Presentation TOK Presentation: To what extent do labels affect the way in which we perceive people, objects, and events?

[Lydia]

My partner and I are in the middle of brainstorming a knowledge issue for our presentation. I in fact came across this intriguing knowledge issue somewhere here in the forum! However, I'm having trouble coming up with a PoKs and CCs for this particular knowledge issue. I know very well how to weave AoKs and WoKs into this presentation, but I'm not so sure about how to approach the PoKs and CCs.

If someone could share any of their ideas about this knowledge issue, it would be very much appreciated!

[CkyBlue]

Keep in mind that the central idea in TOK is about knowledge and knowing. While I can see the potential for you to address that in your presentation, I suggest that it should be more geared towards knowledge rather than focusing your presentation only to discussing a limitation to a way of knowing due to something, in this case, labels. Acknowledging the drawbacks or hindrances of WoK and AoK is necessary in a presentation; however it should not be the focus.

Answering "to what extent" isn't really TOK. At the end of the day people are different, with their own experiences, thoughts and feelings, so the answer to your current KI is that it depends on a variety of factors that you might probably look into. Find a KI that allows you to explore perhaps one of "how do you know", "how much we can know", "how we can know" that has to explicitly deal with knowledge. Be sure to throw in WoKs and AoKs in your presentation as well, of course.

I have no idea what PoK means, does CC mean a counterclaim? Well, you have to have a knowledge claim first.

[Lydia]

Thank you for your advice! I'll take it into more consideration.

At my school, a PoK is a Problem of Knowledge and this includes possible uncertainties, biases, limitations, and methods of justification. And yes, you're right, a CC is a counterclaim. Do I formulate the Knowledge Claim by answering the Knowledge Issue first? I'm not so sure about how the KC and PoK play a role in the presentation though...

[CkyBlue]

I have never come across that acronym in my study of ToK, so I'm not sure about PoK. At my school we didn't really have terminology for ToK as extensively as you have; besides AoK and WoK, there wasn't much to say. Out of my whole class, my presentation was the only one that explicitly mentioned "knowledge claim" and "counterclaim" even. But I'm sure we all alluded to these things implicitly.

Anyway, I believe a knowledge claim can be derived from your personal response to the knowledge issue. Here's a guiding example: If your KI focused on "how do we acquire knowledge?", a KC could be "I believe we acquire knowledge by x, y, and z". The next step in your presentation after introducing your KC is to evaluate it from a ToK perspective.

As you've said, a PoK points out the inherent limitations of an idea. This suggests analyzing your knowledge claim, or the uncertainties of WoK and AoK. This is essential for your presentation as you must acknowledge what you might not know, or the limitations of how you can know. Without stating the problems of your methods of drawing knowledge, you are saying what you are doing is entirely correct and will work 100% of the time. The counterclaim is an argument that opposes your KC, and here I believe you can expect some gray area between your CC and PoK. These two elements make sure you are carrying out a balanced analysis because you are not just asserting your KC, you are evaluating it by stating what could be wrong with it.

Remember whatever you do should come back to your real life situation and ultimately your KI, so there is a sense of closure. Do not attempt to force a conclusion on your presentation; most of the ideas in ToK are subjective and keep in mind you are only offering your interpretation to the KI, which is an open ended question. The point of the presentation is not to conclude an answer, but to demonstrate that you have learned what ToK really is.

Above all, read guides, rubrics and criteria for this presentation, and make sure you are hitting all the points if you want to do well.

[Lydia]

Thank you for the very thorough advice Capt'n Marth. After pondering some more, I figured that my KI is slightly geared towards the weak side. Plus, we discussed labels/names an awful lot in class. I found a topic that interests me some more, and that is political correctness. I feel that I can explore this kind of topic with more depth in terms of TOK. Keeping what you said in mind, I came up with a couple of Knowledge Issues for this topic...

• How can language play a role in political correctness to influence our knowledge claims?
  
• What role does political correctness play in influencing knowledge?
  
• How can language be used to justify a belief in political correctness?
  

These ideas just came off the top of my head, so please be a harsh critic... I won't mind!

[CkyBlue]

Sounds good. Hopefully you have some kind of personal connection to it. I do recall a presentation about political correctness when I was doing presentations, but I didn't really pay attention to it since mine was already done

I'm not really the best at evaluating KIs but I'll give it a try. The IB doesn't really tell us what a knowledge issue is in the black and white, and IBS has attempted to simplify it for the students. You should take a look at this presentation guide one of my buddies made: http://www.ibsurviva...entation-guide/

I really like that guide, and I recommend reading some of our other pinned threads if you need further assistance.

To put my own thoughts to it, a knowledge issue is just an open ended question which can be evaluated by a TOK analysis. I would suggest to remember always that the central question in TOK is "How do we know what we know?" and anything else is derivative from that. I'll try to help as best I can, but keep in mind this is only from my own TOK experience; you might want to consult your teacher about your question to be safe.

1. I can see potential in the first question if you rephrase it better. Certainly language is principal to political correctness, but perhaps you should also address other possible WoKs (not all of them, given your time limit) and AoKs. Also, I recall that ToK is suppose to broaden your thoughts and thinking in real life, often it's not the other way around. So when you say "knowledge claims", it's unclear. I think you mean "beliefs", or maybe "opinions"? A knowledge claim is your personal response to the knowledge issue, so I personally would not mention "KC" in the KI. You can make it more general and practical. Perhaps trying "How does political correctness influence x, or how we know x" where x is something you might think is important or relevant to you or the world, making it an "issue". From there, as long as you have TOK analysis to back up your question, I think you should be fine. Just playing with that idea, hope you'll find something with that.

2. I don't really know what "influencing knowledge" means, but it does sort of sound like what I said up there . Make it clear what you will be analyzing.

3. I feel that this question is a bit restricted and although it does address the central TOK question, you are limiting yourself to explain one justification for one WoK. But I guess you could have different kinds of beliefs in political correctness. Do you feel that this is an issue though?

To be honest, I'm not very experienced in this topic, and you might want to get some other opinions! Political correctness is definitely important in our world and worth looking into; it is definitely making at least "sound" fairer, and it gets eliminates some forms of discrimination. It's great to call people "firefighters" instead of "firemen", but when someone gets called "gravitationally challenged" instead of "fat", there is definitely some controversy Hopefully I helped you get started.

... Holy crap, that was a long post. Anyway feel free to slap me a PM if you have any more questions.