Nov10/May11 Title #4 "To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge?"

[patronymic]

hey guys, i just joined the form and I'm about to start with my tok essay. It is going to be the fourth title. im going to do it in maths and science and my thesis statement is the following:

In maths and science, we need to support our beliefs with as much evidence as possible in order to help us in the search for knowledge.

Is it good? like does it sound like a thesis statement?

cheers

[tanyaa]

I am also doing this essay topic, but what i am having trouble in is linking everything together

the ways of knowing im using are: natural science and history as for the areas that need evidence and religion and personal belief as for those that do not need evidence. by personal belief i mean like someone said above

that the belief in beauty not only needs to have evidence, anyone an be beautiful, and itelligent in their own way, i dont feel we have to have limits or a guildline as to what is beautiful. Could i say that?

as for religion could i talk about "one does not have to see to believe"?

your feedback is greatly appreciated!!

[Sublime Sunshine]

Youre kind of mixing stuff up there. The WAYS of knowing aren't natural sciences and history, they are sense perception, emotion, language and reason. The AREAS of knowledge through which you will be investigating are the naturals sciences and history. Then you need to identify in these two areas (natural sciences and history) the extent to which evidence is needed to support beliefs in that area.

[Kaneele]

Hey, hey!

I've also chosen this topic. Sadly, ToK is not my strongest subject, but I hope I can help somebody and somebody can help me

Just a couple of ideas I have: I think it's pretty important to explain why evidence is not important in some spheres, huh [as it is kinda obvious it's not]? And for this, I assume one of the main questions or issues [call them whatever you wish] could be "How can people know when to trust evidence and when not?". I, for example, have also chosen religion as one of the AoKs [as it's kinda close to me] and I have found myself being irrational because of religion many times in life, which I find paradoxical as I dislike irrationality. Probably that's the main reason why I think this should be discussed. How do you, guys, think is that a valid KI for this topic?

The AoK I am going to compare religion to is Mathematics [but I am not sure whether two is enough?].

We've actually just started working on these essays. We have to hand in first draft in 2 weeks, so we're simply planning at the moment. I would really appreciate any feedback and advice whatsoever.

P.S. Tanyaa - About that religion question you have, I'd say it's a valid statement but you would have to explain it. And in my opinion, for Christianity, for example, it could be explained from the Bible (after Jesus' redemption Tom (no idea whether that the same in English) did not believe Jesus could do that and a lesson is being taught to Christians that when it comes to God we have to believe miracles...). Also, I think it is one of the basic rules of religion - to have blind faith in it because people are sort of made that way that they want to believe there is a higher cause, a higher plan, a higher power... I dunno, just play around with it. Hope it helps at all!

Thank you in advance!

[coca cola]

hi guys! Ive chosen that title also for my TOK essay..

"To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowlege?"

My teacher told me that I should add a paragraph with reference to the evidence in the arts.

Can someone help me top find an example that I can add on my essay?

thanksss!

[lynyrd]

hi guys! Ive chosen that title also for my TOK essay..

"To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowlege?"

My teacher told me that I should add a paragraph with reference to the evidence in the arts.

Can someone help me top find an example that I can add on my essay?

thanksss!

hey~! i wrote the same essay title, and i based my answer in the sciences and history. which areas of knowledge are u basing your essay? Personally, I would use Art as a counterargument in the essay, because Art is a discipline that is totally subjective and depends on the opinions of the society on aesthetics, so basically, the individual provides his own evidence to support his own beliefs. I think that there's no truth nor falsity in the arts, it all depends on the humankind. Hope I helped!

[absenzo]

Hi,

First of all the replies here have been really helpful for me in writing my TOK essay which I am having difficulty at the moment. So far, I have defined evidence and beliefs and have chosen to write about arts, natural sciences and history for Areas of Knowledge; Perception and Emotion for Ways of Knowing. However, I am stuck in analyzing the evidence necessary in the arts. I know that in arts, compared to natural sciences for instance, it is highly subjective but I can`t think of anything more. Also, I am having difficulty thinking of an example. I would really appreciate the help..

[Rock_Star1993]

How would religion be considered to be under the ethics AoK? I am also doing this topic, i have decided to talk about the natural sciences, the human science, and i am trying to decide of the last AoK to talk about, either ethics or History but i am unsure which one would be better to use. For natural sciences i will concentrate on biology or chemistry. For the human sciences, it will be psychology. The WoK i am going to talk about are reasoning and perception. I am also a little stuck because TOK isnt really my best class so, what could be a knowledge issue for either ethics concerning religion and history?

Edited December 4, 2010 by Rock_Star1993

[Rock_Star1993]

Hello,

I was wondering if you could help me with my ToK Essay because ToK is not my strongest subject. My prompt is 4. To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge? I was planning on talking about Natural Sciences (Biology), Human Sciences (Psychology), Math and Art. The Ways of Knowings are Reason and Sense Perception. I was wondering, how would i relate Math and Art to Reason and Sense Perception? And if you know any good examples of Art which does not require evidence to support its greatness that would be extremely helpful.

Thank You

[Connor]

My only input is to use samples quite thoroughly to investigate how each AOK would cover a subject or a controversy such as:

Death Penalty

Art (the views on it from both sides)

The Justice System

Atomic Power

Remember that Scientists deal with an "is" system and human scientists deal with an "ought to" system.

