Arguing to Find the Truth (Plato's Method)
Turn disagreements from winning contests into shared truth-seeking
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 62%
Drawing on Plato's Republic, the method reframes disagreement from a contest to win into a cooperative search for truth. Plato was frustrated arguing with people obsessed with winning, so he had his students do exercises to reconnect with the plain satisfaction of getting the right answer, even when it was not the answer they began with. The mechanism has three moves: first remind yourself why you care about the issue in the first place; second cultivate the desire for the correct answer over the defence of your current one; third locate a value you share with the other person, most powerfully a mutual love of the truth. When that shared value exists, argument becomes generative rather than destructive. The book adds philosophical fear of missing out: imagining how much better a jointly-reached true answer would be, which lowers the tension of the exchange.
Origin
Megan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko draw this from Plato's Republic and their Notre Dame course The God and the Good Life, contrasting it with the sophistry Socrates fought in ancient Athens and with modern social-media argument.
Core principles
- 01The goal is the right answer, not defending the answer you arrived with
- 02Productive argument requires a shared underlying value, usually love of the truth
- 03Rhetorical tricks to change minds are sophistry, not ethical persuasion
- 04You can only progress with someone who also cares whether they are wrong
- 05Both parties are better off if the truth is found, even if it means you were wrong
How to run it
- 1
Reconnect with why you care
Before engaging, remind yourself why the issue matters to you and why getting it right, not just winning, is what you actually want.
Pro tip Plato's students did unrelated math problems first to re-feel the pleasure of a correct answer they did not start with.
- 2
Want the right answer over your current answer
Deliberately cultivate the desire for the true answer rather than the defence of the position you already hold.
Watch out Watch for the slide into 'I just want to be right' — it is easy and usually invisible in the moment.
- 3
Find the shared value
Identify a value you both hold underneath the disagreement. The strongest is a mutual care for the truth combined with care for each other.
Pro tip Sullivan argues productively with her mother because they both care about each other AND about being right; the same content fails on Twitter where that shared value is absent.
Watch out Without a shared value, treating every argument as equally weighted never produces consensus — it just amplifies whoever ignores the truth.
- 4
Invoke philosophical FOMO
Picture how much better a jointly-reached true answer would be than staying in your separate positions, which reduces the tension of the exchange.
Pro tip Frame it as the allegory of the cave: how much better to be outside the cave with your friends than alone.
In the wild
Sullivan describes calling her mother, trading articles, and telling each other 'I think you're wrong about this' back and forth. It works because both care about each other and about the truth, so being shown wrong is a gain, not a loss. The identical exchange on Twitter or Facebook fails, because the shared value of caring about the truth is missing and the aim collapses into winning.
→ A repeatable, affectionate disagreement that leaves both parties with better beliefs instead of entrenched ones.
Common mistakes
Using rhetorical tricks to change minds
Techniques to 'mold' someone into agreeing with you are sophistry — they persuade without regard for whether the claim is true and are an unethical way to treat people who disagree.
Treating all arguments as equal weight
The naive op-ed model of putting every view on the table so truth rises to the top fails once people argue with no concern for truth; without a shared value it never converges.
Is it for you?
Best for
People stuck in repetitive fights with those they respect and want to keep improving beliefs alongside.
Not ideal for
Interlocutors who have no regard for the truth at all and only want to persuade or dominate.
From the transcript
“first like remind ourselves when we start to get into these fights why we care in the first place about this issue and like why…”
“cultivating that feeling of like wanting the right answer rather than defending the answer you currently have is it's a better option”
“where that does work is if you have some shared value underlying you know the arguments that are getting on the table”
From the episode
A Philosopher's Guide To The Good Life - Meghan Sullivan & Paul Blaschko - #419
Meghan Sullivan & Paul Blaschko