New TOK Guide:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/02/24/upcoming-changes-in-ibs-theory-of-knowledge-guide/
Thank you to Mr Ferlazzo for drawing attention to this document outlining the new TOK Guide for students starting the IB in September 2013.
Apart from the additional WOKs and AOKs and the change in terminology from “KIs” to “KQs” or Knowledge Questions, you’ll see that the assessment criteria for the essay have also been streamlined.
The implications for students? All good, it appears.
Not only will you have a greater pool of ideas to draw on, but also the examiners of your essays will assess their ‘global impression’ of your work.
What does this mean? They will have two fewer criteria to worry about when addressing the quality of your writing, opening up their minds to the overall ‘TOK quality’ of the essay based on the remaining two criteria.
Suffice it to say, the descriptors for each remaining criteria are fairly clear about what is meant by ‘TOK quality’ – there’s nothing fundamentally different in WHAT you have to write or HOW you have to write your essays.
Continue to focus on the main Q by exploring the related KQs and the arguments/counter arguments related to the AOKs you’re asked to study, making sure you build in relevant examples from those AOKs.
Read the posts on 'Notes layout and structure' to give you some guidance on best practice for TOK Essays & watch this space for further elucidations on the new concepts like KQs...
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
ToK Essay Prescribed Titles (May 2013): Question 3
From wormholes to crossing moral lines to a philosophy of action...
Perhaps the most important example to consider in relation to this Q is the case of the great physicist Oppenheimer, who was quoted in the sci-fi series 'Fringe' (S02.ep15, 'Peter').
Walter is discussing the possibility of opening a portal between alternative universes, but his assistant, Carla Warren, is anxious. The dialogue goes something like this:
CARLA WARREN: No, Walter, I mean you can't. Shattering the wall between universes would rupture the fundamental constants of nature.
WALTER: It's a theory. We don't know that to be true.
CARLA WARREN: It's a good theory. It is why we have been lying to the military, telling them it's impossible. Walter, there has to be a line somewhere. There has to be a line we can't cross.
WALTER: I always considered you as a scientist, Doctor Warren... despite your personal needs for religious claptrap. I see I was wrong.
CARLA WARREN: "I am become death, Destroyer of worlds."
WALTER: Don't you quote Oppenheimer to me.
CARLA WARREN: Knowledge cannot be pursued without morality.
WALTER: You sound like a pious sanctimonious Southern Preacher!
CARLA WARREN: I may go to church every Sunday, Walter, but I also have three degrees in theoretical physics, and I am telling you you cannot do this. We both know the amount of energy required to create a portal will forever ruin both universes. For the sake of one life, you will destroy the world. Some things are not ours to tamper with. Some things are God's.
WALTER: My son is dying, Doctor Warren. I will not allow that to happen again. There's only room for one God in this lab, and it's not yours............-- that will be all!
Recognise Warren's lines about KNOWLEDGE? Follow the connection to Oppenheimer and what he thought about scientific progress and the moral responsibility of scientists and remember that he was fond of quoting from the 'Bhagavad Gita'...
Monday, January 14, 2013
ToK Essay: Prescribed Title (May 2013): Question 5
5. “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher Hitchens). Do you agree?
Answer: They are responses to something seen for the first time – an attempt to explain something unfamiliar and unknown and never experienced before.
The ‘iron horse’ was, allegedly, how a Native North American Indian described the first train that was seen moving across the North American plains. A ‘floating mountain’ (p. 17 of the pdf document; section: 'The versions of the vanquished') was, supposedly, how the native South American Indian spies described the oncoming ships of the Spanish invaders. And, ‘flying saucer’, as everyone may know, is how the Western media first publicised the phenomenon of UFOs. Now, imagine how each of these assertions were received by the general population: with understanding nods of approval and general acceptance? With undoubting certitude and unquestioning acknowledgement? Nope. Most probably with a lot of hilarity and not merely a pinch of condescending irony.
Now this is a slightly different take on the above title – some sceptics reject a belief, not simply on the grounds that it was asserted ‘without evidence’, but because the evidence presented is framed in highly metaphoric terms and is thereby somehow diluted as far as justification of a belief is concerned. The language of evidence, it appears, is crucial.
Consider the language of the Bible, for example. When justifying statements in the Bible, believers often argue that we shouldn’t take the words of the Bible too literally – it detracts from the essential message or teaching; whereas atheists sometimes argue that after you’ve stripped the metaphor away from the language, there’s nothing of substance left in the message.
