Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...

What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or truths does this subject convey?
(answer as seen in my TOK notebook)

I've chosen Music as my subject, but since it does not convey any truths, I will focus mainly on the types of knowledge that make up this subject.

As there is both practical and theory side to music, both practical and propositional knowledge apply. For example, to play an instrument, we need practical knowledge (the skill to which we play the instrument) in order to do so. However, we also require experiential knowledge in music, as we gain experience through playing/practicing our instrument and performing in front of an audience. It boosts our confidence and therefore we are more likely to improve. For example, when I performed the flute in assembly, I learnt to play freely and concentrate less on the technical side of things as this makes me less nervous. I then realised that I play better with this mind set. Hence from then on, I would always do this whenever I am in the same/similar situation.

Another form of experiential knowledge is through watching concerts, performances or videos and learning from what we see. This direct encounter with music helps us remember what we were taught and we also learn new things through our experiences.

Experiential knowledge in Music helps trigger our memories by reinforcing what we were taught and what we know (our propositional and practical knowledge). Through experience, we play the instrument better, and can also develop our own knowledge.

Theory of music is mostly conveyed through propositional knowledge. We have to be taught the subject or read about it in a book, both of which require information from other people or 'outside'. Playing an instrument also requires propositional knowledge. For example, we have to be taught the skills verbally as well as physically in order for us to understand it. If my teacher merely physically showed me how to play the flute, I might not entirely understand it or play it right as it may be more ambiguous. Our teachers have to give us instructions and directions so we can improve on what we already know.

Reaction to sense perception quote

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)

In this quote Huxley is suggesting that without perception, we do not have knowledge. We have to first take in and process sensory information to convert ideas into representations of the world that we can make sense of. By doing this, we change what is 'unknown' to us to things that are 'known' to us. So this quote basically means that things we do not know has to first enter 'the doors of perception' in order to become knowledge and things we do know. It is an 'input > processing information > output' procedure.

Knowledge from GCSE subject - Religious Studies

I acquired knowledge about aspects of different religious around the world in Religious Studies, which I studied for my GCSE course. The beliefs of each religion all vary because they have different ‘truths’ regarding something, such as God. This truth is what makes the religion all individual and unique. For example, in Hinduism, people are not allowed to eat beef, but in Islam, they can eat beef but not pork. This is due to the quality of animals that each religion see and how sacred they are from their perspective. Another example is, depending on which denomination of Christianity you are in, you are allowed or definitely not allowed to divorce. This is also about perspective that lies in Christianity: some believe marriage has to last for life, and others believe they should be given a second chance as everybody makes mistakes in their lives.
I’ve learnt that especially studying at KGV, where people from all over the country come and study, it is very important for me to understand different religion’s perspectives and be able to appreciate them. When I graduate, there is a high chance that I have to work with more numbers of people from all over the world – and Religious Studies has made me prepared to go out and know one’s belief, and be able to acknowledge it. I thought the subject was extremely useful and interesting, as I got to know the lives of people who are dedicated to different Gods.

Henry David Thoreau

"We hear and apprehend only what we already half know."

This quote here tells us that as human beings, it is likely for us to filter some of the things we hear from sources according to how much we know, as the information we know are the information that we have perceived in our mind. Or we can say it in a more basic way, we only let ourselves hear what we want and like to hear.

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

I Chose Science to discuss about what sorts of ‘knowledge and/or ‘truths’ does this subject convey because it involves many sorts of ‘knowledge’.

Throughout this GCSE course, we had to read facts and truths that scientists had recorded in the past, they have also proved what they have found out to be ‘true’ by doing practical experiments. By that we can solely see each of the ‘knowledge’ and/or ‘truth’ this subject conveys, it has ‘experiential knowledge’ which involves us experiencing how they prove the facts by teaching us how to do the ‘practical’ experiments so we can also see that that the ‘prepositional knowledge’ is true.

‘Science’ in this world itself is evolving. It constantly tries to improve the way how human beings live in this world by inventing more and more ways to ease our way through lives. But is the result of it treating our world in a good and satisfying manner?

