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TOK Oral Presentation Topic


alis0nxxoh

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hi, my tok oral topic is due sometime next week, and ive been throwing around ideas but i am still having trouble actually grasping the concept of a "knowledge issue". im leaning towards doing something along the lines of instinct vs. belief, or even taking a psychological approach. wondering if anyone has any insight on knowledge issues/ how i could craft the instinct vs belief topic? thanks

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Hey. Just some ideas I can think of:

Instinct:

Can relate to the AOK of the Natural sciences - Biology: evolution etc. Instincts developed as an evolutionary response to our environments so that we may know how to behave in response to certain stimuli or in certain situations.

Can relate to the AOK of the Human sciences - Psychology: Although, it's the biological perspective of psychology which is basically the same as above, although you could talk about some psychological studies?

Belief:

You could talk about the belief-knowledge continuum (or whatever it's called, I can't quite remember :P haha). Beliefs can be defined by culture, environment, past experiences etc. In regards to psychology, maybe you could include something about schemas, being the organised collection of one's knowledge about the world, often thought to be influenced by environment, culutre and past experiences.

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In relation to combining the two/comparing/the lines between: Maybe you could talk about how instincts are seemingly subconscious & how instincts control some aspects of our behaviour that we don't necessarily believe in (it's late here, so not sure if that makes any sense at all!).

I just had an idea: Maybe you could talk about the psychological study conducted in 1937 by Konrad Lorenz on imprinting in Baby ducks/geese (one of them i think haha). Imprinting is an instinctual behaviour that occurs in the critical period of development (newborn). In the experiment, Konrad was around after hatching and they followed him around. Question you could look into: Did the baby ducks/geese actually believe that Konrad was their mother? Or was this just instinctual behaviour?

:P Good Luck!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

hi my topic was rejected by my tok teacher, he said it was too subject specific :D im thinking of doing "how can we know that what we remember is true?" but im not sure how to start the presentation. i also need a real life situation....i was thinking of using loftus and palmer eyewitness testimony but my teacher said it was too artificial and that i can talk about it but shouldnt focus on it. any ideas?

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm still struggling on deciding on a topic. Me and my partner were thinking "When does a tattoo become just a body decorations instead of art for a culture?" or something about astrology using some WOKs'. Can you please comment on our chosen topic and maybe give some ideas for both. : )) Thanks.

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  • 3 weeks later...

hi my topic was rejected by my tok teacher, he said it was too subject specific :D im thinking of doing "how can we know that what we remember is true?" but im not sure how to start the presentation. i also need a real life situation....i was thinking of using loftus and palmer eyewitness testimony but my teacher said it was too artificial and that i can talk about it but shouldnt focus on it. any ideas?

There's nothing in the criteria from IB saying that you shouldn't do a subject-specific presentation. In fact, since you have to focus your topic on a specific knowledge issue, it's almost something to be sought after. But yes, about the second point, you do need a real life situation, and going in to some theoretical life situation is quite the opposite to what they want. This is because philosophy is often about designing fake situations in order to consider consequences, which is why you might want to mention the eyewitness testimony. Best bet, honestly, is to read magazines and newspapers till you find an article that makes you think "hey, I can philosophize about this." My own presentation was done on an article about the Canadian supreme court overturning a federal attempt to change laws on youth crime, so I did the presentation by posing the question of how youth should be treated under criminal law. In your case, I'd even suggest finding a trial that was decided based on witness testimony, and maybe analyzing how they went about determining "truth" from it.

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