And what do you notice about each of the above expressions? They are deeply metaphoric. Metaphor, it seems, is crucial to our ability to make sense of the world, especially our experiences of it. Metaphor fills the gaps, so to speak, in our more literal attempts to grasp order and meaning in what we see in our universe. The North American Indian, seeing a giant, metallic object, racing towards him, breathing smoke and screaming violently, can only grasp what he’s sensing by comparing this unbelievably strange experience in terms of something more familiar to him. Metaphor helps to suspend our incredulity about the world and reach for knowledge and understanding that slips through our more literal (rational?) approaches.
Which begs the knowledge issue: to what extent is imagination an integral part of making assertions? Or the more ethical KI: should evidence, grasped imaginatively and presented in metaphorical terms, be rejected with a corresponding rejection of the belief?
If the South American Indians had collectively accepted the ‘floating horses’ hypothesis, might they have taken more seriously the threat of the invading Spanish ships?
A what if question, the answer to which we’ll never be able to know...
What do the expressions ‘iron horse’, ‘floating mountains’ and ‘flying saucers’ have in common?
Answer: They are responses to something seen for the first time – an attempt to explain something unfamiliar and unknown and never experienced before.
The ‘iron horse’ was, allegedly, how a Native North American Indian described the first train that was seen moving across the North American plains. A ‘floating mountain’ (p. 17 of the pdf document; section: 'The versions of the vanquished') was, supposedly, how the native South American Indian spies described the oncoming ships of the Spanish invaders. And, ‘flying saucer’, as everyone may know, is how the Western media first publicised the phenomenon of UFOs. Now, imagine how each of these assertions were received by the general population: with understanding nods of approval and general acceptance? With undoubting certitude and unquestioning acknowledgement? Nope. Most probably with a lot of hilarity and not merely a pinch of condescending irony.
Now this is a slightly different take on the above title – some sceptics reject a belief, not simply on the grounds that it was asserted ‘without evidence’, but because the evidence presented is framed in highly metaphoric terms and is thereby somehow diluted as far as justification of a belief is concerned. The language of evidence, it appears, is crucial.
Consider the language of the Bible, for example. When justifying statements in the Bible, believers often argue that we shouldn’t take the words of the Bible too literally – it detracts from the essential message or teaching; whereas atheists sometimes argue that after you’ve stripped the metaphor away from the language, there’s nothing of substance left in the message.
And what do you notice about each of the above expressions? They are deeply metaphoric. Metaphor, it seems, is crucial to our ability to make sense of the world, especially our experiences of it. Metaphor fills the gaps, so to speak, in our more literal attempts to grasp order and meaning in what we see in our universe. The North American Indian, seeing a giant, metallic object, racing towards him, breathing smoke and screaming violently, can only grasp what he’s sensing by comparing this unbelievably strange experience in terms of something more familiar to him. Metaphor helps to suspend our incredulity about the world and reach for knowledge and understanding that slips through our more literal (rational?) approaches.
Which begs the knowledge issue: to what extent is imagination an integral part of making assertions? Or the more ethical KI: should evidence, grasped imaginatively and presented in metaphorical terms, be rejected with a corresponding rejection of the belief?
If the South American Indians had collectively accepted the ‘floating horses’ hypothesis, might they have taken more seriously the threat of the invading Spanish ships?
A what if question, the answer to which we’ll never be able to know...
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
ToK Essay prescribed Titles (May 2013): Question 3
"The possession of knowledge carries an
ethical responsibility." Evaluate this claim.
'Morals,
ipods and psycopaths.'
Suppose
you had sufficient evidence to give you good reason to believe – to know – that
your neighbour is a terrorist; should you report her activities?
Common
sense would tell us to ring the terrorist hotline immediately and protect
ourselves and others in the neighbourhood from potential annihilation.
Utilitarians
would tell us that we should consider the consequences and report the neighbour according to the principle
that we’d be serving the greater good by sacrificing one individual.
Deontologists,
such as Kant (a very complex case!), argue that the consequences of my action
wouldn’t matter; it’s the intent that counts.
I have to ask myself: what
would happen if everyone in the world did this, all the time? And would that be
the kind of world I’d like to live in? Presumably
we’d all live in utter terror and not step out of our front doors and lots of
innocent people would die. I don’t want
to live in a world like that; therefore, I am compelled to report my neighbour.
Using
a more sceptical argument, following Hume’s law, one can
show that no amount of REASONED argument can get us from the premise ‘My
neighbour is a terrorist’ to the conclusion ‘Therefore, I ought to report her
to the authorities.’
