Key Ideas:

Quotes & Activities:

Knowledge

Facts

What use is ToK?

In school knowledge is presented as a series of facts, found in text books, and proved to be true. But would the same truths have been taught in school 100 years ago? In the year 2100 future generations of IB students may look at your studies and find them outdated, or crude.

Yesterdays revolutionary idea becomes todays common sense, and tomorrows superstition.

We live in a perplexing world. There has been an explosion of knowledge in recent years and still we are confronted by contradictory beliefs.

E.g.

• Appolo 11 landed on the moon, but some think that the landings were faked by NASA. [1]
• Some scientists declare that mobile phones are safe to use, while others say they could heat the brain and cause cancer.
• Chris Ofili (born 10 Oct 1968) is a Turner Prize winning British painter whose artworks reference his Nigerian heritage, through the use of elephant dung. New York Mayor, Giuliani famously discribed his work as, “ horrible and disgusting projects!”[2]

How can we make sense of things for ourselves, and develop a coherent picture of the world?

PPT - limits of schooling

"It is the customery fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions", T.H. Huxley, 1825-95

Perspective

Laws

Perspective -

Since we have been trying to make sense of the world in an tiny fraction of the time the universe has existed there is no guarantee that we have got it right.

Our solar system is just one of billions in the universe yet we flatter ourselves that we have discovered laws that apply to all times and all places.

Activity: to look at our place in the history of the universe, compressed into one day.

Douglas Adams's book tries to explain this - the total perspective vortex

Mental Map

Cultural Bias

Prejudice

Common sense

Most people don't see any problems of knowledge ... they see knowledge as organised common sense.
But common sense is mostly made from untested beliefs, at worst based on prejudice;

But Common sense is useful as a starting point, A sort of Mental map of reality. Different people have different 'mental maps' of reality, each of them with strengths and weaknesses.

Our ideas and beliefs come from a variety of sources: our experience, parents, friends, teachers, books, media. We don't have time to check the truth of everything - so there are likely to be some inaccuracies and half-truths in our mental maps.

There is also likely to be all sorts of cultural bias in our mental maps. [3]

Alford Korzybski stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness". What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it.

"All men have opinions but few think." George Berkeley, 1685-1753.

"Common sense consists of thos layers of prejudice laid down before the age of 18." Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

Activity: The analogy of maps of the world to illustrate the way common sense has limitations.

Activity: Naming the Greatest - activity to illustrate cultural bias. (based on idea p7 of Lagemaat)

"The Map is not the territory" Alford Korzybski, 1931 to American Association for Advancement in Science.

Certainty

Knowing

Believing

Certainty

If our common sense is imperfect, perhaps we can identify those parts of it which we know for certain.

At first sight this seems logical:

• When you know something, you are certain it is true, but
• when you believe something you may think it is true, but you are not certain.

How do you know, when you know something for certain?

• you may have seen it with your own eyes (Perception)
• you may have reasoned it out. (Reason)
• you may have read it in an encyclopaedia (Language)
• you may know it intuitively (Emotion)

Perception

Reason

Language

Emotion

These are the Four Ways of Knowing.

If we know something to be true, then these ways of knowing should be certain. Are they?

Can you always believe what you see?

Can you always believe what you read (or what you are told)?

Can you always trust your 'gut feelings' - your emotions?

Reason may be the most trustworthy, but humans are good at making mistakes. (have you ever made an error in a maths solution?)

Relativism

Since there are problems in all ways of knowing - rather than insist that I am right and you are wrong we could say - this is true for me and false for you. The Truth is relative. - This is relativism.

open-minded

scepticism

Jugement

Judgement is balancing 'open-mindedness' and 'scepticism'.

The danger of open-mindedness (gullibility )- you may believe nonsense.

The danger of scepticim - you may close your mind to new challenges.

confirmation bias.

Logical Falacy #1:ad ignorantiam

Reasonable knowledge

This is a system of deciding whether knowledge is reasonable:

Evidence: there should be some positive evidence to support it.

Coherence: is whether it fits in to current understanding

references:

1. Dr. Tony Phillips (23rd Feb 2001) The Great Moon hoax
2. Robert Ayers (November 20, 2007), Red Grooms’s Chris Ofili Drawing, ARTINFO, retrieved 2008-04-17
3. Rex Steven Sikes (2001) The Map is not the territory, IDEA Seminars (NLP)

Resources -
CK notes -opening lessons

PPT 1. ToK Introduction

Intro PP to Premiere

PPP2 Truth & certainty