I thought I had a good idea of what the Socratic Method was, but then I had some doubts.  My original idea was that the Socratic Method was a way of making an argument against an opponent by means of careful questioning which is designed to lead the opponent to whatever position your are advocating.  This seems to be what Socrates does in Plato's writings.  In this kind of arguing, a person doesn't state his opinion explicitly but instead relies on the opponent to reason to that opinion in a round about way after being guided by specific questions.When I was reading up on it yesterday, though, I noticed that other people have slightly different views on what the Socratic Method entails.  This article in Lifehacker, for example, essentially boils the method down to "questioning" as a form of "conflict resolution".  This article says that the "method focuses not so much on proving your point but on disproving the other person's point with a series of questions (elenchus), resulting in their aporia (puzzlement)."  Another site emphasizes something else: "Socrates engaged in questioning of his students in an unending search for truth. He sought to get to the foundations of his students' and colleagues' views by asking continual questions until a contradiction was exposed, thus proving the fallacy of the initial assumption. This became known as the Socratic Method, and may be Socrates' most enduring contribution to philosophy.My question is whether the Socratic Method is really meant to bring someone around to a specific position, or simply to poke holes in the other's argument?