TOK Essay

"Context is all" - Margaret Atwood Does this mean there is no such thing as truth? There is a famous quote by Austin Dobson which complies two of the most contradicting believes in philosophy that is "Time goes and we stay or Time stays and we go". 1Here the statement can be interpreted in the two ways and both are right but it is upto a person to believe which he feels is right. In a card game if a person gets all aces then he wins the game whereas in Tennis a point taken on the serve is called an "ace". In the given examples, the meaning of the word "ace" differs. Therefore, the meaning of a statement depends on in what context it is used, as it can have varied interpretations. Context is nothing but a "Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation".2 Truth is a series of complex theories put together and therefore to state something true is one of the biggest philosophical problems , but to check if a statement is true then it has to go through a simple Plato' s truth test. This involves a three-step proof used to check a statement claim to be true. Now we would test the two following scenario .Firstly, "The sun is in the centre of the solar system the milky way" and secondly, "Kashmir is a good place to live". When we test the first statement by the Plato's truth test, we find that it would pass all the criteria confirming that the

  • Word count: 1592
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK Essay

Día a día, nos vemos enfrentados a cientos de objetos, personas e ideas, con las cuales interactuamos de diversas maneras. Pero esto no se da porque sí. Se debe gracias a la adquisición de conocimiento, el cual puede ser obtenido usando de alguna manera la razón, la percepción el lenguaje y las emociones. La percepción es el primer proceso cognoscitivo, a través del cual los sujetos captan información del entorno, de esta manera, los órganos sensoriales transmiten impulsos eléctricos al cerebro, que luego transforma estos impulsos en información para el conocimiento1. Por otra parte, la razón es la facultad en virtud de la cual el ser humano es capaz de identificar conceptos, cuestionarlos, hallar coherencia o contradicción entre ellos y así inducir o deducir otros distintos de los que ya conoce. Así, la razón humana, más que descubrir certezas es una capacidad de establecer o descartar nuevos conceptos concluyentes o conclusiones, en función de su coherencia con respecto de otros conceptos de partida o premisas2. En este ensayo afrontaré el problema del conocimiento de "¿Cuál es el uso de la razón para el conocimiento? ¿Es superior este uso respecto del ofrecido por la percepción?". Mi tesis es que la razón se acerca más a la realidad que la percepción, debida a que la percepción es más instantánea, a diferencia de la razón. La percepción es

  • Word count: 909
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK essay

IB TOK Essay Prescribed question: #8 "Are some ways of knowing more likely than others to lead to the truth?" Peter Frederiksen Svane St. Mary's International School IB Candidate number: 000134 - 039 March 6th, 2008 Word Count: 1599 A man, Peter, gets home from a strenuous day of work, and walks upstairs to the bedroom to see if his wife is fine. The door, however, is closed, and Peter hears strange noises. Could it really be the truth that she is unfaithful? Peter is confronted with a dilemma.1 Peter pauses, and his emotions take over: "No, she would never do such a thing," he cries to himself. On the other hand, he reasons out that his wife always receives secret calls and that people who receives secret calls are unfaithful, therefore she must be unfaithful. Confused, he decides to call a neighbor, and ask him to open the door. A few minutes later, the neighbor arrives and peeks through the door. Peter is taken over by Socrates,2 and demands the truth: "There is another man." In denial, Peter tears the door open but only sees his wife. The predicament summarizes the four tools one can apply in many situations to reveal the truth. Each one concludes with a potential truth, but proposes conflicting facts. Thus it illuminates problems that arise with ways of knowing and the reliability of truth. With an emotional approach, Peter follows his intuition which denies any

  • Word count: 2050
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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Tok essay

" Doubt is the key to knowledge " ( Persian Proverb ). To what extent is this true in two areas of knowledge ? Have you ever thought what is doubt , knowledge and how they are related . Doubt is a status between belief and disbelief . Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as (a) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education ; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; (b) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or (c) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. However there are no one agreed definition of knowledge. Notion of "doubt" plays an important role in knowledge. I believe is the key to knowledge, because doubt brings thinking and without thinking , we would not be able to make any progress in knowledge. We should not doubt everything what we can all the time, because it can even stop our development. If for example a person has doubts about the experiment he has done and he checks what was done and was find, repeats an experiment for 15 more times doubts might not gone and in the end there would be only the waists of time and stop of development. Otherwise, if people would not have any doubts , they would start believing everything they hear and would live in one big lie. As Descartes stated in his Discourse on Method, the first rule in

  • Word count: 1184
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK essay

Prescribed Title: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of reason as a way of knowing. "Two extravagances: to exclude reason, to admit only reason"1 The above quote, attributed to Blaise Pascal, best describes the use of reason. On one hand, reason provides an unparalleled element of certainty and surety; on the other, it creates an emotionless approach. On one hand, reason establishes a logical justifiable chain of thought; on the other, it is often riddled with fallacies. On one hand, reason involves the compilation of existing knowledge; on the other, it's subjectivity leads to alternate contradictory viewpoints and confrontation. Ultimately, reason comes across as a double-edged sword: complete with its own strengths and weaknesses. Reason attempts to use the powers of the mind to create sequences of logical thought and thus arrive at claims that may be classified as knowledge. By either deducing, inducing or informally comparing2, we arrive at conclusions: and this has a direct impact on our lives at all stages: be it in a more micro-picture, such as our personal experiences, or a macro-picture, like that nation's economy. Ultimately, this comes across with a number of strengths and weaknesses. The primary strength of reason as a way of knowing - which draws conclusions from working on premises and assumptions - is the element of certainty that it adds to knowledge.

