Nov09 May10 Title 7

[bohemian03]

You should have examples taught to you through the course and if you're having a lot of problems with it, you should go ask your TOK teacher.

I actually wrote this essay a while back.... exact same prompt.

[Vvi]

You don't have to discuss 4 ways of knowing in an essay, 2 or 3 is fine. And the best essays discuss them without saying it explicitly (they use arguments which imply that problems lie in the ways of knowing but don't directly say "This is an example of how language disrupts communication", etc.). What you should do is come up with a thesis (what do you think about the question?) and then come up with several examples to illustrate your arguments and build up your essay around those. If you have good, original examples (nothing like "Several hundred years ago, people thought the world was round", that's cliche and wrong as well), you will be able to argue very well.

[Gracey J]

I like what I am hearing, please keep putting in some imput. I'm starting to work a thesis, something like "Can humans ever really know anything without their own bias or someone else's." Also for others working on the same title, a man named George Lakoff does a lot of research on this. He is an Amerian Professor at Berkey. You could take a look at what he has to say, I got that idea from my TOK teacher, I haven't looked into it yet.

[Vvi]

A tip for everyone: don't use examples from any TOK textbooks you have. You should come up with your own examples, you don't need a teacher to teach them to you. For example, I recall using the issue of the Armenian genocide in my final TOK essay to explain how the objectivity of history differs due to cultural differences (although that example might have been edited out because I was over word count). I didn't pick the classic example of Holocaust denial because that's something examiners are all very familiar with, and so it doesn't interest them/bring anything new to the argument. You have to remember that examiners will be reading hundreds of TOk essays, and some titles are more popular than others each year (because they are seen to be easier). This means that unless you come up with something original that illustrates your point, you will end up being lumped together with all the other candidates that used the examples in the textbooks for lakc of anything better.

[lilliannn]

oh goodness! i only just got the prescribed titles last week from my TOK teacher. we're suppose to choose 3 of the titles and plan it over summer. how did you guys manage to start so early? unless of course you've covered all AoKs in class already.. :\

im planning to do mine on this title and am choosing perception and language, and probably one other WoK. though i haven't done anything about language yet. but i feel that i can write a lot about it. gahhh, from what i've read some of you guys already finished it? thats so quick!

oh, and do we actually have to do an outline? like a formal one i mean..

[PrincessPink2911]

Your thesis sounds super! I'm doing practically the same thing! Good luck!

[Vvi]

oh goodness! i only just got the prescribed titles last week from my TOK teacher. we're suppose to choose 3 of the titles and plan it over summer. how did you guys manage to start so early? unless of course you've covered all AoKs in class already.. :\

im planning to do mine on this title and am choosing perception and language, and probably one other WoK. though i haven't done anything about language yet. but i feel that i can write a lot about it. gahhh, from what i've read some of you guys already finished it? thats so quick!

oh, and do we actually have to do an outline? like a formal one i mean..

An outline helps you a lot. It helps you make sure your thoughts are coherent before you write the essay, and you have a lot less work to do at the end if you make your outline very detailed (write down all of your examples and explain them, analyze as much a spossible already).

And we didn't cover all the AoK's in class before the summer. But we had textbooks, so if we wanted to use an AoK we hadn't covered, we read up on it.

[Rahul1]

actually i wantedto know what do we understand by reasons?

in which Aok would religion come in?

experince would be included in the perception?

[Tilia]

oh, and do we actually have to do an outline? like a formal one i mean..

It's very stupid not to. You should have the whole essay planned before you start you write it, and if you want to have it planned in your head it's fine, but it's easire to write it down as an outline.

[fali2009]

can someone tell me what exactly i could say about emotion in terms of ways of knowing? In this case

[alis0nxxoh]

hi i am doing number 7 also. i'm planning on focusing on sense perception and emotion. in the essay i want to bring in how culture religion belief experience affect perception and i have a few examples but i am struggling on finding an example for how emotion affects our understanding....any suggestions? thank you so much

[sweetnsimple786]

Emotion tends to color everything we view. We look at the world through tinted glasses. Sometimes, they're an angry red, sometimes they're a mellow yellow. What we perceive is often affected by how we feel/are [as a state of being]. I suggest you try to use personal examples that relate to your life. Maybe you were struggling with some work, and a friend asked if you needed help. Did you take offense to it because you were mad/frustrated? Or did you accept with gratefulness? That kind of thing.