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' doesthis subject convey?
The sucject I have chosen is History, i believe it conveys knowledge as it provides uswith information of the past for example the events that took place etc. But if we were to think about what truths this subject conveys we could argue that many of these sourcesthat we have studied may not be reliable.

It is a great source of knowledge as we can look into the past and ensure that we won't repeat the same mistakes and prevent unnecessary wars. I think it is a really important subject as it helps us understand how the different countries are the way they are now.

The truth of this subject is questionable; it is all up to what you believe and how you have interpreted it. For example some people may say that Hitler was an amazing leader, History will provide us with the knowledge as to what has happened. But whether it is true or not will be up to how we interpret it.

However the information could also be distorted, as the information has been passed on from generation to generation (a bit like Chinese whispers) and the information recorded may be biased to the opposing side depending on the source of this information.

The eyes can only see...

Hi everyone!
Claire and Brendan just happen to have started a little discussion about the eyes and our minds. Does anyone else out there in TOK-Yin 7 land want to add a few thoughts?

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects - What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

Film Studies

'Knowledge' and 'truths' of Film Studies?
Film studies is similar to media studies, and with most or maybe even all of media is a lie. Television, magazines, radio broadcasts, they are all a type of media projection, basically, to inform others of something. Information in the media cannot be all 'truths', or can it? Where we ask the question - 'Where is the truth in the media?'. Media is misleading, making us viewers believe in what we see or hear. Propaganda is associated to media, and its primary use is to brainwash people - making them believe in the propaganda for a variety of reasons. The knowledge of film studies / media, comes from what the author wants the audience to percept. The subject is mainly analyzing texts, to simply find out HOW and WHY. We put our knowledge to use to find an answer that can't be right. It is arguable if we say that we were right in all our analyzing, because with most media, it is hard to distinguish the real 'truth' and the 'truth' they want us to believe in.

"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comrehend."

this quote explains that the eyes only can see what the mind allows us to see. the mind act's as a filter, too see what you want to see and not want to see. The mind decides from what we think is right and choses from our knowledge.

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

I have chosen biology. It is a subject that not only conveys the way in which the organism operates, but it is also a combination of every other subject known, whether in a vitally or not. Biology is actually a large theory in the form of a subject- it teaches us about the distribution of living things, their evolution and the way every living thing we have today came into form. However, it has modernised. Today all of the topics into 3 main sections: cell theory, evolution, genetics and homeostasis.

Biology is propositional, experiential and practical knowledge. We learn something from all of these. Scientists today are researching on how we came into existence, but no one has ever come to a conclusion where they can actually explain the forming of the very first being. Therole of biology here, is that it gives us little clues to move us on on the research. Of course if you are religious, we would believe that there was a reason laid out by God, he just wants us to find it as humans.

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

I have chosen sport studies...

Sports studies is a very straight forward subject, it taught me many things about sports, various sports, drugs in sports, the elite athlete and the body types. in a lot of ways this subject has many truths but who is to say that some drugs in sports are illegal, what is the elite athlete in his/her sport and what body type they should be. all this information is propositional knowledge, can we trust this information, the information is based on what people think is the fastest, longest time you can run and how much you can lift or push.

"Science is nothing but perception." (Plato)

This quote means that the science we understand is made of measurements and observations (perception). If the way we perceive the world is flawed, science would be meaningless. In addition, with the experiment we did in the tok lesson (involving the gorilla and people passing balls), our brains can choose to ignore what we see. This can mean that we are unable to perceive the whole truth as our brain might filter out things, thus possibly rendering science useless.

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

I picked History and it is a very easy but complex subject. It’s easy to learn about history and what happened in the past but its difficult to actually trust what is considrerd to be history and events that happened and specific people who did things. Its very easy to question the reliability of all sources since History is based on propositional knowledge which could be linked with practical and experimental- because of the people who lived during the time and came face to face with dilemmas and things like that. I think that History’s truths are based on what people say happened, not what actually happened because there is no omniscient narrator in this world (I don’t think).

