, which
takes place, he says, between a man and a boy. Each party to this Heavenly
Love relationship gets something important from Love: the man is sexually
gratified by the boy and the boy receives instruction in virtue and wisdom.
Eryximachus, the physician, moves the discussion of Love from the
erotic and sexual domain and stresses that there is something quite a bit
more general, abstract, and non-physical about Love that the previous
talks have missed. Love, he says, is not just about human relationships,
but we find it in science, medicine, music, and many other pursuits. The
ACADEMIC CONFERENCE 3: WHAT IS THE SELF? 183
scientist “loves” discovery. The doctor “loves” his patients. The musician
“loves” his art.
The playwright Aristophanes goes after this and shares a mythical tale
suggesting that human beings were originally in quite a different form
than we are in now. We were also much more powerful. Originally, he says
we were hermaphroditic in nature, a male–female compound, who rolled
about on four arms and legs. Fearing that this being would somehow
make its way to Olympus, Zeus became threatened and so cut this original
being in half right down the middle “like an egg.” We still bear the scars
of this procedure in our navel. Zeus then sent the separated halves to roam
different corners of the earth in hopes that they would never reunite.
Aristophanes says that this separated state is the one our souls are cur-
rently in. We wander the earth, desperately searching for our “other half,”
our “soul mate.” On the rare occasion when we actually happen to meet
this person, we immediately feel like we have met them before. We desire
to cling to this person in loving and sexual embrace, to become whole
again as we once were originally.
Agathon goes after Aristophanes and gives a lofty speech in which he
praises all the beautiful qualities of love: beauty, sensitivity, and wisdom.
He sees love as a god who implants all of the virtues in us human beings.
Socrates is next to speak. He stands and takes issue with Agathon’s praise
and adulation of Love. He says that Agathon confuses the wonderful
things which love desires with love itself. Love desires beauty, for example,
but love is not beautiful itself. Socrates delivers his speech by relating the
story of an encounter he had many decades ago with a wise woman named
Diotima who freed him from these types of errors about Love and taught
him what Love really is. The assigned text for class is Socrates’ narration of
this encounter. The prior speeches are briefly presented to students as back-
ground on the day of the Conference or in the class immediately prior to it.
After having read nearly a dozen Socratic dialogues, the students note
right away how remarkable and unique this reading is. It is one of the
only occasions where Socrates is in the position of the student dutifully
following a teacher’s prompts. It is the only dialogue where another inter-
locutor performs the full-fledged Dialectic upon him. In fact, Socrates
tells us he first learned the Dialectical Method from her! He tells the men
assembled for the Symposium that Diotima performed the Dialectic upon
him concerning this very question of the nature of Love. Socrates says
he wishes to share the fruits of this process with the others. He says what
he learned from her is particularly pertinent to their present discussion
184 J.J. DILLON
because Diotima ended up saving him from many of the erroneous ways
of thinking about Love which he has just heard in his colleagues’ speeches
tonight.
Socrates says the first point Diotima made to him is that we are mis-
taken when we think of Love as a god. The gods are perfect and lack for
nothing. Love lacks what it desires and so cannot be perfect (and so can-
not be a god). Diotima conceives of Love as occupying a sort of “middle
position” between perfection and imperfection, wisdom and ignorance,
beauty and ugliness, immortal and mortal. Rather than being a god or a
Form, she says Love is a “spirit” which exists “halfway between god and
man” (202e) and helps join god and man together. It is the fate of Love to
always be needy, never full or satisfied. In this sense, only humans can love.
The gods lack for nothing and so cannot love. Socrates believes that many
of the speakers who have given speeches on Love thus far have confused
Love—a longing—with the beautiful and good things which Love desires.
Socrates goes on to relate how Diotima then taught him what it is that
Love desires most of all. Yes, she desires beauty and is delighted by attrac-
tive forms and sexy bodies on earth, but this is not her ultimate desire.
She really desires not the beautiful in itself, but beauty’s good effects. She
desires the good, to make the good her own, which she believes will make
her happy.
More than that, Diotima continues, love desires not just the good in
itself, but longs to be with the good forever, to make it her own. She
longs for immortality. Diotima says, “…the mortal does all it can to put
on immortality” (207d). But since Love is not immortal herself, she can
only put on immortality by a sort of “procreation” that mirrors sexual
activity. Love is “come upon” by the immortal Form she desires and the
immortal takes root in her and becomes alive, born into the world where
before it was not. Diotima says, “This is how every mortal creature per-
petuates itself” (208a). Some seek this immortality through begetting
children, some, like Achilles, through heroic acts of glory which will be
remembered and recounted in poetry through the ages. But there are
those unique souls who pursue true immortality. These people seek not
sexual attraction or military victory, but to “conceive and bear the things
of the spirit” (209a). And what are these things of the spirit? she asks.
They are wisdom and all her sister virtues. Socrates later learns that this
office of “giving birth” to wisdom and virtues belongs to the philosopher.
Wisdom is love’s true aim; the philosopher, the true lover, “loves wisdom”
and brings wisdom to life in a world often filled with ignorance.
Yes, Love may come upon a “comely body” and be sexually attracted
to it, but sex is not what Love ultimately wants. Sexual attraction may be
consummated and nothing more may come of it. If one can look through
this sexual desire though, one finds that the beloved’s soul is even more
beautiful than his body. So instead of wanting sex, the lover begins “to talk
of virtue to such a listener, and to discuss what human goodness is and
how the virtuous should live—in short, to undertake the other’s education”
(209c, emphasis added). The bond between these two is even stronger
than the bond that exists between husbands and wives, even mothers and
children, because teacher and student “…have created something lovelier
and less mortal than human seed” (209e). True love leads to the advent
of real knowledge in a soul who was previously ignorant. Teaching with
the Dialectic is thus the most loving thing one can do for another human
being. But how should we teach, Socrates asks Diotima? Diotima next
imparts her teaching method to Socrates.
Diotima provides a series of stages in the process of education, what
she calls the “initiation of a soul into eternal wisdom.” She describes
these changes in terms of a “heavenly ladder” (211c) which the teacher
and the student climb together. First, the student’s soul will be drawn
into the beauties of the body, typically one individual body which arouses
passion in him. If he does not get lost in those feelings, he reflects upon
his passion and begins to realize how nearly related the beauty of one
body is to the beauty of any other. Diotima says, “Having reached this
point, he must set himself to be the lover of every lovely body, and
bring his passion for the one into due proportion by deeming it of little
or no importance” (210b). As one becomes wiser, the student’s love
should move from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the
abstract. The teacher needs to be the one who shepherds this process of
initiation along.
From this place, Diotima continues, the student grasps that the beau-
ties of the body are as nothing compared to the beauties of the soul, “so
that wherever he meets with spiritual loveliness, even in the husk of an
unlovely body, he will find it beautiful enough to fall in love with and
to cherish—and beautiful enough to quicken in his heart a longing for
such discourse as tends toward the building of a noble nature” (210c).
The student is now sensitive to the deeper, invisible aspects of beauty and
love. From this place, he will be led to contemplate the beauty of laws and
institutions. He realizes fully that the beauty of the body is not of so great
a moment.
186 J.J. DILLON
Next, the student’s soul moves from institutions to the sciences. The
soul seeks to behold the beauty of every kind of knowledge. “And thus,
by scanning beauty’s wide horizon, he will be saved from a slavish and
illiberal devotion to the individual loveliness of a single boy, a single man,
or a single institution” (210d). The lover’s soul is now lost upon the open
sea of beauty and finds in this contemplation the seed of the most fruit-
ful discourse and the highest thought and will “reap the golden harvest
of philosophy” (210d) until he comes upon the final revelation. Note
that this is nearly identical to the progressive vision of the philosopher in
Republic (505a–509c).
At the next stage, the student’s soul beholds a vision of the beautiful in
itself. “It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which
neither flowers nor fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the
same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every
worshipper as it is to every other” (211a). This vision is not of the flesh.
It is also not one of words or knowledge. It is not in anything that is on
earth or in the heavens. It is a vision of “eternal oneness, while every
lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may
wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable
whole” (211b). It is at this point that the student has come to know what
beauty really is. Now he is living a life that is truly worth living. And he is
forever changed. He will never “…be seduced again by the charm of gold,
of dress, of comely boys, or lads just ripening to manhood; you will care
nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and kindle
such longing in you” (211d). He is now a philosopher.
Socrates says that he learned from Diotima on this night long ago that
to devote oneself to this vision and help facilitate it in other people is the
highest form of living. Who will initiate the young into such a glorious
vision? How will they be initiated? The answer is the Dialectical Method.
Socrates responded to the vision Diotima showed him by devoting his
life to the practice of this Dialectical Method. This revelation Socrates
shares with his friends about Diotima’s teaching helps us to understand
Socrates’ life and teaching career at a deeper level. We see that his vision
of education provides a thought-provoking challenge to contemporary
educational models and practices. For example, what would Diotima say
about how we educate students today?
With Socrates’ speech, we now see that all the speeches which came
before his in The Symposium mirror Diotima’s discussion of the “heavenly
ladder.” Each speech has focused on an aspect of love and takes us up a
“step” on the ladder, leading us ultimately toward a vision of the whole