Edit: Also, please only post the same thing in one thread.

Edited December 20, 2009 by sweetnsimple786

[tillytheterrible]

Alright, so my essay is coming along but my teacher and I are in disagreement. He doesn't want me to get off-track by focusing on AoKs, because the prompt explicitly states that I should look at WoKs. I'm working with reason and perception as ways of knowing, but I feel that my essay's big "so what" (that is, how this question matters in relation to real life, the big picture) needs to include something about AoKs like art and ethics. I don't think I'm getting off-topic with that, I feel like I'm trying to make connections to a bigger picture.

Thoughts? I don't want to screw this up.

[sweetnsimple786]

The way I bring in AoK is through examples to support my point. If that's what you're doing, I don't see anything wrong with that. If you're specifically dedicating a paragraph to AOKs, then that's different.

Are you wanting to say something like "In this AOK, the claim is/isn't true to this extent, and we see this through these WOK"? If so, I suggest you switch tactics a little and look at when perception and reason are most/least flawed [aka different AOK], which would flow naturally in support of your argument and help you develop counterclaims.

You're right in saying that you need to bring in AOK as well as WOK in your essay because they are both in the rubric. However, the rubric also says that the extent to which each one's presence in your paper will depend on which title you're doing.

[Pathos]

Hello all,

I was redirected here to pose my question, as I couldn't track down an answer for it in amongst this thread (may have just been me though...)

Nevertheless, I'm currently driving myself insane whilst trying to piece together my final Theory of Knowledge essay for May 2010- hence, I seek advice!

I am attempting to construct a paper around topic #7 (" We see and understand things not as they are but as we are" discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing"- or something along those very same lines). The difficulty I am having is how to successfully integrate these ways and areas of knowing within my paper. I was to focus along the lines of subjectivity and objectivity in relation to this topic, but am a unsure of how to weave all of this into my paper successfully (as my first endeavor seemed to be far too superficial and lacked cohesion).Hence,any advice, examples, etc would be greatly appreciated and received.

Additionally, how is it best to address the claim and fully explore it without reducing it to mere superficialities.

Pathos

[sweetnsimple786]

Don't find what I'm about to say offensive. It may be completely off track anyways.

Don't worry about sounding eloquent. Write like yourself, only clearer

Are you going to be looking at the objectivity and subjectivity of a couple of ways of knowing? Language? Reason? Emotion? Perception? Any combination of 2 or 3 would be interesting.

I'd suggest you mainly structure your essay around the WOK since that's what your prompt is primarily asking for. Then you can weave the AOK in. I'd suggest working AOK around the WOK rather than having separate paragraphs for AOK and WOK because they're already linked. Read through the thread for some examples and structural questions. Also, what does your outline look like right now? Just the basics... Intro, _____, ______, _______, & Conclusion. Or however you plan to do it. What are you filling the blanks with?

[Pathos]

Don't find what I'm about to say offensive. It may be completely off track anyways.

Don't worry about sounding eloquent. Write like yourself, only clearer

Are you going to be looking at the objectivity and subjectivity of a couple of ways of knowing? Language? Reason? Emotion? Perception? Any combination of 2 or 3 would be interesting.

I'd suggest you mainly structure your essay around the WOK since that's what your prompt is primarily asking for. Then you can weave the AOK in. I'd suggest working AOK around the WOK rather than having separate paragraphs for AOK and WOK because they're already linked. Read through the thread for some examples and structural questions. Also, what does your outline look like right now? Just the basics... Intro, _____, ______, _______, & Conclusion. Or however you plan to do it. What are you filling the blanks with?

No offense taken whatsoever I'm only sorry that I was unclear.

