Presuppositions in Socratic Design

Presuppositions in Socratic Design 
Presuppositions are beliefs about humanity and the world that we consider so self-evident that we rarely question them. They influence our thinking, actions, and feelings at both personal and cultural levels, forming the basis of our way of life and how we organize our environment. Because we continually see our way of life and environment confirmed around us, we think there are no alternatives to our presuppositions and unconsciously perpetuate them. Breaking these presuppositions requires fundamentally examining and recognizing them within ourselves and others. 
 
Personal presuppositions 
Each person forms presuppositions in their childhood about how humanity and the world work and how to behave best. Presuppositions arise from what we are told by caregivers, in school, and in the media, as well as from our experiences. Painful childhood experiences lead to the most deeply rooted presuppositions. The unconscious avoidance behavior we learn is called 'armor'. Think of the youngest child in the family who is not allowed to join in with the others and develops armor that he always wants to be involved everywhere. Or a bullied child who develops armor to always please and never say no. 
 
We Internalize Cultural Presuppositions 
Because we receive similar messages as children and undergo similar experiences, many presuppositions are shared. By sharing our inner worlds, we can gain insight into how culture influences us and how we continue that influence in society. Sharing our inner world is not therapy but an analysis of culture. 
 
For example, in many Western cultures, a mechanistic view of humanity is dominant, seeing humans as rational, separate individuals who have a body, stand above nature, are to be distrusted, and play a role as consumers in the community. Through quantitative measurements, humans can improve themselves and the environment. These presuppositions determine how we organize our lives: how we build, how we structure our education and healthcare, which economy we stimulate, and so on. 
 
Another view is that humans are social beings, with embodied intelligence, connected to nature. What truly matters to our inner worlds is hardly measurable, and together we can continually create morals about what constitutes a good existence and what this means for how we collectively want to achieve it. 
 
The Role of Socratic Design 
In Socratic Design, presuppositions are examined and questioned, both at a personal and cultural level. Through collective intelligence, space is created for new ways of thinking and insights. We can then validate the new presuppositions in experiments and use them to reflect on how we organize our way of life and environment. What practices are conceivable from new presuppositions? 
 
Humberto Schwab further explains this in Dutch with concrete examples in his lecture on presuppositions. You can find this and other lectures in the Video Curriculum.