of Beauty (which Diotima provides). In this sense, The Symposium itself
is an act of love where we the reader/student are educated by Diotima
(and Socrates). Those who walk this path outlined by Diotima will not
fully attain wisdom, but they will find happiness in a life dedicated to the
pursuit of wisdom in oneself and others.
We can see that Socrates’ has been infused by the “spirit” of Love. His
very identity and self-concept are formed by this quasi-divine presence
inside him. He takes direction and guidance from this presence as if it were
a god. Perhaps Meletus and his other accusers in Apology were right; per-
haps Socrates really does worship gods of his own making! Plato is offer-
ing us a very distinct model of the human self here, one which stands in
stark contrast to that emerging from modern psychology. This Conference
reading helps us join together the previous three units in psychology. Let
us consider here the various guiding questions pondered since the last
Academic Conference:
Personality Psychology: What does it mean to be a person?

Social Psychology: How much attention should we pay to what other
people think? Is it ever right to disobey an unjust law?
Motivation–Emotion Psychology: Why do we do what we do? Why do
we feel the way we feel?
Many of the Interlocutrix dialogues from these three units have to do

with whether there is any kind of stable personality to speak of or whether
the self is simply a product of biology or social experience. This Conference
will help us sort out some of these issues. It will also shed some light on
the guiding questions from the previous three units.
Returning to the Apology and Personality psychology, the Symposium
Conference reading helps us see that Socrates is literally inspired by this
spirit of Love. His soul has been infused by her. Love is his nature. Helping
to develop true love in others is his life’s aim. As for Crito and Social
Psychology, the Symposium helps us see that others profoundly influence
us. We can be affected by others’ physical charms and verbal manipu-
lations to an almost unlimited degree. But the important question for
Socrates is: What is the best kind of influence for others to have upon each
other’s souls? Are others in society taking us up the “heavenly ladder” to
wisdom and a vision of the Good? Or are they ensnaring us in images,
concerns of the earth, and the frivolous opinions of others? Most “social
188 J.J. DILLON
influence” will be of this latter variety. Why do we sit back and just study
these stultifying influences? Why are we not studying wisdom-promoting
versus wisdom-destroying influences? True love and wisdom can prevail in
people if they have real teachers. These teachers know how to use words
and their influence to liberate souls instead of just studying them from a
detached, “objective” place.
As for Euthyphro and Motivation–Emotion psychology, Diotima sug-
gests that what should motivate and guide us is the vision of love and
wisdom Socrates shared with his colleagues in the Symposium. Diotima
argues that our emotions can either lead us to a prison of lust and igno-
rance or provide an avenue for our liberation and enlightenment. Her
ladder of love can help us judge our own motives and emotions. When we
live on the lower levels, our actions tend to be motivated by smaller, more
particular concerns. We feel passion and intensity for particular things and
particular people. At higher levels, we are motivated to attain real knowl-
edge. We feel a detached, almost fatherly love for all creatures. From this
place, we desire to take other people’s souls higher rather than delight in
their beautiful bodies.
After students read the Symposium selection at home, they complete
one of the Conference questions below which have been randomly
assigned to them. After reading the text, they prepare their formal answers
to these questions using the texts, their class notes, and their completed
Interlocutrix worksheets.

