ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (November 2015): Question 1

“The main reason knowledge is produced is to solve problems.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

The production of scientific knowledge to help solve crimes has its roots in the 19^th Century. Consider these two real life examples, one of which has been consigned to the realm of pseudo-science and the other which has evolved significantly as part of the area of forensic science.

William Herschel and Henry Faulds’ work on fingerprinting to help identify people was developed into a science by Francis Galton.  Galton’s used a form of mathematical analysis to produce the verifiable knowledge that that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and no two fingerprints are exactly the same.  Based on this knowledge, he devised a method of categorising fingerprints based on patterns of loops, whorls or arches as a way of identifying people. This scientific knowledge was adopted by Scotland Yard in 1894 to complement their approach to solving a range of crimes by using fingerprints as empirical evidence.  Today, DNA fingerprinting is part and parcel of the forensic approach to crime solving, whose discovery can be explored as one of those curious ‘eureka’ moments in the history of science.

On the other hand, compare the earlier work of Cesare Lombardo, whose interest in psychology shaped his researches into the criminal mind.  Lombardo’s central theory came to be known as ‘characterology’: simply put, the physical features of a person’s face and head give clues about the likelihood of their mental state (or criminal behaviour.)  So for example, unusually oversized ears, the short distance between a person’s pupils or having long hands was a mark of criminal psychopathology. Why?  Lombardo theorised that they were ‘atavisms’: regressive, physical traits that resembled traits of humans in earlier stages of development and which could spontaneously appear down the line of evolutionary development.  So innovative did this ‘scientific’ approach seem that Lombroso was invited to give evidence at trials to solve ongoing criminal cases. However, his knowledge was later discredited as being more pseudo-scientific than anything else.  Firstly, we now know that some of Lombroso’s ‘atavistic’ traits involve the work of extremely rare genes: eg. ‘werewolf syndrome’ where a person can be covered completely in bodily hair.  Secondly, apart from its link to the discredited theory of phrenology, Lombroso believed that not only could a person be born a criminal, but also that a criminal was under-evolved: a violent beast or savage akin to our primitive ancestors.  This had, of course, great social implications: if we want a society with less criminality, why not genetically engineer people with the right kind (ie. Non-criminal) of facial features?

So you see, in the field of criminology, new scientific knowledge is specifically produced to solve crimes, but the application of it doesn’t always lead to success.  One of the key concepts to apply in this analysis is the distinction between shared and personal knowledge.  Which part of the distinction applies to which example and HOW?...

ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (November 2015): Question 6

Is explanation a prerequisite for prediction? Explore this question in relation to two areas of knowledge.


Click caption to listen to Tom Lehrer's 'Periodic Table Song'

One of the lessons being learned with the new TOK Essay marking criteria is the need for a clear and explicit attempt at unpacking the key terms of the title.  Usually, this should be done concisely and precisely in the introduction, alongside the presentation of a thesis that sets the direction of your essay. By all means, go to a dictionary and remind yourself of the meaning of words, but avoid reproducing them wholesale in your essays: it takes too much TIME and involves much word wasting on definitions which have little or nothing to do with TOK.
 So here goes:

 

Explanations involve giving reasons for why you believe what you believe and can fall into two broad categories that tie in with the TOK definition of ‘knowledge’ as ‘justified true belief’.

 

First, evidential reasons in the form of objective, empirical evidence, data or statistics that help support or refute a specific knowledge claim. For example, the observational data generated by Tycho Brahe which helped Kepler formulate his mathematical calculations to explain elliptical orbits.  Or, the preponderance of evidence gathered to refute the claim that the Bermuda triangle is a place in which weird, paranormal activities take place.

 

Second, non-evidential reasons in the form of subjective, personal testimony based on emotion, intuition or faith, which help or hinder the justification of our knowledge claims.  For example, the intensely felt experience of the ever present force of Brahma is explained by Buddhists in terms of mindfulness, a form of intuition.  Or, the ideals of terrorists, of whatever denomination, which are often grounded in extreme interpretations of sacred writings, a form of faith.