The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." (Henri Bergson)

You wouldn’t be able to see something if your mind can’t comprehend it. For example the picture handed out to us last TOK lesson with the whippet dog thing. We couldn’t see the dog because my eyes couldn’t actually see it but when I saw it, I started to make out that it was a dog.

If my eyes see something that I have never seen before my mind cannot comprehend it. Maybe if I (or someone) invent something and say this is a whatever then now whenever anyone sees it they will say “oh yes this is a whatever’

Religious Studies

Pick one of your GCSE/IB subjects...
What sorts of 'knowledge' and/or 'truths' does this subject convey?

I chose my GCSE Humanities subject, Religious Studies, to answer this question. Religious Studies (in short form, RS) reveals to us the differences and similarities between cultures and religions. We explore their beliefs, morality and ethnicity.

In this course, I studied Hinduism and Christianity. It is quite funny how two different religions based on the same general concept (the belief in supreme power) can be so diverse when it comes to worshipping, thinking, and ‘the way of life’.

I believe that RS is all based on prepositional knowledge. After all, the teachings of Christianity are all based on the bible. Religion is just, let’s say, a group to assist and guide you along one of the many paths to living life. There is no ‘truth’ and there is no ‘correct way’. In religions, everything is based on faith and personal beliefs.

To put it crudely, I think that the ‘truth’ in RS is that every religious person has a different concept to ‘what religious truth is’.

What sorts of knowledge or truths does this subject convey?

The subject I have chosen to do is History, history is basically built up from what has happened in the past and is taught to the future so as not to 'repeat their mistakes'. But what we learn in history is based on what people have seen/done/said because we weren't there at the time, so we can't say whether the history we learn is true or false. We just accept its true and because of how everyone else around us accepts this information as truth, and we cannot question what we are told because for example the fact that Neal Armstrong was the first man on the moon, we just accept that as fact because we weren't there at the time, but have to rely on what others have to say because they were there.

Also when we are taught history there are questions on whether different sources on a certain topic e.g the vietnam war, and whether we think that the sources are reliable or not because a lot of them are based on memories it cannot always be reliable because one person cannot remember something for so long, and not in that much detail. In a way history is like that, based on memories but we assume its based on different memories of the same event, but then there is no wrong answer, just different points of view. History is based on information that was written or made over time until it is finally taught to us. But also we believe that what we are taught is true because to us its basic knowledge, we read books that all say the same thing and the news tell us the same and those around us say the same, so because we are so revealed to hearing things a certain way and that everyone agrees with one version of history we all go along with it.

What I mean by some parts of history being basic knowledge is that before I actually learned about history in a subject I knew that China had a dictator called Chairman Mao because my parents told me about him and I had also heard about him on the news and in books I read. Also I knew about the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara again because I grew up with my parents talking about him, and I again had read it in books and heard it on the news about how he was first known for the motorcycle diaries and that he was pro-communist so on and then how he was killed. So basic knowledge first comes from our parents or material around us, and once we become accustomed to these versions of history and we learn the same thing in school. We call it the truth on what really happened in history.

Things you need to do

By 13 November you should have printed-out and pasted your 2 Sophie's Worrd assignments into your journals together with 6 follow-up posts.
For next lesson please return your copy of Sophie's World. If you want to buy/keep the novel please see Mr. Jabal.
Gorilla link is http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html.
Claire - you have been accepted into the class blog.
Steffi, Emily and Shivani - you have just been invited(for the THIRD time) to join our class blog.

Sense perception

Some quotes for your consideration!
There's more to seeing that meets the eye." (K. T. Cole)
"There is no truth. There is only perception." (Gustave Flaubert)
"Everyone hears only what he understands." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception."(Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy)
"We hear and apprehend only what we already half know." (Henry David Thoreau)
"Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic." (Edward de Bono)
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see." (Henry David Thoreau)
"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)
"We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message." (Cullen Hightower)
"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comrehend." (Henri Bergson)
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is -- infinite." (William Blake)
"It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive." (C. W. Leadbeater)
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings." (Richard Dawkins)
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." (Camille Pissarro)
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." (Hans Margolius)
"Science is nothing but perception." (Plato)

What sorts of knowledge and or truths does this subject convey

The subject that I have chosen is Economics.