I was planning on looking at objectivity and subjectivity in relation to perception and perhaps emotion or reason (or both!) Thank you for your advice, so say I wished to interweave science and ethics in as my AoK would I then merely use examples from science and ethics to support my 'claims' in regards to my WoK? (I may be asking what you have already written clearly, but my brain is a little fried from the hours I've spend producing nothing of any substance )

This far in, I have something along the lines of Intro, WOK 1( with analysis), WOK 2(with analysis), (potentially WOK 3), and blank space because I don't quite know what I should pop in there as of yet and my conclusion. Structurally I don't think it's particularly sound at the moment, but I keep writing myself into corners as is.

Thank you so much for your advice!

[sweetnsimple786]

I was planning on looking at objectivity and subjectivity in relation to perception and perhaps emotion or reason (or both!) Thank you for your advice, so say I wished to interweave science and ethics in as my AoK would I then merely use examples from science and ethics to support my 'claims' in regards to my WoK?

Yes, that's what I'd do. And you can use a different area of knowledge as a counterclaim. I was writing a practice essay just on emotion, and I was at a point where I had the more subjective AOK versus the more objective AOK. My teacher suggested that I might need to spell out why the more subjective ones were just as important as the objective ones even though there wasn't a certainty in them, per se. So you might want to look into doing that if this happens in your essay. You could fit it into the intro or the conclusion, maybe.

This far in, I have something along the lines of Intro, WOK 1( with analysis), WOK 2(with analysis), (potentially WOK 3), and blank space because I don't quite know what I should pop in there as of yet and my conclusion. Structurally I don't think it's particularly sound at the moment, but I keep writing myself into corners as is.

I'd go with 2 WOK unless you're really passionate about three of them and think you can be concise enough.

Also, I find making outlines of the essay much easier. When I start writing, I go off on tangents and it's just a big mess

So here's what my simple outlines look like:

Intro:

Thesis [or main argument]:

Body Paragraph 1: Topic Sentence

Point One:

Example/Support

Point Two:

Example/Suppor

Counterclaim:

Refuting/agreeing with the counterclaim:

Body Paragraph 2: [pretty much same as BP 1]

BP 3 [if necessary]

Conclusion:

Summary [one-two sentences]

Delving a little deeper. Synthesizing what I've said and coming up with some new questions for the reader to think about

Okay so in a TOK essay, there's a lot more flexibility needed. The above outline is just what I use for English essays and it overlaps with TOK, except I know that I have more freedom in the TOK essay, and my outline can be drastically different. So don't put a lot of weight on that outline because it might not work for you at all! But I do suggest you come up with your own outline. Put in your main ideas and arguments and your examples so that you know what WOK and AOK you've incorporated already. And then if you've written like one body paragraph and it's already 700 words, you know something's going to have to give.

And you're welcome! Good luck.

[Sandwich]

I could've sworn I've mentioned this somewhere before, however there's nothing here, so perhaps I didn't

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I (personally) don't think the objective versus the subjective is getting right to the core of the TOK issue in this question as much as is possible. It's about ways of knowing, i.e. ways in which we gain knowledge. So even more fundamentally than just subjective and objective facts, you have the fact we have to process everything in order for it to become knowledge. So the place to focus on in a TOK essay is really the processing aspect and then relate it out. It'll naturally have some cross-over with objective versus subjective, but it's about how we piece together bits of information in the first place, and then to what extent that information then becomes knowledge which has been "tainted" by us (i.e. the title, we see things as we are because WE can't help but play a part in acquiring knowledge). The thing to do is look at how that knowledge is acquired and how we piece it together, IMO. A previous title might help make my point -- something about "science is more than a pile of bricks", and how knowledge in science is really to do with how we stick the metaphorical bricks together, not just the fact we have a pile of them. In themselves the facts are useless unless we know how to build a wall (and many other bits of metaphor along those lines, I'm sure there's probably something which would do for concrete if you thought hard enough etc. xP). Anyway, my point is that a bit like the quote from that old TOK question, it's looking at HOW the different WOKs and AOKs are different and why they are different on the most fundamental level you can find, and that seems to be most appropriate for this question.

Just to put in that bit of input. The best way to tackle any TOK essay is to try and reduce it to the theory of knowledge itself and what's going on there, and then obviously go a bit more superficial after that. From what I know, anyway!