Quotes to keep in mind: “Consider, then, don’t you think that this is a
sound enough principle, that one should not regard all the opinions that
people hold, but only some and not others?” (Crito, 47a).
“And if, my dear Socrates, Diotima went on, man’s life is ever worth
the living, it is when he has attained this vision of the very soul of beauty.
And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm
of gold, of dress, of comely boys, or lads just ripening to manhood; you
will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and
kindle such a longing in you…” (Symposium, 211d).
1. Personality Psychology: Referring to his discourse in Symposium

on Diotima and his self-narration in Apology, just who is Socrates?
What theory of personality in psychology is closest to this view of
the person? Why? Which theory would you say is farthest? Why? In
the context of the Symposium and Apology, how is Socrates Method
of instruction connected to his personality? Construct a dialogue of
at least 300 words between Socrates and (a) Freud, (b) Maslow, (c)
Bandura, or (d) Eysenck on the nature of the person. Be sure to base
your dialogue upon Apology, Symposium, and the Griggs (2014) text
on personality. Have Socrates do the questioning using the
Traditional Method. Finally, what do you think people are all about?
Present your own one-sentence theory of the personality.
2. Social Psychology: Describe Socrates’ argument in Crito as to why
he decides to remain in Athens rather than flee to Thessaly. What do
you think of this argument for accepting capital punishment? How
do you reconcile Socrates’ approach to obeying law in the Crito
with what he says in the Apology that he won’t obey the law by ceas-
ing to philosophize? We learn from Diotima in Symposium that love
is neither a god, nor beautiful, nor good. Describe what you take to
be the four central elements of what she teaches Socrates that love
actually is. What are the three types of social influence discussed in
Social Psychology? Which do you think take us up Diotima’s ladder?
Why? Which take us down? Why? Construct a dialogue of at least
300 words between Socrates and (a) Solomon Asch, (b) Cialdini, or
(c) Milgram on the role of social influence in human affairs. Be sure
to base your dialogue upon Crito, Symposium, and the Griggs
(2014) text on Social Psychology. Have Socrates do the questioning
using the Traditional Method. What do you think the role of social
influence is in human affairs? Present a one-sentence answer.
3. Motivation and Emotion Psychology: What are the two defini-
tions of piety that Euthyphro offers? What are Socrates’ problems
with these definitions? How might Socrates’ view of piety have been
offensive to traditionally observant religious people of his society
(part of the charge in the courts against him)? Referring to the
Symposium, what is the relationship between the desire for physical
conception through sex and the desire for philosophical conception
through Socratic Dialogue? How do our motives change as we move
“up” the heavenly ladder? How do our feelings change as we move
up the heavenly ladder? Finally, offer your own view along with a
brief rationale: Is the good good because the gods approve it, or do
the gods approve it because it is good? Construct a dialogue of at
least 300 words between Socrates and (a) Clark Hull, (b) an incen-
190 J.J. DILLON
tive theorist, or (c) Maslow on the nature of human motivation. Be

sure to base your dialogue upon Euthyphro, Symposium, and the
Griggs (2014) text on Motivation–Emotion Psychology. Have
Socrates do the questioning using the Traditional Method. What do
you think motivates our actions? Present a one-sentence theory of
motivation.
ON CONFERENCE DAY
As noted in previous chapters, the Conference atmosphere should be a
festive and celebratory one. After some minutes of gathering snacks and
refreshments, the instructor should call the conference to order with some
introductory remarks. This would include a brief review of the guiding
questions of the three previous units and some of the questions that have
not yet been resolved, but will hopefully be answered (or at least addressed)
by the Conference. Students then work in small groups with the other stu-
dents who have been assigned their Conference question. They take about
eight minutes to prepare their dialogue script together and we then jump
into group role-plays. Each group stands before the class and enacts its
assigned role-play. Instructors may prefer to have selected students indi-
vidually deliver their papers to the group. Students have feedback forms
upon which they all must write their immediate impressions and questions
about their peers’ role-plays or papers (see Appendix B). They hand this in
at the end of the Conference. I allow about five to ten minutes after each
skit for students to ask questions.
In the last two or three minutes of the Conference, students complete
the last part of their Conference feedback forms. Here they answer the
questions: What are the ideas that I learned today that are new to me?
What are ideas that I previously had but which have been deepened or
stimulated by this Conference? What do I still not know, or what am I still
not sure about? What am I still chewing on? After helping to clean up,
students hand these forms in as their “ticket out the door.”
REFERENCES
Buchbinder, A. (2014). The order of speeches in Plato’s Symposium: A new ascent
interpretation. Lyceum, 13(1), 1–20.
Worth.
CHAPTER 20
Omnibus Academic Conference:

The Socratic Method
Our exploration of psychology through the Socratic Method is nearly

complete. This final chapter provides an opportunity to stand back from
our studies and reflect upon the work we have witnessed Socrates per-
form on his students, psychology, and us. I finish this book as I finish the
course: with a two-day Omnibus Conference on the Socratic Method in
which we draw together the important practical aspects of the Method
which have now been deepened through our contact with nearly a dozen
Socratic dialogues.
As mentioned in the first chapter, it is an encouraging sign that most
colleges and universities still embrace a set of humane learning outcomes.
The central aspect of any humane teaching project is a commitment to the
development of the person, particularly the “distinctly human” parts of
the person: thinking, writing, speaking, self-knowing, moral action, and
loving. Since the founding of Plato’s Academy 2400 years ago, higher
education has been the predominant way Western society has tended to
the development of these “higher” human faculties in the people lucky
enough to attend them. As I discussed in the first chapter, I believe there
is a very serious disconnect between today’s humane educational aims in
higher education and the pedagogical means we’ve chosen to pursue them.
Instead of large doses of atrociously written and easily forgotten textbook
material, the approach offered in this book makes use of smaller bits of
engaging original source text. Instead of sitting and passively listening to a

