Introduction to TOK - Lecture notes 1 PDF

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Introduction to TOK - Lecture notes 1...

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Introduction to TOK: Knowledge communities – where one’s knowledge comes from, sometimes knowledge communities can contradict one another. We are bombarded with so much knowledge, much of which is miss-information. It is important to be able to distinguish between what is true or not. Questioning information is extremely important. TOK isn’t philosophy TOK is based in real life knowledge situations TOK is everywhere and can be anything Epistemology – The study of how we know things The IB The IB presents us with 8 ways of knowing  Language, Reason, Sense perception, Emotion, Faith, Intuition, Imagination & Memory Each has some positives and downsides. Patterns and Classification We can look for patterns to sort information, but in the natural world they don’t exist. We do this to understand the world around us. Much of the natural world is managed through our structuring. Time is another thing that we use to split up and manage ourselves. These divisions that we create aren’t fixed, they can change and be enhanced all the time. Sometimes information overlaps between different categories. Our Brains Everything we know, comes from our brains, it processes all experiences, it then interprets that information and relay’s it back to us. The reality isn’t always that easy to understand, so we can simplify things to help us. Our brains give us a series of mental representations of the raw experiences we have. - The reality our brains show us may not be the reality that exists - The reality that I experience may not be the reality that you experience - How far do your emotions and beliefs influence the mental representations our brain gives us? The truth and the lies How do we decide what to believe? Types of knowledge There are all different types of knowledge - Personal and Shared knowledge – what have you seen first hand? - Propositional and Procedural Knowledge - ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how to’ - Knowledge by Experience and Knowledge by Authority - ‘what we experience and what have we been told by someone we respect or a figure of authority’ A priori knowledge – True by definition A posteriori knowledge – truth established by empirical experience

Value Judgement Predicted knowledge based on logical reasoning Belief – faith based knowledge Quality of knowledge Plato famously described knowledge as justified true belief – however there are many contradictions - What is justified? - What is truth? - Belief  You have to believe something to know it… but something that is true needs to have other validation than our beliefs. Growth and development of knowledge - We used to know that the earth was flat - We used to know that there is a planet called Pluto Our knowledge develops over time, as we discover new things our knowledge changes Areas of knowledge The IB prescribes areas of knowledge for us to study  subjects Do they deal with different sources of truth? Do they contradict one another?

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