Economics is also known as a social science, this subject tries to study human behaviour during changes in various factors in relation to how resources are best used. As the concept of economics is far too complex models are created to simplify things.

It is with these models that economists use to test human and economic responses when a variable (such as the supply of rice) would change (with all other things being the same). However, the real world works in a much more complex way. By trying to represent the world with a simplified model, we would only have a glimpse of the inner workings of our economies. As a result of us using models to learn about economics, how can we be sure that the knowledge provided to us are true?

Then theres the prediction of human behaviour, economists assume that people will make rational decisions and go for the best choices available to them while entreprenures will choose to produce goods for maximum profits. However, we have seen many times in history when people have made the wrong decisions and have caused castrophic problems. Assumptions are also involved in economics, for all we know these assumptions could be wrong. This reliance on something so abstract and unverifyable leaves us wondering whether we'll ever grasp the truth of economics.

With different people seeing and observing the world in different ways (which is shaped by their experiences and their tinted glasses) different opinions and theories are presented. The conclusions reached can sometimes contradict one another. I would think that the truth and knowledge for this subject would only be perfectly correct for the person who thought it up, this is because people perceive the world differently and they have different values and opinions.

Pick a subject; What sorts of knowledge and or truths does this subject convey

For this area of discussion, i have chosen the subject; History

Practically since the dawn of time, mankind has been trying to document experiences whether through carvings on a cave wall, or by passing via word of mouth. History transcends culture and time and is a thoroughly "enriching" subject.

However, how much of this history is believable? Such is the cruelty of mother nature that all humans will inevitably die. This means events witnessed or experienced by individuals cannot be recounted to a perfect degree of accuracy. Yes some may argue there are videos and photographs but these offer limited dimensions from only one perspective. But then undoubtedly, there would be another set of people that experience the same event. As a result, what we now have will be several, subtly different accounts leading to an argument as to what really happened.

Now here is what i think a problem when it comes to the subject of history. Historical accounts you read from a textbook or see from a video will only give you a one-dimensional, slightly warped perspective of the event. This is by no means a wrong perspective, but just the experiences of someone with a different way of re-telling or recreating an occurence. The next generation of historians will take these already slightly altered accounts and distort them a little more, for not wanting to be accused of plagiarism. The cycle then repeats with more people reading this, by now, relatively inaccurate re-telling and alter it a bit more.

So, if technology somehow allows us in the future to go back and revisit an event when it actually happen; i'm afraid History will always be fraught with a degree of inaccuracy.

Vark link.

Here is the vark link for Monday:
www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=younger

Knowers & Knowing

1. 'Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognise that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to recognise that you do not know it. That is knowledge.' (Confucius)
2. 'Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.' (Leonardo da Vinci)
3. 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' (Martin Luther King)
4. 'Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.' (Francois de La Rochefoucald)
5. 'Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.' (Daniel J. Boorstin)
6. 'It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.' (G. K. Chesterton)
7. 'Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.' (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.)
8. 'A very popular error – having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.' (Anon)
9. 'There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.' (Democritus)
10. 'The most important truths are likely to be those which… society at that time least wants to hear.' (W. H. Auden)
11. 'Never assume the obvious is true.' (William Safire)
12. 'The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.' (Ludwig von Mises)
13. 'The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.' (Anais Nin)
14. 'If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.' (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
15. 'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.' (Buckminster Fuller)
16. 'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' (Carl Jung)
17. 'The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.' (Eden Phillpotts)
18. 'The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.' (Malcolm Forbes)
19. 'Self-knowledge is like a garden. If it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.' (Ghanaian proverb)
20. 'In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future: the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.' (Eric Hoffer)
21. 'The more you know the less you understand.' (Tao Le Ching)