 

‘Prerequisite’ implies that there is a step by step order in the process of knowledge building, in which certain steps come before, first or are a basis for, or ground or foundation of other steps. Finally, in a basic sense ‘prediction’ means a best guess about the future; more specifically, it involves making specific claims about future conditions or events based on general laws or statements.  At least, if you’re aiming to be objective and scientific! So yes, you can have predictions based on both empirical and non-empirical kinds of explanation; and yes, you can have predictions made on nothing resembling an explanation at all.  It just depends on how reliable you want your predictions to be and how you KNOW this…

 

This should give you the KIND of thing you may do in your introduction.  The direction of your essay will then focalise on two AOKs, one of which could be the Natural Sciences.  Here’s an example many of you will no doubt explore: Henry Mosely and the periodic table…

 

Mendeelev invented the periodic table but the explanations for ordering them were largely based on their perceived chemical properties and a subjective, intuitive sense of their relative atomic masses.  Mosely’s experiments provided a more objective, measurable basis for explaining why elements should be ordered in specific ways: the mathematical link between the protons in an element’s nucleus with that element’s atomic number.

 

Now, the strange thing is, both Mendeleev and Mosely were able to predict the existence of elements missing in their versions of the Periodic Table.  While Mendeelev’s intuitive based prediction was that an element was missing from the table, Mosely’s more experimentally based prediction could actually pin point WHERE in the Periodic Table the gaps were…

ToK Prescribed Essay Title (Nov 2015): Question 4

“In some areas of knowledge we try to reduce a complex whole to simple components, but in others we try to integrate simple components into a complex whole.” Discuss this distinction with reference to two areas of knowledge.

[Note: A version of this post appeared here on Sept 19 2013.]

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

(From 'The Tables Turned', by William Wordsworth)

These lines are from a pair of poems in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, which encapsulate the central tension between emotion and reason within his revolutionary project of writing poetry which we have come to know as belonging to the 'Romantic Period'.

In these lines, Wordsworth appears to argue against the 'meddling intellect' of the learned community of minds in 18th Century Age of Enlightenment whose focus on Reason has been at the expense of human empathy.  Wordsworth's criticism seems to be aimed specifically at the scientific spirit whose need to discover the laws of nature have led only to one thing: the destruction of the natural environment.  He was quite possibly pointing to the mass industrialisation and its adverse effects on society which was made possible by the very scientific discoveries made by intellectuals such a Newton in the 17th Century.  Newton's laws of motion not only gave us a mechanistic view of the world, but also gave us a means of controlling and shaping that world to our most immediate social and economic needs.

The last line of the verse stands out, however, as underlining the main thrust of Wordsworth's criticism of the scientific urge for new knowledge: science, in its attempt to know how the natural world works, is a form of 'murder'; it fails to see natural objects, or even the natural world, in their wholeness.  By trying to find the essence of life by dissecting nature into its parts, we kill that essence. The life force of nature is something more than its individual parts.

Wordsworth's lines appear to make two assumptions: first, that what makes nature work in the way that it does somehow inheres invisibly in natural objects like a hidden essence or soul-like element just waiting to be seen, without physical interference, by someone who has the right skills (this is the 'essentialist' assumption).  And second, Wordsworth doesn't seem to take into account that science works in both directions: reducing things to their simple parts and putting them back together in imaginative and often more efficient ways.  So one of the key knowledge questions embedded in this question are: in what ways do the parts of an object relate to the whole?  To what extent is a natural object more than the sum of its parts?

Think of someone new to mechanics.  How is she going to know how an engine works?  Reading about it in theory is one half of the job.  If, however, she takes an existing engine apart and learns about the different roles played by each physical component, in time, she’ll know enough about them and their interrelationships to put them back together in working order.  The engine is itself is nothing more than the sum of its parts.  Is this true of knowledge?  If you want to be an economist, is it enough for you to pick apart all the various facts about how an economy works (‘the engine’ of an economy’) to be able to claim that now you have economic knowledge?  What ‘more’ do you need?

Let’s continue the thought experiment.  Presumably, if our mechanic ever came across an alien engine, given sufficient time, she’d be able to learn about the individual alien components and reverse engineer the engine using components with which we’re more familiar.  This alien engine too would also be nothing more than the sum of its parts.  (Can we reverse engineer an entire economy?)

Now extend this analogy to living things.  Say human minds.  Can we reduce a mind to the component parts or physical functions and chemical reactions of the brain?  Surely a mind is MORE THAN the sum of its parts (we have discussed this idea in a series of posts under the tab ‘Consciousness’ - read posts from bottom up!).

Implicit in this Q is the idea of ‘reductionism’ or ‘materialism’, which is a view of knowledge held by most scientists: all material things can be reduced to their smallest physical particles.  Combined with this view is the idea of ‘mechanism’: to think of living things as organic machines.  Scientists who believe in reductionism tend to be ‘monists’ (only matter is real – no place for immaterial entities); whereas those who take the ‘essentialist’ position are dualists (mind is something separate from its physical and chemical brain functions).  It gets a little more complicated than this especially when you take account of recent developments in technology and AI.

