Of course it doesn’t give “one right answer.” Were that the case, we could use the Socratic method to solve the budget deficit, economic policy, gun control, environmental law, and everything in the world because it would give us the agreed upon “one right answer.”
It helps solve a condition upon which to proceed in the sense that it fleshes out someone’s view and helps them restate their argument in a proper manner. For example:
Suppose we are having a debate about abortion. A student says that she favors legal abortion because “A woman should have the right to control her own body.” That’s a pretty vague statement, so the professor might say something like, “Well, do you believe a woman has a right to take her own body and run naked down the middle of the interstate during rush hour?” The student would like answer no on some sort of public safety or public nudity ground. Depending on the answer, the student would restate his position along the lines of “A woman has the right to control her own body so long as it doesn’t pose a threat of harm to another person.”
So, by Socratic questioning, the professor has made the student think about the absolute position she took and modify her broad statement into something more manageable. Now, of course, this continues into whether the fetus is “another person” who is harmed and further redefines the statement. (This is also used on a student who advocates a pro-life position and talks about “murder.” How is it murder? Do you think the death penalty is murder? etc)
In the end, not everyone agrees on the outcome or even the correct question, but it helps a student take what is an abstract sound bite and allows her to explore the bounds of her broad statement and contract it. At times, opinions can be changed by thinking critically in this manner.
I’m not sure what the OP thinks Socratic Dialogue actually is, but it must be something like this:
Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks? Fat Tony: Bart, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Bart: No. Fat Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them? Bart: Uh-uh.
Fat Tony: And, what if your family don’t like bread? What if they like…cigarettes? Bart: I guess that’s okay. Fat Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart? Bart: Hell, no!
Socrates wasn’t executed, he drank tea made with Hemlock prescribed by a jury of his peers, the charge was insulting the gods which he was actually guilty of. He was just surprised religious nuttery and tradition trumped sound logic. So yeah, not his best moment but of valuable lesson through the ages. Most deaths mean far less to posterity.
Oh, please! How does being made, by state authorities, to drink poison not amount to execution? :rolleyes:
The charges were failing to worship the gods and corrupting the youth, but anyone who knows anything about it will tell you that these were bogus charges. Socrates was certainly no atheist, and ws a corrupter of youth only inasmuch as he made the young men who admired him question conventional wisdom (and he was far from being the only man in Athens in his time to do that). He was executed because he was (or had been) aligned with the wrong political faction, and because, as ElvisL1ves says, because he had pissed a lot of people off.