What do I mean when I say "I know" and why should someone believe me?

[Kristyna H.]

What we should be focusing on here is the kinds of justifications we have for claiming to know something.

Do you guys have any thoughts? because i tried thinking about it so much, my brain hurts from it haha.

[Chelleee]

ahh i'm a bit confused about what exactly your trying to ask

but i'm gonna assume that your looking for the ways of knowing

you can know things by/through:

authority

empirically

logically

memory

through practice

conscience

empathy

faith

instinct

etc.

hopefully that's what you were looking for

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Hahaha who is your TOK teacher? Because I vividly remember doing this as my first TOK essay for Ms Helen (and I got a C so don't fuss haha). But I don't think Ms Helen teaches TOK anymore...Actually my essay might have been slightly different. She actually gave us several scenario: how do I know that there are 13 chairs in this room (empircal knowledge/reason), that the table is blue (perception), that I love someone (emotion) and some other stuff I can't remember.

That's what you have to do for this essay, to come up with examples when knowledge applies to different ways of knowing: reason, perception, emotion, language.

For example, you know the table is blue because your eyes perceive the light that the table gives off, which correspond to a point on the colour sprectrum and this point on the colour sprectrum is given the name "blue".

However you must also mention that all ways of knowing have their problems. Reason relies on empircal testing methods and logic, but can fail due to misinformation/lack of information, perception is biased according to individual (if you're colour blind, you're going to perceive differently), emotion again is biased...

I'm not sure whether you've covered language yet since it's such a big topic on its own and you've only been doing TOK for a month.

So why should anyone believe you? What you have to think about is whether you can test/prove this "knowlege" to people (as you can do with reason), or do you have enough authority on a subject so that they should believe you (you believe your teachers when they tell you stuff because you trust their authority but that's an entire different topic. For the essay, you just have to mention authority. This can apply to knowing your friend - your close interaction with a friend would give you more authority on that friend than someone who's just met her).

Just some ideas. Stick with real life, normal examples, it's easier to work with. How do you know that HIS has 6 floors? Well, you walk up and down those 6 floors for the last however many years you've been at the school, so you have the experience and you can "prove" it by going up and down and counting...etc.

[Can anyone tell I have my own essay to write and I can't be bothered to start since it's public holiday tomorrow?]

[Kristyna H.]

Hahaha who is your TOK teacher? Because I vividly remember doing this as my first TOK essay for Ms Helen (and I got a C so don't fuss haha). But I don't think Ms Helen teaches TOK anymore...Actually my essay might have been slightly different. She actually gave us several scenario: how do I know that there are 13 chairs in this room (empircal knowledge/reason), that the table is blue (perception), that I love someone (emotion) and some other stuff I can't remember.

That's what you have to do for this essay, to come up with examples when knowledge applies to different ways of knowing: reason, perception, emotion, language.

For example, you know the table is blue because your eyes perceive the light that the table gives off, which correspond to a point on the colour sprectrum and this point on the colour sprectrum is given the name "blue".

However you must also mention that all ways of knowing have their problems. Reason relies on empircal testing methods and logic, but can fail due to misinformation/lack of information, perception is biased according to individual (if you're colour blind, you're going to perceive differently), emotion again is biased...

I'm not sure whether you've covered language yet since it's such a big topic on its own and you've only been doing TOK for a month.

So why should anyone believe you? What you have to think about is whether you can test/prove this "knowlege" to people (as you can do with reason), or do you have enough authority on a subject so that they should believe you (you believe your teachers when they tell you stuff because you trust their authority but that's an entire different topic. For the essay, you just have to mention authority. This can apply to knowing your friend - your close interaction with a friend would give you more authority on that friend than someone who's just met her).

Just some ideas. Stick with real life, normal examples, it's easier to work with. How do you know that HIS has 6 floors? Well, you walk up and down those 6 floors for the last however many years you've been at the school, so you have the experience and you can "prove" it by going up and down and counting...etc.

[Can anyone tell I have my own essay to write and I can't be bothered to start since it's public holiday tomorrow?]

haha We actually DO have ms.Helen...yup, she is not supposed to teach anything anymore, but she just LOVES our class too much. I like her, except I dont like ToK. It's too complicated and quite boring.

but thanks so much for your help! Now i can finaly write it!

ahh i'm a bit confused about what exactly your trying to ask

but i'm gonna assume that your looking for the ways of knowing

you can know things by/through:

authority

empirically

logically

memory

through practice

conscience

empathy

faith

instinct

etc.

hopefully that's what you were looking for

aaahhh thank you soo much! that's exactly what i am looking for actually!