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_20
192 J.J. DILLON
lecture, success in a Socratic classroom depends upon students’ taking an

active role in the learning process by discussing important ideas with oth-
ers, writing about them in critical essays, and enacting them in classroom
role-playing activities.
The teaching approach I develop in this book includes four central com-
ponents, all of which interact in a cyclical fashion: student, text, Dialectic
and role-play, teacher/peers/discussion. The crowning jewel in the cycle
is the student. Teaching is all about facilitating the development of knowl-
edge and wisdom in the student. This is done with beautifully written bits
of “classical” texts. These works are true “spiritual exercises” which leave
the student’s soul different from the way it was before learning started.
Classical texts are the ideal vehicles for achieving the humane learning out-
comes in college and university: thinking critically, writing and speaking
well, making rational and considered decisions, growing personally, inter-
acting civilly and democratically. The student enters into dialogue with the
text. In our case, this process initiates them into a dialogue with Socrates
and his Dialectic Method. The student then enters into further dialogue
with himself or herself through thinking, writing, and role-play. In class,
he or she enters into dialogue with classmates and the teacher through
seminar discussion. Based on this dialogue, the student then continues
reflecting and thinking about the text. The cycle continues back around
to the student and the cycle repeats.
The Socratic Method is one way to close the disturbing gap between
educational aims and achieved outcomes on today’s campuses. At the final
Omnibus Conference, the guiding question is: What have we learned
about the Socratic Method and how do we use it to facilitate our own
and others’ learning? To prepare for the Conference, students assemble all
of their class notes, their Interlocutrix, and Conference Feedback Forms
which they have completed over the semester. Students review the major
learnings they noted on each of their Interlocutrix forms. They then circle
the three “biggest learnings” of the semester. Next, they consider all the
“Remaining Questions” they listed on their Interlocutrix forms and artic-
ulate the three biggest questions which still remain unresolved. I invite
them to bring these questions to the two-day Omnibus Conference and
to look at this Conference time as an opportunity to make some progress
toward answering the questions that remain. At least one half of the class
meeting on the second day of the Conference is devoted to a seminar dis-
cussion of students’ unanswered questions over the course of the semester.
I also assign students to answer one of five Conference Questions listed
OMNIBUS ACADEMIC CONFERENCE: THE SOCRATIC METHOD 193
below. They are designed to help students to summarize the major ele-
ments of the Socratic Method. At the Conference, students work in small
groups to formulate a Conference Presentation which they later deliver to
the whole class. Alternatively, instructors may wish to have selected stu-
dents deliver their papers to the group for comment and criticism.
OMNIBUS CONFERENCE QUESTIONS

1. The “last days” dialogues we have read paint a picture of Socrates’
articulating the meaning of his life and his role as a teacher in soci-
ety. Using at least one example each from (a) Meno, (b) Euthyphro,
(c) Republic, and (d) Apology, explain what you see as the six central
“rules” or elements of Socrates’ Dialectical method of teaching.
Referring to the example of the slave boy in Meno, what would you
say is Socrates’ “philosophy of education?” Connect at least three of
the “rules” of Socratic Dialectic you articulated above to this phi-
losophy of education. What is your own philosophy of education?
How is it similar to or different from Socrates’?
2. In the Apology, Socrates claims what he is doing for the citizens of
Athens with his Dialectical Method is highly beneficial to them.
Using examples from both the Apology and Phaedo, what are at least
three of his arguments for his claim that the Dialectic leaves the souls
of students in a better condition than they were before? What do
you personally think about each of these arguments? Has your own
soul been changed as a result of your involvement with the Socratic
Method? If so, how? If not, why do you think you have remained
unchanged? Which teaching methods have changed your soul?
3. Describe five “steps” of the development of love that Diotima
describes in the Symposium. In what ways are these steps similar to the
“rules” of the Dialectic? We learn from Diotima that love is neither a
god, beautiful, nor good. Describe what you take to be the four cen-
tral elements of what she teaches Socrates that love actually is. What
is the relationship between the desire for physical conception through
sex and the desire for philosophical conception through Socratic dia-
logue? Are you a “philosopher” as Socrates defines one, that is, do
you “love wisdom” in the way he describes? Why or why not?
4. Referring to Phaedrus, how is the soul like a charioteer? What do the
steeds represent? Where is the charioteer supposed to ride? Describe
the “fall” of the soul in this story. What are “wings,” and what do
194 J.J. DILLON
they do for the soul? What is love’s relationship to the wings and the
chariot? Describe how the ascent of the soul in this story is related
to the Socratic Method. Do you agree with this charioteer model of
the soul? Why or why not? Do you believe the Socratic Method can
have these “uplifting” effects upon the soul? Why or why not?
5. How does Socrates define “knowledge” in the Republic? With refer-
ence to the Republic, what is “Dialectic” and how does it relate to
the attainment of knowledge you just defined? Why does he say it is
not wise to teach Dialectic to persons under 30? Why does he say
teachers of Dialectic should be over 50? In Socrates’ view, how
would the relativism described in Theaetetus affect: (a) the general
course education he lays out in Book 7 of the Republic, and (b)
Dialectic in particular? Do you agree with Socrates that his Dialectic
will aid a student in the attainment of knowledge? Why or why not?
After each Conference presentation, students use the Conference

Feedback Form (see Appendix B) to record what they have learned and
ask questions of the presenters. For illustration purposes, I present here
the central elements of the Method which I have seen Socrates employ in
the dialogues we explored in this book.
ELEMENTS OF THE SOCRATIC METHOD, REDUX

In Chapter 3, I outlined the basic “rules” of the Socratic Method: (a)
begin with a single question about a conceptual matter, (b) have the stu-
dent then offer a general definition as an answer to this question, (c) the
teacher then provides a counterexample which is formulated to illumi-
nate what has been left out of the student’s definition, (d) the student
then reconsiders his or her initial definition and responds with a (hope-
fully) improved one. In addition to these basic elements, we have learned
a number of other rules for the teacher from watching Socrates work with
students in the many dialogues we read. These include:
1. The teacher must not be too proud to “play the boob,” that is, act
like they don’t know something when in fact they do. Students are
very good at sensing whether teachers are asking what I call a
“do-you-know-what-I-know question.” With this kind of question,
the student is expected to offer the “right” answer the professor
already knows, for example, “How many members of Congress are
there?” “Is this shape a pentagon or a hexagon?” When students

