Putting Socratic Logic to Work

Last semester I took a philosophy class on Socratic Logic. It's one of those courses that you take and you think "hmmm. . . this will probably be useful in some way shape or form but I wonder if I'll actually apply it. . ."

Well, this past week when I was doing my lifeguarding courses I was doing some specialized training for lifeguarding waterpark facilities (think water slides, wave pools, etc...). The students in the course were divided into groups and asked to come up with a definition for "waterpark". Members of my group proposed such things as "an Aquatic facility with a wave pool" or "a swimming pool with waterslides".

This is where Socratic Logic kicks in. Wave pools are not essential to all waterparks, neither are waterslides in fact. I told them that we had to find the essential difference between waterparks and other aquatic facilities to come up with an answer. I said this essential difference must be universal to all waterparks if we are going to use it to define "waterpark". They looked at me like I was crazy.

In the end, they realized I wasn't so crazy when the instructor pointed out that not all waterparks have waterslides nor do all waterparks have wave pools.

See. You need philosophy to be a lifeguard.