[Pathos]

I was planning on looking at objectivity and subjectivity in relation to perception and perhaps emotion or reason (or both!) Thank you for your advice, so say I wished to interweave science and ethics in as my AoK would I then merely use examples from science and ethics to support my 'claims' in regards to my WoK?

Yes, that's what I'd do. And you can use a different area of knowledge as a counterclaim. I was writing a practice essay just on emotion, and I was at a point where I had the more subjective AOK versus the more objective AOK. My teacher suggested that I might need to spell out why the more subjective ones were just as important as the objective ones even though there wasn't a certainty in them, per se. So you might want to look into doing that if this happens in your essay. You could fit it into the intro or the conclusion, maybe.

This far in, I have something along the lines of Intro, WOK 1( with analysis), WOK 2(with analysis), (potentially WOK 3), and blank space because I don't quite know what I should pop in there as of yet and my conclusion. Structurally I don't think it's particularly sound at the moment, but I keep writing myself into corners as is.

I'd go with 2 WOK unless you're really passionate about three of them and think you can be concise enough.

Also, I find making outlines of the essay much easier. When I start writing, I go off on tangents and it's just a big mess

So here's what my simple outlines look like:

Intro:

Thesis [or main argument]:

Body Paragraph 1: Topic Sentence

Point One:

Example/Support

Point Two:

Example/Suppor

Counterclaim:

Refuting/agreeing with the counterclaim:

Body Paragraph 2: [pretty much same as BP 1]

BP 3 [if necessary]

Conclusion:

Summary [one-two sentences]

Delving a little deeper. Synthesizing what I've said and coming up with some new questions for the reader to think about

Okay so in a TOK essay, there's a lot more flexibility needed. The above outline is just what I use for English essays and it overlaps with TOK, except I know that I have more freedom in the TOK essay, and my outline can be drastically different. So don't put a lot of weight on that outline because it might not work for you at all! But I do suggest you come up with your own outline. Put in your main ideas and arguments and your examples so that you know what WOK and AOK you've incorporated already. And then if you've written like one body paragraph and it's already 700 words, you know something's going to have to give.

And you're welcome! Good luck.

Wow! Thank you so very much for all of your advice and help. The outline, I feel, shall help me greatly in establishing the structure and such for my essay- in addition to your advice. I feel a little less stressed and quite a bit more able to write this essay! Thank you so much

I could've sworn I've mentioned this somewhere before, however there's nothing here, so perhaps I didn't

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I (personally) don't think the objective versus the subjective is getting right to the core of the TOK issue in this question as much as is possible. It's about ways of knowing, i.e. ways in which we gain knowledge. So even more fundamentally than just subjective and objective facts, you have the fact we have to process everything in order for it to become knowledge. So the place to focus on in a TOK essay is really the processing aspect and then relate it out. It'll naturally have some cross-over with objective versus subjective, but it's about how we piece together bits of information in the first place, and then to what extent that information then becomes knowledge which has been "tainted" by us (i.e. the title, we see things as we are because WE can't help but play a part in acquiring knowledge). The thing to do is look at how that knowledge is acquired and how we piece it together, IMO. A previous title might help make my point -- something about "science is more than a pile of bricks", and how knowledge in science is really to do with how we stick the metaphorical bricks together, not just the fact we have a pile of them. In themselves the facts are useless unless we know how to build a wall (and many other bits of metaphor along those lines, I'm sure there's probably something which would do for concrete if you thought hard enough etc. xP). Anyway, my point is that a bit like the quote from that old TOK question, it's looking at HOW the different WOKs and AOKs are different and why they are different on the most fundamental level you can find, and that seems to be most appropriate for this question.

Just to put in that bit of input. The best way to tackle any TOK essay is to try and reduce it to the theory of knowledge itself and what's going on there, and then obviously go a bit more superficial after that. From what I know, anyway!

Thank you so much!I really appreciate your input and value what advice you have given me. I feel as though this was perhaps the portion I was missing within my essay- the depth that then gives way to shallowness- I was writing in extremes! Nevertheless, thank you so much!!

Edited January 30, 2010 by sweetnsimple786
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