sense this is what is expected of them from a teacher, they shut down
and lose curiosity. They do not explore or exert themselves to answer
a question because it isn’t a real question! On the other hand, if
students sense the teacher is asking a real question, their minds
become activated and they begin to open and explore with more
enthusiasm.
2. The teacher should always offer a weak counterargument instead of
a strong one. This allows the student to perceive the flaws in the
teacher’s position and offer a better one by employing their own
powers. In this sense, lecturing and giving really good answers to
students does not necessarily facilitate their learning. They may learn
that the teacher is smart, but they do not become smart themselves.
It is often difficult for the teacher to resist the temptation to appear
smart before students (see Rule 1).
3. The teacher should never allow the student (or a colleague) to suc-
cumb to “misologic” or relativism of any kind. What this means is
that the teacher must believe that even the deepest, most imponder-
able questions can be profitably explored and rationally answered by
the Dialectic. It is never sufficient to claim that the answers are
beyond words, cannot be known, or that people disagree about such
things and so “who is to say who’s right?” The teacher must also
genuinely believe that the Dialectic can and will guide an interaction
through the inevitable conflicts and disagreements which arise when
discussing such weighty matters. Just because people have different
opinions about things does not mean that all views are equally cor-
rect or that they will always end in bitter disagreement.
4. The teacher should trust that the student already knows the answers
to the deepest questions (even if the student does not believe this
him or herself). The teacher must communicate with the student in
a way that reflects the fact that the teacher believes the student
already knows the answers. This means the teacher avoids telling the
student the answers, will endure uncomfortable silences in class
while students think, and will genuinely want to know what a stu-
dent thinks (however imperfect, derivative, or clumsy these initial
thoughts may be). The teacher must avoid communicating in a way
that assumes the student’s mind is a blank slate or empty container
ready to be filled with the information/wisdom from the text, notes,
196 J.J. DILLON
or teacher’s own (big) mouth. The student must do the work of

learning because the student already knows the answers.
5. The teacher will always encounter resistance to the Socratic Method
from students. It is therefore necessary to see the learning process as
one which does not always move forward elegantly. There are times
when the process will break down, where there is chaos, or where
the teacher needs to be satisfied that he or she has gone as far as pos-
sible with a particular student and can go no farther given the stu-
dent’s abilities, attitude, starting point, and so on. The teacher
should learn to be satisfied with “good enough for now.”
6. When the teacher is at risk of fully losing a student from engaging in
Dialectic, when the student is ready to shut down or walk away, it is
permissible and even wise to bend the rules of the Method. The
teacher may in these cases offer a poor definition to the student as a
“lifeline” or do a small bit of the work the student would otherwise
be expected to do. Of course, this lifeline is only meant to be tem-
porary and should not become a permanent habit for the student.
Training wheels should eventually come off the bicycle, but some-
times training wheels are needed.
7. The teacher should always handle resistance, rule violations, and
total breakdowns of the Method with patience and humor. The
teacher must keep in mind that the aim of the process is the intel-
lectual liberation of the student, not power or compliance.
8. Before talking about anything in class, the teacher must be sure to
prepare the ground by “defining the terms.” Often this might
involve the parties agreeing to stipulated definitions, but discussions
can only proceed with clearly defined terms. Definitions should
never be offered or accepted if they are examples. They must be
abstract principles that subsume the examples.
9. Before offering a counterexample in the Socratic Method, the
teacher should first summarize the gist of the student’s offered claim
or definition. The student should be allowed to hear what he or she
has said and to face its implications. The student should also be
allowed to correct the teacher’s summary before the teacher gets to
respond with a counterexample. This process of reflective listening
on the part of the teacher has immense educational value which is
often underappreciated. It also provides a model for the student of
how to listen both to him or herself and to others.
10. The teacher should not allow the student to hide behind the
experts while thinking or writing. In this sense, name-dropping
and excessive textual citation should be discouraged in writing and
speaking.
11. The teacher should remember to trust the Method during the
inevitable times of crisis, chaos, or disagreement. Discussions will
always get off the rails. It is the teacher’s job during such moments
to remind the student of the rules and to gently redirect them to
comply. For example, if we are discussing a topic, students may
want to meander or introduce any number of new topics. The
Dialectic can only work if a single question is discussed at one time.
The question can be changed, but there cannot be more than one
question on the table at any one time.
For a variety of reasons, some students simply do not like the Socratic
Method (or do not like rules in general). They will fight against it and
attempt to throw wrenches in it at every turn. There will be at least one
of these students in every group, sometimes more. The teacher would
be wise to expect and prepare for such students. Further, many of the
teacher’s own colleagues will be similarly skeptical of the Method. This is
also inevitable. Many modern minds are closed, though they believe they
are open (see Bloom, 1987). This does not mean that these people are not
“tolerant” or “open-minded,” but that their mind is not open to even the
possibility of Truth.
The Socratic Method is premised on the idea that there are ontologi-
cal distinctions in the universe, distinctions between the material order
and the intelligible order, between the abstract and the concrete, between
the body and the soul. For many modern individuals, these distinctions
simply have no meaning. For them, the world is a flattened place, not one
full of invisible layers of conceptual reality. From the many experiences
of inevitable breakdown of the Dialectic I have witnessed and personally
experienced, I have concluded that there are a few assumptions about the
universe we must make in order for the Socratic Method to make sense.
The failure to share these basic assumptions is behind many breakdowns
of the Method:
1. The universe is cosmos, or ordered whole. There is a pattern and

structure to the things we observe and talk about in our life. If the
universe is simply a chaotic flux, then any truth or pattern we discern
198 J.J. DILLON
is just our brute opinion which we construct, assert, or impose upon

the unformed, meaningless world.
2. This pattern of the cosmos is abstract and cannot be observed
through the senses.
3. This pattern transcends the universe, but also runs through the
order of being.
4. Structure and pattern can be discerned and known by human reason
through words and thinking.
All the “rules” of the Socratic Method make no sense if the ontology con-
tained in (a–d) is false. In fact, the Socratic Method comes across like an
annoying parlor game to people who do not share one or more of these
assumptions. The teacher might be well served to ask for at least a pro-
visional or stipulated acceptance of these assumptions from interlocutors
before proceeding further with any dialogue. Socrates knew very well that
these ontological assumptions are constantly called into question by our
intellectual vices and academic the fads of the day. Recall the definition of
wisdom with which I began this book: a condition of the soul in which it
is open and sensitive to an order of reality which transcends itself, where it
finds a source of order which is superior to what is seen as valuable in soci-
ety. As Bloom (1987), Voegelin (2000/1952), and others have observed,
the achievement of this kind of wisdom in modern souls is the very thing
modernity most impedes. The teacher will thus need to work very hard to
keep perennial intellectual vices and contemporary academic fads in check.
A RENEWED ACADEMY?
Arum and Roksa (2011, p. 120) point out that over the past two decades,
college and university campuses have seen more and more emphasis put
on publication in tenure and promotion decisions. This has forced profes-
sors to make difficult and painful choices between using their limited time
to prepare engaging classroom experiences and read student written work
versus doing their own scholarship and research. This situation has even-
tually led to an unstated compact between students and professors. Kuh
(2003) describes the compact this way, “I’ll leave you alone if you leave
me alone” (p. 28). The details of this silent understanding are, “I won’t
make you work too hard (read a lot, write a lot) so that I won’t have to
grade as many papers or explain why you are not performing well” (p. 28).
So more and more college students sit in large classrooms each semester
passively listening to professors lecture at them (or skipping class entirely