Coming back to the question of mind or consciousness: if mind IS only a system of organised facts (just like a human or alien engine, the mind is a ‘brain engine’), then presumably we can reverse engineer it like any other engine (click the picture above to view the TED Talk on this issue)...

ToK Prescribed Essay Titles for November 2015

A little belated, but here are the titles for the November 2015 Examination session:

1. “The main reason knowledge is produced is to solve problems.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

2. Assess the advantages and disadvantages of using models to produce knowledge of the world.

3. “Without the group to verify it, knowledge is not possible.” Discuss.

4. “In some areas of knowledge we try to reduce a complex whole to simple components, but in others we try to integrate simple components into a complex whole.” Discuss this distinction with reference to two areas of knowledge.

5. “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.

6. Is explanation a prerequisite for prediction? Explore this question in relation to two areas of knowledge.

All the best!

ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (May 2015): Question 6

 

“The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

 

This post considers three areas of knowledge that attempt to produce ‘meaning and purpose’ in our lives.

 

Religious Knowledge Systems: religions, especially the monotheistic ones, promote the idea that the universe has a specific design which is conceived and executed by a higher power.  It is this design that gives ‘meaning and purpose’ to our lives.  Meaning comes from the dualistic conception of the self – we are both flesh and soul, but it is the soul which must be nurtured while the flesh is merely functional and houses the soul for a short while.  In this life, the soul is to be made ready for the after-life in which it can exist either in God’s paradise or Satan’s hell.  This brings us to the purpose of life: while each individual is given a personal will, it’s up to us to merge this will with the higher Will of God.  This is what prepares the soul for the after-life.  Those who deviate from God’s Will take the path of evil; those who conform, take the path of good.  See how this religious narrative carries within it a wide range of moral values and ritualistic elements that shape our day to day lives from the moment we are born.  Out of this narrative are born ethical systems such as deontology (eg ‘The Ten Commandments’) and artistic traditions (eg. medieval iconography), as well as culturally evolved groups based around different faiths.  What happens when one group’s perception of the meaning and purpose of life clashes with another groups perception of meaning and purpose?  Is there a meaning and purpose we can all share? (Some would argue that ‘science’ gives us such a meaning and purpose…)

 

Indigenous Knowledge Systems: indigenous tribes gave us creation myths to shape our day to day lives with meaning and purpose.  These narratives accounted for the origins of the universe and many of them reveal a deep connection between man, animals and the environment.  The thread running through these creation stories is the idea of ‘interconnectedness’: the fates of every living creature are linked in an unpredictable environment.  Meaning comes from imposing a coherent story to make sense of the apparently random cycles of life and death; purpose comes from devising rituals to create balance between harmony or chaos in the environment. Much of this knowledge is handed down the generations through the oral tradition and guarded by individuals specially raised and trained to minister it to other members of the community.  In this sense, indigenous knowledge and religious knowledge seem to be the same thing: a way of organising society according to a set of, what many scientists would now call, superstitious beliefs.  A potential problem of this approach to knowledge is, of course, how do we know that the ministers of this knowledge aren’t abusing it…?

 

Science & technology: Those of you who are hooked to your computer games will know how sometimes you get so involved in the game that the distinction between virtual reality and reality itself becomes blurred.  Just reflect on how sometimes your dreams are so powerful that when you initially wake up, you still feel as though you’re in the dream. Now what would happen if we could harness this power of imaginative engagement with virtual or dream worlds and use it to shape our personal lives in a purposeful and meaningful way.  Well, scientists have developed virtual reality technologies to such an extent that it can be used in such a way.  The military have been doing this for years with flight simulators and now chicken farmers can use technology to give their birds the illusion of wandering happily in a field, when in fact they continue to be caged.  Why?  In an attempt to use a cost effective method of producing ‘free range’ yet factory farmed eggs…Think ‘The Matrix’ (gone mad!).  And yet, is this so farfetched?  Star Trek’s idea of a ‘holodeck’ showed us the vast possibilities of virtual reality for entertainment purposes; today, the proliferation of online roleplaying games suggests that many people find more meaning and purpose in their simulations and simulated universe than in the physical universe of their day to day lives.  In fact, Bob the builder feels he is more himself in the sim version of Bob the dragonslayer, than he is in his mundane, poorly paid job of fixing the plumbing for a living.  What does this tell us about the nature of technological knowledge through which such games are constructed…?

ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (May 2015): Question 5

5. “Ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

How many times has someone told you to ‘trust your instincts’?  And when you do trust them, how many times have you felt disappointed about the outcome? This title is built around a central human tension between our need to trust our instincts and the unreliability of them.  Instincts are closely connected to our emotions and impulses and rooted in our subjective experiences of the world.  Some would argue they are remnants of our evolutionary ancestors and tie us to our animalistic origins.  We’ve outgrown our instinct, the argument goes, since our bigger brains allow us to override our primal instincts by means of reason and language and perception which are the basis of our more objective experiences of the world.  But as we know, even reason, language and perception aren’t completely infallible when it comes to knowledge building, so the central tension of trusting instincts remains in the subjective-objective dichotomy built into our very nature. Conceptually, we need both the subjective and objective approach: the former allows us to build personal knowledge, while the latter enables us to shape this into shared knowledge by means of collaboration.

Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in Star Trek, dramatized in the interactions between Dr McCoy (instinct and emotion) and Mr Spock (reason and logic) with the Captain as a bridge between both, which Michael Shermer explores in terms of what he calls ‘The Captain Kirk Principle’.

It’s often when we’re faced with moral dilemmas that the tension between instinct and reason surfaces and raises the knowledge question: how do we know which course of action to take? Should we follow our instincts or reason?  In the later Next Generation series of Star Trek, the tension is explored through the concept of ‘the Prime Directive’, in which Captain Picard is forever faced with the ethical dilemma of interfering with an indigenous population when he knows that it might be faced with genocide or mass destruction.  A common argument for ethical NON-intervention is the ‘natural order’ argument – let nature take its course.  What implications does this have?  What are the counter arguments? Another argument is the ‘cause and consequence argument’: if we didn’t intervene in a situation, the outcome would be so bad that this justifies action to intervene – this is another version of the ‘precautionary principle’.  However, all these arguments are based on reason and logic and presuppose that in any given moral situation we have the TIME to think out the problem.  As we know from experience, we often DON’T have time and have to make a spontaneous judgment.  Is this the place for instinct?

We explore a possible response to this knowledge question in a review of the recent movie Star Trek: Into Darkness...

ToK Essay Prescribed Title (May 2015): Question 4

4. With reference to two areas of knowledge discuss the way in which shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge.

Click on picture to visit site about the neurobiology of moral behaviour

Ethical situations are perhaps the best examples to highlight how shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge. Consider, for example, how the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ can bring nations together under the umbrella of a single moral code.  This doesn’t always mean that nations adhere to the rules as we know from the various Human Rights’ abuses by member states.  Even the fields of sport and medicine, for example, have ethical codes to guide the behaviour of individuals, though again, we still come across incidents of medical malpractice and cheating in sports (you may be able to recall some recent examples.)  In the fields of Religion and Ethics, the shared knowledge encapsulated in the various ethical theories such as Utilitarianism and deontology, provide a framework within which individuals can think through their personal morality and act in a rational manner.

But here’s the central knowledge question underlying this topic: does our personal sense of right and wrong always follow a rational path towards shared knowledge of morality?  Not according to Jonathan Haidt, whose famous example (presented below) is the basis of a fascinating argument promoting the idea that our ethical behaviour is driven by intuition which shapes our personal knowledge of right and wrong:

‘Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that? Was it OK for them to make love?’

When confronted with this scenario, Haidt argues, most people are automatically and quickly repulsed and answer with an emphatic “No!”  When asked to justify their answer, people often turn to the incest argument: such sex leads to deformed babies.  Haidt then points out that the couple used two forms of contraception.  Now, instead of accepting the union, people reach for a consequentialist argument to justify their revulsion, such as “It might harm the relationship and be devastating to the family.”  Haidt then mentions that the couple actually feel ‘closer’ after the episode.  At this point, people tend to stay with their original answer but claim not to be able to find the words to explain why they believe what they believe.

The point? Haidt argues that moral knowledge is like aesthetic knowledge: subjective and personal in nature.  When you see a work of art you instantly and automatically know whether you like it.  When someone asks you to explain why, you fish for explanations: you don’t really know what makes something beautiful, but the rational part of your brain needs some justification and will make one up when it can’t find one, based on colour, light, structure and so on.  Similarly, in a moral argument between two people, their feelings come first; the reasons are invented after the fact, so to speak.  Reason is secondary to emotion, or as Hume, put it: in the world of morals, “Reason Is and Ought only to be a slave of the passions.”

The implication of this argument is that the shared body of ethical knowledge often has little or no impact on we personally know right and wrong in the world of human affairs…