ToKTutor's Blog

ToK Essay Prescribed Titles May 2024 Prompt 4

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 09:44:18 GMT

Mayan hieroglyphs & the challenge of creative historical interpretations

To begin, consider the analogy of a tomato seed.

When growing tomatoes from seeds, there might be three transplanting phases.

From a packet to some seed compost. From seedling compost to a potted plant. From potted plant to a garden site.

As the seed grows, different treatments are need to protect the seed until it comes to maturity: feeding, weeding, watering and so on.

If you transplant a seedling to a pot too early, the roots can get damaged and the plant dies. If you transplant the potted tomato plant into your garden too late, the roots can become pot-bound and the plant wilts or gets diseased.

Similarly, if you don’t protect the seedling under conditions of warmth and watering, it won’t germinate. And if you never monitor your tomato plant in the garden, it can be attacked by pests and never produce a crop.

Does the analogy help to understand the challenges of knowledge when transferred from one context to another?

Surely knowledge evolves – like our tomato plant – from a seed idea (or hypothesis) into generally accepted knowledge, bearing the fruits of new perspectives and applications that can help human beings and the environment.

From one perspective, if the initial idea or hypothesis isn’t handled with care, it can lead to the production of distorted knowledge later on down the line. For example, the hypothesis that energy could be produced in a test tube through means of ‘cold fusion’ was based on knowledge that couldn’t be scientifically replicated and died a quick death.

From another perspective, the skills and techniques involved in nurturing knowledge in one context, say Maths, could be used to help produce new knowledge in another context, say the Arts. For example, the innovations in building AI algorithms to solve math problems can be used to generate artistic patterns which helps artists break beyond the boundaries of how they normally work.

Of course, in each case, your job is to articulate a/ the challenges involved in the transferring process and b/ to evaluate whether or these challenges were ‘underestimated’ at the time.

This is how your analysis might look:

In Breaking the Maya Code , (1992) the archaeologist Michael D. Coe extracted knowledge from its original indigenous context and integrated it into a broader narrative of the past. Coe pieced together the linguistic puzzle of the Mayan hieroglyphic script, translating inscriptions from various sites to reveal the stories of ancient rulers, their rituals, and the intricate political relationships that once shaped the Maya world. By transferring these inscriptions within a historical context, Coe was able to reconstruct, for example, the underlying socio-political forces that contributed to the historical drama of this sophisticated and enigmatic civilization, allowing us to step back in time and experience the Maya's varied past with an incomparable richness.

Nevertheless, it's important to acknowledge that Coe faced specific challenges in his work. He encountered limitations such as the incomplete nature of the archaeological evidence and the need for creative interpretation. While his contributions have been invaluable, they remind us that the task of transferring knowledge from one context into another is fraught with uncertainties. The historian must not underestimate the potential for misinterpretation and the inherent complexities involved in understanding ancient civilizations.

How would this analysis look for a different AOK?

ToK Essay Prescribed Titles May 2024 Prompt 3

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 09:01:21 GMT

Fresh ideas, change and knowledge

'Fresh’ has the connotations of ‘new’ or ‘innovative’. And when something new arrives into the world, it’s usually accompanied by change. Often it’s hard to measure the impact of change until time has passed and we can look back with the cool, detached eye of objectivity. But one thing’s for sure, the immediate impact of change is an emotional one. Change upsets the apple cart of existing routines and tradition. It can cause a sense of upheaval and uncertainty, making you feel uncomfortable, perhaps dread. However, change can simultaneously be a time for opportunity. It can reveal different ways of doing or looking at things, energising you with excitement, even inspiration. Depending on your appetite for risk, change can be either helpful or a hindrance. In the context of knowledge, it’s the same. Let’s look at a couple of examples to get a sense of why fresh ideas may or may not be adopted slowly by experts within AOKs…

Fresh and exciting ideas within the H Sciences often encounter a slow adoption process by experts owing to the inherent conservatism of academic knowledge communities. This reluctance to embrace change is exemplified by the case of Leon Festinger, a prominent figure in psychology. Festinger’s groundbreaking theory of cognitive dissonance , published in 1957, challenged prevailing psychological paradigms by suggesting that individuals experience discomfort when holding conflicting beliefs and are motivated to resolve this discomfort. Initially met with skepticism, Festinger’s theory faced resistance from established psychologists who adhered to behaviourist or psychoanalytic perspectives. It took several years for cognitive dissonance theory to gain widespread acceptance, ultimately reshaping the field of Psychology and influencing research across various domains of human behaviour.