and “getting the notes” online or from a friend). They are assigned poorly
written textbook readings, take a relatively easy mid-term and final, and
retain little or nothing even just a few weeks after the class is over (see
VanderStoep, Fagerlin, & Feenstra, 2000). In return for all this, students
give the professor a “good” or “excellent” class evaluation at the end of
the term and the professor gets tenure. Everyone who has taught at a
college or university knows exactly what I mean by this compact. It is a
nefarious practice which must stop.
Humane teaching methods like the one offered in this book cannot
succeed on their own in isolated, individual classrooms. In some ways, I
fear if the program I outline in this book were embraced by new professors
in most of today’s academic departments, they may spend so much time
on classes and paper grading that they would fail to earn tenure. My plan
can only succeed in conjunction with wholesale cultural changes on our
campuses in which professors are encouraged to work with smaller groups
of students and rewarded with tenure or promotion when they spend time
grading written papers and developing creative classes. Some days I am
optimistic about this prospect; other days I am not. Sadly, most of today’s
higher education system is so corrupted it does not have the desire, ability,
or resources to fix the situation on its own. A solution will only happen
with pressure from the outside, when parents, students, alumni, legisla-
tors, boards, employers, and other stakeholders finally hold colleges and
universities accountable for their failures to achieve their own laudable
learning outcomes.
I end this book with the question I posed when we began, why do we
teach? Why do we teach? Is it a necessary evil which enables us to be able
to do our own research and publication? Is it to convey valuable skills and
information? Is it to prepare students for the jobs of the twenty-first cen-
tury? Whatever other reasons may lie behind our time in the classroom,
the primary purpose of teaching is to develop “real knowledge” in stu-
dents. Most indicators show that we are not doing a very good job with
this at all. The failure to achieve the lofty liberal arts learning goals we have
for our students exerts a huge social and developmental cost. In order
for students to realize their distinctly human faculties, they must exercise
them, a lot. In order for students to think critically, write, speak, and think
well, they need to do them in class. And they need to have these things
modeled in a way that textbooks and lectures simply cannot do for them.
It is my hope that the approach to teaching and learning I offer in this
200 J.J. DILLON
book can be tailored to fit the diverse needs of today’s college instructors,
that it can help reverse the depressing national trends in higher education,
and hopefully give students at least a taste of real knowledge through a
rediscovered humane higher educational experience.
REFERENCES
Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college
campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind: How higher education has
failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Kuh, G. K. (2003). What we are learning about student engagement. Change, 35,
24–32.
VanderStoep, S. W., Fagerlin, A., & Feenstra, J. S. (2000). What do students
remember from Introductory Psychology? Teaching of Psychology, 27(2), 89–92.
Voegelin, E. (2000). The new science of politics. In M. Henningsen (Ed.), The
collected works of Eric Voegelin (Vol. 5, pp. 75–241). Columbia, MO: University
of Missouri. (Original work published 1952).
APPENDIX A: INTERLOCUTRIX WORKSHEET
Platonic Dialogue: Psychology Sub-Discipline:
Guiding Question:
Psychologist’s answer (one-sentence essence):
Socrates’ answer (one-sentence essence):
Construct Script/Further Dialogue (10 passes; use back if necessary)
Your answer to the guiding question (done in class after discussion; one-
sentence essence)
Results/Remaining Questions (done in class after discussion)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8
APPENDIX B: CONFERENCE FEEDBACK FORM
Presentation 1: What did I learn from this presentation?
What did this group do well?
What could this group work on to improve?

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8
204 APPENDIX B: CONFERENCE FEEDBACK FORM
Overall Conference Reflection:
What are ideas that I learned today that are new to me?
What are ideas that I previously had but they have been deepened or stim-
ulated by this Conference?
What do I still not know, or what am I still not sure about? What am I still
chewing on?
INDEX
A B
Abnormal Psychology, 117–26, Bandura, A., 153–6, 158, 189
143, 145 beautiful, the, 85, 101, 130, 143,
abstract, 2, 22, 24, 38, 72, 83, 166, 183, 184, 186
97–100, 110–13, 118, 141, behavioral therapy, 133–5
171, 182, 185, 196–8 bipolar disorder, 122
actuality, 76 blank slate, 50, 58, 195
Adeimantus, 94 body, 23, 36–43, 47, 49, 50, 62, 66,
Agathon, 183 70, 74, 76, 78–90, 94, 95, 97,
algorithm, 77 99, 125, 132, 141, 159, 161,
Allport, G., 159 165, 176, 181, 185, 197
alteration, 67 bottom-up processing, 69
analogy of the cave, 97, 100 brain, 35, 40, 41, 43, 48, 49, 66,
anxiety disorder, 122, 123 69–74, 77–81, 124, 125
Apology, 36, 53, 105, 147–58, 160, brutishness, 120, 121, 145
187–9, 193
appetite, 94, 119, 165
a priori, 46, 50 C
Aristophanes, 183 character, 16, 82, 94, 119, 120,
Aristotle, 15, 16, 25, 28, 65–73, 122–6, 133
75–80, 87–9, 118–26, 145, 152 Chomsky, N., 50
Asch, S., 163, 189 civil disobedience, 166, 167
attunement, 39, 43, 82–5, 88 classical conditioning, 57–9
auxiliary, 94 classics, 13–15