  • Word count: 2033
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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ToK Essay

To what extent do personal attributes affect Ways of Knowing and why, if at all, does answering this question matter in the first place? Personal attributes affect Ways of Knowing is a large way, however answering this question is still important. Personal attributes are traits or characteristics that make people individuals. Personal attributes can be both physical and mental or physiological. This means that an individual's traits could be anything from the shape of their hands to how kind they are. The ways of knowing include: Perception, Reason, Emotion and Language. These ways of knowing can all be directly affected by a person's personal attributes. Perception is the mental and physical awareness of the world through our five senses. Personal attributes affect perception due the varying ways that the five senses can be damaged and therefore change the way that they interpret a situation or thing. Reason is a way of coming to a conclusion by using a deductive or inductive argument as well as logic. Personal attributes affect reason through their ability to trap us in our beliefs and not allow us to sort through our traits to derive better logic. Personal attributes affect emotion in a vast sense as they have the ability to determine how we use our emotions. Likewise, language is also affected greatly by our personal attributes as both mental and physical expressions of

  • Word count: 1531
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK essay

Consider the meaning of "justification" in different areas of knowledge. Is any one kind of justification more compelling than any other? Have you ever wondered where things come from or how they appeared? In this high-paced world, we as humans live, there are many such questions for which we have no answers. By using the different areas of knowledge; history, art, natural science, human science, ethics and math, one is able to justify these questions. Though all the areas of knowledge are useful in determining the truths of the world, math is more compelling than any other. Math, more so than any other, seems 5 to display more answers to our continuous questions. In history, a person can learn about knowledge, because it has been recorded for future generations. Though it is good for one to see the artifacts and history of the past, we often find out that we as humans have transformed the history ourselves by perceiving things differently. Even when one is looking at facts on display, different people can see the same facts in a different 0 manner. An example taken from today would be a news reporter reporting the news. While numerous reporters from various stations would be reporting the same news, they would each have diverse stories according to their point of view. The same principle applies in both cases, though it may be the same object

  • Word count: 1530
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK Essay

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin", (probably a roach), (The Metamorphosis, 3). Imagine living your life day by day, not knowing when you might be the next Gregor Samsa. Is it possible that you might awake one normal day to the realization that nothing is as it seemed? To the realization that all you've ever known does not exist anymore?! To the realization that everything you were certain of, has now become tormenting doubt? Although the question being raised in "The Metamorphosis" is the question of identity, here the question is that of certainty. Is anything certain in this world? And if certainty truly exists, by what means can it be attained? How uncertain is certainty? We live our lives with one aim in mind, to advance from what is unknown to us, to what is known, "from ignorance to knowledge", whether on a scientific level or simply to advance in our knowledge of life (on a philosophical level). However the unknown is commonly confused with the unknowable; and there lies "a fundamental difference between the words "we do not know" and "we cannot know". 1 The concept of "It is certain" bases itself on the fact that "Science sets out from the basic notion that the objective of the world exists and can be known to us."1 However, many disagree with this notion, conveyed through the

  • Word count: 1372
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK essay

El conocimiento que más valoramos es aquel del que podemos ofrecer las justificaciones más sólidas". ¿En qué medida esta de acuerdo con esta afirmación? El ser humano lleva intrínseco el querer buscar la causa racional a todo aquello que ocurre a su alrededor. El identificar, conceptualizar y cuestionar todo cuanto forma parte del medio en el que nos desenvolvemos nos hace posible el establecer conceptos nuevos concluyentes, en función de su coherencia o contradicción frente a otros conceptos de partida o premisas, es decir, aquellos conceptos preexistentes. Es mediante el procesamiento de toda esta información, obtenida tanto gracias a nuestro razonamiento deductivo como inductivo, que tenemos la posibilidad de adquirir conocimientos. Si únicamente no enfocásemos en la razón, al encontrarse fundamentada por la lógica y/o la evidencia; la validez de esta afirmación parecería ser aplicable al cien por ciento, sin embargo debido a que la naturaleza del ser humano y el medio en el que se desarrollan los actores del conocimiento serán siempre cambiantes en cada individuo hacen complicado la generalización total acerca de la aplicación del estamento que gobierna mi ensayo. Por dichos motivos me he permitido encaminar mis ideas con base a la nueva interrogante ¿De qué depende la valoración que le damos al los conocimientos que adquirimos? Y en ¿qué

  • Word count: 1386
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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TOK essay

"Truth is that to which the community ultimately settles down" (Charles Peirce). Analyse and evaluate this claim. Truth, according to The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, is a judgment, proposition or idea that is true, or accepted as true. Well, then when is something true? True, again according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, is when something is in accordance with reality of a proven fact. Well, then what constitutes a reality? Merriam Webster states that reality is the quality or state of something being real. Well, then what is real? The questions could go on and on, like you had just 5 discovered the word why when you were six. The concept of truth proves to be just as fascinating. However, I believe the dictionary to be wrong about a couple of things. Truth, I think, while often interpreted as concrete, is actually an objective word. I believe truth to be an individual decision, and would therefore differ from person to person. This, while my person feelings on the issue of truth, is the exact reason that I disagree with the above statement made by Philosopher, Charles 0 Pierce. Contemplate the following scenario; a large group of people are sitting in a room. They are discussing a currently pressing social issue and trying to come to some universal conclusions and/or solutions. Well, if truth can be something ultimately

  • Word count: 1259
  • Level: International Baccalaureate
  • Subject: Theory of Knowledge
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