Where
does this leave us? Look again at the
question – there are so many Knowledge Issues embedded within it. Perhaps we have to explore the idea of ‘responsibility’
more closely. What’s the difference
between ethical ‘responsibility’ and ethical ‘accountability’? And where does our sense of ethical
responsibility come from? Are we born
with it or do we learn it? According to
some religious belief systems we are born with Original Sin which explains
where our sense of right or wrong comes from.
Not everyone is satisfied with this explanation.
So how
do ipods feature in this reflection?
Consider the analogy of your playlist of songs with the network of
beliefs which make up your moral cosmos.
Both are subjectively chosen and both are filtered by personal and
cultural bias; often shaped by your parents’ tastes/beliefs and the fashions/beliefs
of the society you live in. Okay. Our playlists are also shaped by the various published best sellers charts and by expert musical reviews, while our moral beliefs are also influenced by ethical documents such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
When you
share your playlist with another person, one of three things can happen (of
course, this narrows the possibilities): he can love your playlist so much that
he adds some of the songs to his and so there’s some growth in musical taste; he
can hate your playlist and never want to talk to you again because of your vile
musical taste, so there’s some conflict and tension in your relationship; or he
can shrug his shoulders with utter indifference and carry on listening to his
own ipod, so there’s a kind of switching off to outside influences. Now in this simplified analogy, the same
things seem to happen when different sets of moral belief come together – sometimes within
small communities, though usually between large nations.
It’s
my responsibility to update my playlist as I experience a wider range of
musical influences – how I adapt and choose the songs I add will be determined
by a variety of personal and cultural factors (can you identify specific
ones?). And so it’s my responsibility to
adjust my moral cosmos to the realities which I experience – the more I wake up
to the world around me – the more knowledge I have of it – the greater is my
responsibility to update my moral beliefs. Presumably, a psychopath-terrorist would be unable to adjust her moral cosmos either because she has switched off emotionally or has a distorted sense of reality.
Can
you think of the problems of this anology?
Monday, September 24, 2012
TOK Websites
http://theoryofknowledge.edublogs.org/about/:
This is one of the most comprehensive TOK resource sites on the internet, full of categorised links to articles, clips and other content - all of this relevant to your various TOK studies. Particularly useful are the links to other TOK Teacher Blogs & Websites.
But we have to commend Mr Ferlazzo's site for being constantly udated with new material as well as giving an insight into the challenging, though intellectually inspiring, TOK experience provide for his students!
Well worth spending the time to browse...
This is one of the most comprehensive TOK resource sites on the internet, full of categorised links to articles, clips and other content - all of this relevant to your various TOK studies. Particularly useful are the links to other TOK Teacher Blogs & Websites.
But we have to commend Mr Ferlazzo's site for being constantly udated with new material as well as giving an insight into the challenging, though intellectually inspiring, TOK experience provide for his students!
Well worth spending the time to browse...
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Examples
The Arts/Economics
November : Q1 Can we have beliefs/knowledge independent of culture? Q4 What counts as knowledge in the arts ?
Click on the link to hear a clip of Rebecca Ferguson’s song ‘Nothing’s real but love’:
It won't build you up
It won't fill you up
It's not love!
And nothing's real but love
No money, no house, no car, is like love...”
A fairly commonplace sentiment and quite overused in pop songs over the last decades, so at the risk of taking things too literally, just what does Ms Ferguson proclaim to know? That love is more valuable, more real, than material things? That love gives meaning to all those other things? Whose love? What sort of love? More ‘real’ or ‘valuable’ in what sense? In the best tradition of knowledge claims, the lyrics raise a greater number of knowledge issues than provide answers.
Now let’s juxtapose beside the song an extract from another literary work of art – a counter point to the sentiment that love is of greater value than money. It’s Francisco’s ‘money speech’ in the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. You can listen to the extract here:
“…To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.” (http://www.working-minds.com/money.htm (August, 2012) )
There’s a complete reversal of the song lyric Implied by these statements about money, in both are embedded cultural ideas from which we cannot escape. Can you formulate these in the form of searching knowledge issues?
A more interesting question is this: which belief do you find more compelling? Or, where does each belief lie in the scale of Believing Bullshit?
November : Q1 Can we have beliefs/knowledge independent of culture? Q4 What counts as knowledge in the arts ?
Click on the link to hear a clip of Rebecca Ferguson’s song ‘Nothing’s real but love’:
Let’s just look at the chorus lines a little more closely:
“No money, no house, no car, is like love...
It don't fill you upIt won't build you up
It won't fill you up
It's not love!
And nothing's real but love
No money, no house, no car, is like love...”