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8
206 INDEX
client-centered therapy, 133, 134 E

cognitive-behavioral therapy, 133–5 Echecrates, 82
Cognitive psychology, 67, 75–80, education, 1, 2, 5–9, 14, 16, 27, 50,
87, 89 62, 93, 96, 97, 102, 105, 120,
Cognitive Revolution, 75 124, 143, 149, 172, 185, 186,
cognitive therapy, 133, 134 191–4, 196, 199, 200
compliance, 162, 163, 196 ego, 152
concrete, 2, 13, 27, 85, 97, 99, 100, egocentric speech, 97
107, 113, 141, 157, 185, 197 emotion, 36, 38, 40, 167, 169–79,
concrete operations, 97, 99, 100 181, 182, 187–90
conference, 28, 30–3, 43, 50, 58, 62, episteme, 96
74, 80–90, 93, 103, 114, 126, ergon, 3, 6
137, 139–46, 158, 167, 179, Eryximachus, 182
181–200 Euthyphro, 20, 24, 36, 148,
conformity, 162, 163 169–79, 188–90, 193
congruence, 134 exchange tactics, 163
counterexample, 20, 22, 24, 55, 56, extrinsic motivation, 174
60, 66, 171, 172, 194, 196
courage, 3, 20, 22, 28, 55, 56,
82, 85, 119 F
Crito, 24, 25, 36, 148, 159–67, five factor theory, 15
187–9 foot-in-the-door, 163
formal operations, 97, 99, 100
forms, theory of, 86, 93
D Freud, S., 14, 146, 152, 189
daimon, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157, 178
De Anima, 65–80, 87, 89
depressive disorder, 122 G
Derrida, J., 114 g-factor, 77
developmental psychology, 27, Gilligan, Carol, 110–12, 114, 145
93–103, 140, 141, 143, 144 good life, 14, 42, 105, 106
dialectic, 4, 9, 15, 20–2, 25, 54–6, 59, good, the, 4, 42, 101, 105–7, 111–13,
83, 97, 99, 102, 107, 114, 133, 139, 140, 142–5, 165–7,
131–3, 135, 143, 150, 160, 165, 177–9, 184, 187, 189
171–3, 178, 183, 185, 192–7 Gorgias, 54, 107, 131
Diotima, 25, 183–9, 193 Great Chain of Being, 73
distant learning, 1
divided line, 96, 102, 113,
140, 144, 145 H
door-in-the-face, 163 happiness, 23, 119, 120, 122, 137,
doxa, 96 187
drive reduction theory, 173, 175 heuristic, 77
INDEX 207
hierarchy-of-the-soul, 67, 141, L

144, 145 Lacan, J., 114
Hull, C., 175–7, 189 learning, 1–9, 13, 16, 25, 27–33, 46,
53–62, 66, 76, 81, 84, 86, 88,
89, 105, 114, 117, 125, 126,
I 131, 134, 147, 153–5, 158, 191,
id, 152 192, 195, 196, 199
incentive theory, 173 lecture, 7–9, 13, 25, 28, 31, 37, 61,
incontinent, 120, 121, 124 62, 65, 67, 95, 109, 118, 132,
informational social influence, 163 192, 199
innate ideas, 46–8, 50, 85 liberal arts, 4, 6, 7, 27, 105, 199
inner speech, 97 licentious, 120, 121
intellective function, 67, 75 Little Albert, 57
intelligible, 83, 86, 94–6, 99, 130, logos, 3, 66, 87
136, 142, 197 long term memory, 47, 48
Interlocutrix, 21, 28–31, 40–2, love, 15, 16, 49, 129–31, 133, 136,
48–9, 58–62, 69–73, 78–9, 142, 143, 149, 172, 182–9, 193
87, 98–101, 111–12, 123–5, low-balling, 163
134–6, 144, 154–7, 164–6,
174–7, 187, 188, 192
intrinsic motivation, 174 M
Ion, 3, 4 Maslow, A.H., 152, 174, 189, 190
Massive Online Open Courses
(MOOC’s), 4
J Meletus, 148, 150, 187
James–Lange theory, 174 memory, 25, 40, 43, 45–50, 66, 76,
Jung, C.G., 152 81, 86, 88, 98, 130
justice, 15, 16, 19, 55, 94, 95, 110, Meno, 20, 24, 31, 46, 53–62, 65, 66,
113, 119, 142, 169, 170, 172, 88, 94, 107, 135, 171, 193
176, 177 Meno’s Paradox, 57
mental disorder, 122–5, 145
Milgram, S., 163, 165, 189
K misanthropy, 83
knowledge, 2–5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 19, misologic, 82, 83, 195
20, 23, 26, 38, 46, 48, 50, 54, moral development, 103, 105–14,
56, 57, 59, 62, 69, 79, 83, 85–7, 139, 143, 144
89, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 102, motivation, 169–79, 181, 182,
107–9, 111–14, 132, 133, 137, 187–90
140–5, 150, 151, 157, 161, 163,
165, 177, 185, 186, 188, 192,
194, 199, 200 N
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 109–11, neuron, 40
113, 145 neuroscience, 35–43, 75
208 INDEX
neurotransmitter, 40 psyche, 40, 47, 53, 66, 70, 75, 80, 86,
Nichomachean Ethics, 118 87, 125
normative social influence, 163 psychoanalytic therapy, 133, 152
psychotherapy, 126, 129–37, 139,
143, 145
O
obedience, 162, 163, 165
obsessive compulsive disorder, 122 R
online learning, 9 reason, 2, 5, 10, 14, 20, 22, 24, 29,
ontological distinctions, 102, 197 37–9, 46, 65, 84–6, 94, 112,
operant conditioning, 57–9 119, 121, 126, 132, 133, 141,
Oracle of Delphi, 149–50 148–52, 160, 161, 167, 169,
170, 172–5, 177–9, 197–9
receptor cells, 68, 69, 72
P recollection, doctrine of, 45, 49, 62
passion, 122, 130, 185, 188 relativism, 106, 114, 144, 194, 195
Pavlov, I., 57, 58 Republic, 4, 24, 25, 93–103, 105,
perceptive function, 67, 75 113, 140–5, 186, 193, 194
personality disorder, 122 role conformity, 163
Personality Psychology, 147–58, 187, role-play, 8, 9, 13, 30, 32, 33, 42, 49,
188 61, 72, 79, 81, 82, 90, 101, 112,
persuasion, 159 125, 139, 140, 146, 154, 157,
Phaedo, 4, 24, 35–43, 45–50, 57, 177, 181, 182, 190, 192
82–9, 93, 95, 113, 140, 142, ruler, 93, 94
148, 150, 160, 193
Phaedrus, 24, 129–37, 140–6,
182, 193 S
philosopher, 4, 87, 88, 94–7, 111, scaffolding, 98
141, 142, 145, 165, 177, 178, Schacter–Singer theory, 174
184, 186, 193 schizophrenia, 122
Piaget, J., 31, 38, 97–101, 144 scientific method, 22, 23
Plato, 10, 13–16, 20, 25–9, 36, self-efficacy, 153, 156
56, 65, 93, 97, 105, 113, self-system, 153–6
118, 130, 148, 150, 173, 187, sensation-perception, 65–74, 81, 89
191 sensorimotor, 97, 99
play the boob, 24, 194 sensuous, 99
potentiality, 76 short term memory, 47, 48
powerpoint, 28 sixth sense, 68
preoperations, 97, 99 Skinner, B.F., 57, 58, 88, 146
pressure tactics, 163 social influence, 160, 162, 163,
producer, 94 166, 189
Protagoras, 107–9, 114, 131 social psychology, 27, 158–67, 182,
prudence, 119 187, 189
INDEX 209
sociocultural, 97 true, the, 6, 22, 68, 99, 101, 131,

