The possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility. Evaluate this claim.

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Courtney Chin

IB Theory of Knowledge

Puryear 1

TOK Essay

Prompt: The possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility. Evaluate this claim.

        Knowledge is something that this world cherishes. The possession of knowledge can lead to power. But the possession of said knowledge carries with it an ethical responsibility of how to handle the knowledge. Knowledge cannot be simply tossed around to anybody yet it also can’t be withheld from everybody. Ethical responsibilities will always arise from the possession of knowledge and must be dealt with carefully in order to create a functioning society.

        There are a few things that first need to be defined before moving on. These are “ethical responsibility”, “knowledge” and “possession of knowledge”. Ethical responsibility can be derived from a number of things. A person’s own beliefs about what they think is ethical can contribute to how a person feels they are ethically responsible. Their personal ethics as well as their past experiences can lead a person to have a certain perspective about what is ethically correct. Culture or religion can play a major role in what a person believes is ethical. Depending on what a culture or religion teaches, that person may take on those beliefs as their own and live their life according to what the religion says. As said before, a person’s past experiences or their personal history can affect how they go about situations in the present. If something happened in their past that dealt directly with an ethical responsibility they will have a different perspective on the situation. Ethical responsibility can also be viewed as objective or subjective. It may depend on who the person is and what they have experienced. Not everybody has experienced the same things in life and no two people are exactly alike, therefore the definition of ethical responsibility is different for everybody and is affected by aforementioned topics. Knowledge is based on a few things and may follow certain criteria. First off, what counts as knowledge? Knowledge can be a number of things. There can be knowledge in experience, knowledge from the senses, knowledge from others, etc. Knowledge can be acquired in many different ways. But the knowledge that a person knows may not always be right. Sometimes experience can be blurred by memory, the senses can be distorted by perception, and knowledge from others may not always be the correct knowledge. So this then becomes an issue of how to know which knowledge is credible and which is not. It is more reasonable to trust a person’s knowledge on a topic if they are specialized in that. Say for example, a doctor. A doctor would know about the human body and the different diseases and illnesses that are affecting a person better than a child who has only briefly acquired knowledge about these topics. So it is obvious that the doctor’s knowledge is more credible than the child’s. Possession of knowledge may include a personal point of view and does not include just the facts. The possession is not necessarily as important as what is done after the possession. Once a person possesses knowledge, it is crucial that they decide what to do with the knowledge. They must “own” the knowledge in a sense and find a use for the knowledge in order to do what is ethically right. Therefore the possession of knowledge implies that there is some value judgment in how to handle the knowledge and what to do with it.

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        We can use these definitions to help evaluate the statement that the possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility using some examples. Some books have a theme of the censorship of knowledge. In Brave New World, the government is the sole possessor of knowledge. They control everything, even human life. Everything is left up to the government to decide. Social classes are created by the government even before conception and humans are no longer created the natural way but rather through test tubes and machines that control everything in order to provide the government with complete control. In our world ...

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