A fairly commonplace sentiment and quite overused in pop songs over the last decades, so at the risk of taking things too literally, just what does Ms Ferguson proclaim to know? That love is more valuable, more real, than material things? That love gives meaning to all those other things? Whose love? What sort of love? More ‘real’ or ‘valuable’ in what sense? In the best tradition of knowledge claims, the lyrics raise a greater number of knowledge issues than provide answers.
Now let’s juxtapose beside the song an extract from another literary work of art – a counter point to the sentiment that love is of greater value than money. It’s Francisco’s ‘money speech’ in the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. You can listen to the extract here:
Here’s a corresponding sequence of lines: “…To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.” (http://www.working-minds.com/money.htm (August, 2012) )
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Examples
The Arts
November 2012 Q4: What counts as knowledge in the arts?
The purpose of the film is to explain the collapse of Europe and, it soon becomes clear, that the perspective from which this explanation is given is religious. Hathaway is introduced early on as an ‘International Evangelist.’ Now don’t let this put you off, because it’s not so much what he says that’s interesting for TOK, but HOW he says it.
Hathaway uses a combination of biblical references and, importantly for Q4, a series of art objects, as ‘evidence’ to support his explanations for Europe’s demise. It’s sometimes hard to get beyond his impressionistic interpretation of the symbolism of these art works and to get hold of the central arguments, but the gist of Hathaway’s film is to defend the belief that everything that’s happening in Europe is part of a predetermined course of events leading to the second coming of Christ.
So how does he do this?
The film is divided into three parts. Each part focuses on tracing the connections between biblical references, art works and the modern re-invention of the symbolism associated with them.
Part 1: Explores the following two images:
The warning: Against European unionists who are invoking demonic symbolism with which to brainwash the population against Christian belief.
Part 2: Explores these two images:
The warning: Against Muslims who worship a false god and are actively promoting the downfall of Christian belief.
The overall connections: Babel & Babylon & the biblical resonance of the ideas associated with these.
We don’t know where this film would lie on the scale of Believing Bullshit (see previous post), but try to trace the strategies Hathaway uses to defend his beliefs. “Pressing your buttons” and "Piling up the anecdotes" are certainly two of them...
Finally, Hathaway’s film isn’t the only place where these connections between art and modern politics abound. Many websites seem to be devoted to tracing them and weaving a complex web of conspiracy theories around an interpretation of the symbolism associated with the art works.
It just goes to show how art can be used (and abused) to present someone’s version of ‘knowledge’.
November 2012 Q4: What counts as knowledge in the arts?
Click on the image to view a film by David Hathaway entitled ‘The Rape of Europe’. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, start at about 58 minutes, where Hathaway summarises the earlier part of the film and makes his final point.The purpose of the film is to explain the collapse of Europe and, it soon becomes clear, that the perspective from which this explanation is given is religious. Hathaway is introduced early on as an ‘International Evangelist.’ Now don’t let this put you off, because it’s not so much what he says that’s interesting for TOK, but HOW he says it.
Hathaway uses a combination of biblical references and, importantly for Q4, a series of art objects, as ‘evidence’ to support his explanations for Europe’s demise. It’s sometimes hard to get beyond his impressionistic interpretation of the symbolism of these art works and to get hold of the central arguments, but the gist of Hathaway’s film is to defend the belief that everything that’s happening in Europe is part of a predetermined course of events leading to the second coming of Christ.
So how does he do this?
The film is divided into three parts. Each part focuses on tracing the connections between biblical references, art works and the modern re-invention of the symbolism associated with them.
Part 1: Explores the following two images:
 |
| Bruegel’s ‘Tower of Babel’ |
 |
| EU Parliament building, Strasbourg. |
Part 2: Explores these two images:
 |
| 'The Rape of Europa', Titian |
 |
| ‘Europa riding Zeus’ statue outside Council of Members in Brussels. |
Part 3: Explores these two artefacts:
 |
| The Altar of Pergamon, a sacrificial altar for satanic worship. |
 |
| The Gate of Istar, supposedly a gateway to hell built in Babylon, renowned as the ‘Seat of Satan’ |
The warning: Against Germany whose leaders are planning, and in fact have always aimed, to overhaul Christian belief.
We don’t know where this film would lie on the scale of Believing Bullshit (see previous post), but try to trace the strategies Hathaway uses to defend his beliefs. “Pressing your buttons” and "Piling up the anecdotes" are certainly two of them...
Finally, Hathaway’s film isn’t the only place where these connections between art and modern politics abound. Many websites seem to be devoted to tracing them and weaving a complex web of conspiracy theories around an interpretation of the symbolism associated with the art works.
It just goes to show how art can be used (and abused) to present someone’s version of ‘knowledge’.
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