Socratic Method 165, 166, 184
essay, 8, 13, 24, 25, 94, 161, 192
Myth, Metaphor, or Analogy, 24
Role Reversal, 24, 37, 131, 145 U
Traditional Method, 24, 25, 53, 70, unconscious, 134, 152, 162
88, 89, 94, 134, 144–6, 154, upward appeals, 163
160, 161, 171, 175, 189, 190
Sophists, 106, 107, 130–2, 137, 141,
145, 148, 159, 163 V
soul, 4, 5, 13, 14, 23, 35, 37–43, vice, 57, 82, 112, 114, 120, 121, 124,
45–7, 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 66–8, 125, 145
70–4, 76, 80, 82–9, 94–7, 99, virtue, 9, 16, 54–7, 94, 105, 112,
101, 107, 111, 113, 126, 131–3, 119–26, 145, 172, 182–5
136, 140–5, 150, 154, 157, 161, Vygotsky, L., 97–9, 144
165, 176, 177, 183–8, 192–4,
197, 198
spirit, 94, 151, 184, 187 W
Stanford–Binet, 77 WAIS, 77
Stephanus, 29, 36 Watson, J.B., 57, 58
superego, 152 Weschler Scale, 77
WISC, 77
wisdom, 4–6, 49, 50, 55, 85, 86, 95,
T 101, 113, 132, 137, 141–3, 149,
techne, 3, 96 150, 157, 170, 177, 178, 182–5,
temperance, 55, 119–21 187, 188, 192, 193, 195, 198
textbook, 7–10, 13–15, 28, 29,
36, 48, 59, 61, 66, 73, 131,
191, 199 X
Theaetetus, 23, 24, 105–14, 144, 145, Xanthippe, 36, 112
194
three factor theory, 153
top-down processing, 69 Z
trait model of personality, 153 Zimbardo, P., 163

Teaching Psychology and The Socratic Method: Real Knowledge in A Virtual Age

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Teaching Psychology and The Socratic Method: Real Knowledge in A Virtual Age

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Teaching

Psychology and the

ISBN 978-1-349-95049-2 ISBN 978-1-349-95050-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958141

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover image © PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

2 Who Is Socrates and Why Should We Read Him? 13

3 The Socratic Method 19

4 Socrates Structures the Course 27

5 Teaching Neuroscience with Phaedo 35

6 Teaching the Psychology of Memory with Phaedo 45

7 Teaching the Psychology of Learning with Meno 53

8 Teaching Sensation–Perception Psychology with De Anima 65

9 Teaching Cognitive Psychology with De Anima 75

10 First Academic Conference on Psychology and the Body 81

11 Teaching Developmental Psychology with Republic 93

12 Teaching Moral Development with Theaetetus 105

13 Teaching Abnormal Psychology with Nicomachean Ethics 117

14 Teaching Psychotherapy with Phaedrus 129

15 Conference 2: Good, Better, and Best in Psychology 139

16 Teaching Personality Psychology with Apology 147

17 Teaching Social Psychology with Crito 159

18 Teaching Motivation and Emotion Psychology

19 Academic Conference 3: What Is the Self? 181

20 Omnibus Academic Conference: The Socratic Method 191

Appendix A: Interlocutrix Worksheet 201

Appendix B: Conference Feedback Form 203

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

a classroom, face-to-face with a skilled teacher they cannot learn anywhere

LEARNING OUTCOMES: THE MODERN EQUIVALENT

Socrates defines “knowledge” as the condition in which a mind appre-

REAL KNOWLEDGE REQUIRES A REAL TEACHER

real knowledge is and how this knowledge is developed in students. This

Who Is Socrates and Why Should

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 13

The Socratic Method

Question—a sentence designed to explore a topic and elicit information

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 19

central focus of a dialogue. Answering the question is the overall pur-

Interlocutrix—an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and a representa-

1. There must be a willingness to answer questions rather than simply

7. There will be a great temptation to consider deep questions of

I elucidate the Socratic Method by comparing it to its close cousin:

are appropriate to use in answering these two types of questions, as well

1. Traditional Method: With the Traditional Method, there is a cen-

the interlocutor typically does. At a deeper level, the essay form is as

1. All the dialogues are focused on a central question.

clearly and perform disciplined intellectual inquiry. So ultimately, students

Socrates Structures the Course

In the previous chapter, I explored the Socratic vision of how teaching

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 27

RESULTS AND REMAINING QUESTIONS

students “check-in” with each other by sharing their questions pertaining

Teaching Neuroscience with Phaedo

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 35

person since we encounter him in a traumatic life situation in which he is

SOCRATES, PHAEDO (57A–72D; 85C–86D)1

INTERLOCUTRIX: SOCRATES MEETS THE NEUROSCIENTIST

neurological processes rather than an immortal entity in itself. Here is how

Neuropsychologist: Well, in our field, we really don’t refer to an entity

I stop my mock dialogue here. In addition to the specific content points