# Maieutic Prompting

> Maieutic prompting generates a tree of recursive explanations for and against an answer, then infers the most logically consistent answer from the relations among them.

- Identifier: PTL-0043
- Category: Reasoning Elicitation
- Canonical URL: https://protologue.com/t/maieutic-prompting/
- Introduced: 2022

## Description

Named after the Socratic method, it is designed to tolerate individual explanations that are wrong or inconsistent.

## Related terms

- [Self-Consistency](https://protologue.com/t/self-consistency/)
- [Chain-of-Verification](https://protologue.com/t/chain-of-verification/)

## Sources

- Jung et al. (2022). Maieutic Prompting: Logically Consistent Reasoning with Recursive Explanations. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11822

## Cite this entry

Protologue. (2026). Maieutic Prompting. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0043). https://protologue.com/t/maieutic-prompting/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)