[alexacaesco]

I'm also doing this topic and i'm writing it at the moment but I find that the whole problem with the essay is to do with how you define it. My whole essay is basically saying how you can't define it in a definite and concise way and that the extent to which they are needed depends on the nature of the evidence.

What i've done basically is compared AoK's where beliefs are formed through subjective WoK's and one from objective WoK's, and shown how the nature of evidence varies in different areas based on this and how it makes it difficult to compare them, and then I looked at the implications of subjective/objective evidence in different AoK's. So basically I make distinctions and connections between different AoK's and the nature of evidence in them, and then I basically say that they all need evidence to the extent that their beliefs are required to be supported and this varies depending on the degree of subjectivity and objectivity.

I'm really worried that this isn't a viable way of answering the essay but I think that defining evidence in one way could really limit the essay. It is ok to answer essays like this?

Hi! ..I just got a question.. did you get 43 points as it appears in the bottom of your post? Are you done with ur Tok Essay ... cuz im having problems with it : S

[fan]

Have you looked at all AOK and WOK to see which best suits this title? science and mathematics are indeed good choices. I believe history will also fit well under this title. How much evidence do we need to believe what happened in the past.? How easily can historical evidence distort the truth? religion links well to this. What makes religion true? Also look at how the title is telling you "to what extent" this is telling you to weigh out the pro's and cons.

[laryxle]

Just getting back to this thread, I did this title and ended up with 30/40 in the essay (A).

I did use a lot of AoK's (4), and i'm not sure that that is the best way of approaching the essay, but I found it helped me write my essay. Good AoK's are definitely maths and ethics, for this topic sciences are actually quite a difficult AoK to use, at least if you take the approach I did, but useful because they help you to make distinctions in the essay.

[sweet candy]

i'm thinking of answering the following question for tok:

To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge?

the thing is that i'm really confused and dnt know where to start

how do i structure the answer to this question?

i'm thinking of looking at the natuural sciences and history and possibly talk about the human sciences.

are these good wok?

i'm so confused.

[∫ Jorge δx]

Do the following:

-Start with a general thesis

-Create examples based on your AoKs

-Think of counterarguments or even an antithesis

That should be a good way to start.

[Julie]

they are good areas of knowledge to deal with... just make sure you can actually support them... Jorge's brief outline is a really good idea... Do you know how you should organize your essay?

[fridis]

I'm currently working on my first draft of prescribed title #4.

Some basic things to answer firstly are:

- Do we NEED evidence?

-What is evidence?

- What is a belief?

Some central questions to focus on are:

-Do all areas of knowledge use the same sort of evidence? - The answer is no. Here it is easy to compare for example math which doesn't even need empirical evidence as it is just logics independent of reality, and natural sciences, which do, or other AoK such as human sciences which is speculative, and what evidence they use.

-How do we know if one type of evidence is enough to support a belief?

- Could it be that the words evidence, beliefs and even need mean different things in different areas of knowledge? (This problem would then be attacked by showing how the concepts need, evidence and belief apply to different areas on knowledge)

My first reaction is that; as long you don't claim your beliefs to be facts, do we really need to support them with evidence? I mean, otherwise we wouldn't have religions. People must be allowed to have beliefs without supporting them with evidence as long as they don't claim that it's a fact. Do we really need to support beliefs at all?

I'm afraid that moves away from the prescribed title a bit too much and I will probably need to rephrase it many times. But if I used a claim like this I could discuss it with a range of different arguments and counter-arguments which would give a good structure for an essay.

So my questions are:

Does anyone have a good definition of evidence and belief using TOK terms?

Is there anything else that you feel need to be added to get a good essay?

Is it risky to claim a thing such as 'beliefs don't have to be justified unless you want to make them facts'?

Have I made a huge mistake here that I haven't noticed?

And one thing that is easy to forget is that they don't expect a good answer, just a good discussion.

Also, a good point you all might benefit from using is that the need for evidence to support a belief is comparable with the consequences of spreading false statements! Example: natural sciences: the person who claimed vaccination can cause asbergers syndrom for children made a lot of parents decide to not get their children vaccinated --> More diseases spread, killing a lot of people. The claim was later proven to be wrong.

[a.hepburn]

Hey,

I think all the things you guys wrote are good...still could someone tell me what to include in my introduction, because i'm clueless!

Im talking about natural sciences, maths, senses/emotions

thanks x

[Julie]

Hey,

I think all the things you guys wrote are good...still could someone tell me what to include in my introduction, because i'm clueless!

Im talking about natural sciences, maths, senses/emotions

thanks x

Read the section in this about the introduction and thesis statement, it should tell you almost everything... I hope:

http://www.ibsurvival.com/topic/12540-writing-a-tok-essay/

Edited January 29, 2011 by ~Julie~

[Alaskan49er]

Okay, my essay is in a rough draft form, but I am having trouble answering "To what Extent..." do we need evidence to support beliefs in different areas of knowledge. I did Mathematics, Science, and History and my three AOK's. I talked about how reason and language are the two types of evidence for math, but only reason is necessary. I talked about how all 4 ways of knowing were used in science, but emotion was only used by those who couldn't back up their biases or hypotheses with real evidence (aka the other three ways of knowing). I then said that history uses all 4 ways of knowing, and they are all necessary. So basically the conclusion I came to, through all this discussion, was yes, evidence is needed to support beliefs. How do I go about answering the "To What Extent" portion of the essay? Thanks in advance