NOV 2013 TOK Essay Title 6

[asbb96]

Hello all,

TITLE 6 -

"The methods used to produce knowledge depend on the use to which it will be put." Discuss the statement in relation to two Areas of Knowledge.

From this question, what came to mind was 'bias', the idea that a certain conclusion is made before investigation and this conclusion is worked towards.

I think so far the areas of knowledge I will be working within are history and human sciences.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Is anyone doing this essay title?

Thanks

Abdo

[IgnisRexLeo]

If you notice, you have extensively gone into the domain of WOKs. Your point of bias blends in beautifully with the ways of knowing; aural communication, or written communication. The manner in which the method is implemented makes the point of bias effective.

Another point that I think may be excavated from here is that of the premise that this method is based on. Is it based on past experiences, intuition, assumptions, emotions or personal beliefs? More than a focus, can we say that there is a propaganda behind the knowledge being given? The use to which it will be put will borrow heavily from the premise that the knowledge imparted is going to be based on.

AOKs:

1. I think you can also go into the arts. We all know that there are jobs concerning art education, eg: A curator, but how can one really TEACH art? What is method which can be used to teach art?

2. You can also go into ethics, but you can do so once you state that creating convolutions in the process of imparting knowledge is possible. You can talk about how it is unethical not to teach a subject in its pure being and how it is not ethical to have a propoganda (refer to an aforementioned point to mine) in teaching.

Hope this helped a bit!

[-._._.-]

One thing that may sound odd is "methods used to produce knowledge". Does this mean that the person takes an initiative to 'produce the knowledge'? Does this rule out just accidentally gaining knowledge (not taking an initiative to produce it)?

Another point that I think may be excavated from here is that of the premise that this method is based on. Is it based on past experiences, intuition, assumptions, emotions or personal beliefs?

Absolutely.

If we don't know how the knowledge will be used, does that mean we have no way of knowing how to produce the knowledge? I mean like not all knowledge has to have a purpose right? What about knowledge that you like a particular song? Okay, bad example. In fact scratch my whole point out I can't think of anything.

When we say produce, the first thing that I think of is conducting experiments, so naturally you might want to explore the natural sciences.

AOKs:

1. I think you can also go into the arts. We all know that there are jobs concerning art education, eg: A curator, but how can one really TEACH art? What is method which can be used to teach art?

That's a really good idea. It may be just me being fussy, but be careful when you're writing your essay. You'll have to define whether teaching is a form of producing knowledge, or just imparting to someone else. The receiver just gets the knowledge, without having to worry too much about producing it.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense here.

[raweclaz]

My idea for this title was to talk about the "value of knowledge". For knowledge issue say something like: "to what extent does the uses a certain knowledge has will affect the methods used to obtain it?", and then argue that it would depend on the value each person assign to that "x" knowledge. I thought of this because during my TOK seminary were this question was disscused, biological research was used as an example, saying that if the knowledge acquired by using animals in experiments was "worth it". I kinda need help :/