Conversely, some fresh and exciting ideas within the H Sciences can be swiftly adopted by experts, especially when they provide novel solutions to pressing societal issues. A prime example is Esther Duflo, a renowned economist and co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Duflo's pioneering work in the field of Development Economics, particularly her innovative use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness of poverty alleviation programs, gained rapid acceptance and recognition. Her research not only revolutionised the approach to addressing global poverty but also quickly garnered the support of policymakers, fellow academics, and international organizations. Duflo's ability to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world impact demonstrates how fresh ideas, when grounded in empirical evidence and practical applications, can swiftly win over experts in the H Sciences.

So what other criteria can you think of that either constrain the adoption of new ideas, or smoothen the path for their quick acceptance?

ToK Essay Prescribed Titles May 2024 Prompt 1

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 07:57:25 GMT

Subjectivity is at the heart of knowledge...

Human beings are at the centre of the knowledge universe. This is why in your TOK studies everyone explores the ‘Core Theme’. Figure 3 pictures ‘Me as a knower and thinker’. Anyone who pursues knowledge, whether an expert or not, will at some point have to reflect on the fact that there are various factors, both internal and external, which either promote or constrain their endeavours.

Human minds are driven by subjective biases – the internal constraints. However, they are also driven by curiosity and imagination – the internal triggers for creativity and problem solving. The clichéd example of Einstein comes to mind. Individuals and groups are also subjectively influenced by reputation, money, political ideals – the external constraints. However, they are also influenced by institutional and ethical frameworks which create a space for collaborative and productive work. The evolution of Microsoft Corp comes to mind.

Let’s look at this dynamic in relation to the Arts and History and how subjectivity can be ‘overly celebrated’ or ‘unfairly condemned’ in pursuing knowledge.

Subjectivity in the Arts is undeniably overly celebrated, often leading to the elevation of works that lack clear artistic merit. An illustrative example of this can be found in the ‘Untitled’ sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan , a piece consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, which generated significant buzz in the art world. While some may argue that it’s a profound commentary on consumerism, the sheer subjectivity surrounding its interpretation obscures the fact that it's essentially a banana duct-taped to a wall. Such instances highlight how subjectivity can sometimes be used to justify and celebrate what might otherwise be dismissed as trivial or gimmicky, detracting from the genuine artistic endeavours that demand more rigorous scrutiny.

Conversely, subjectivity in the Arts is unfairly condemned, stifling artistic creativity and diversity. Take the works of Yoko Ono, a pioneering artist whose avant-garde pieces often provoke strong reactions. Critics have sometimes dismissed her art as nonsensical or pretentious, but her subjectivity and willingness to challenge established norms have pushed the boundaries of art and encouraged viewers to engage in new ways. Her performance art and conceptual works, such as ‘Cut Piece’ , in which she invited the audience to cut away her clothing, are prime examples of how subjectivity can be a powerful tool for sparking dialogue and challenging societal norms. Condemning such subjectivity limits the evolution of Art and fails to acknowledge its capacity to challenge the status quo and provoke essential discussion

On the one hand, subjectivity in History is often unfairly condemned, as it can generate valuable insights and perspectives that broaden our understanding of the past. Consider the works of Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian known for her book The Return of Martin Guerre . While some critics argue that Davis's approach is overly subjective and speculative, her meticulous research into the life of Martin Guerre, a 16th-century French peasant who assumed another man’s identity, offers a nuanced exploration of identity, society, and the historical context of the time. Davis’s subjectivity sheds light on the complexities of historical events and individuals, emphasising the importance of diverse perspectives in enriching our comprehension of the past. Condemning subjectivity in historical scholarship risks perpetuating a one-sided, exclusionary view of History, ultimately limiting our ability to learn from the past.

On the other hand, subjectivity is overly celebrated in History when it leads to the distortion or romanticisation of historical events or figures. For instance, the uncritical celebration of Thomas Carlyle , a 19th-century historian, as a great thinker often overlooks his troubling views on race and his advocacy for authoritarianism. By celebrating Carlyle without acknowledging the full complexity of his ideas and their impact, subjectivity can perpetuate a misleading view of History. It’s crucial to strike a balance between embracing diverse, multiple perspectives and ensuring that historical accounts remain grounded in factual evidence and a nuanced understanding of the past, rather than being excessively influenced by subjective interpretations.

How might these arguments develop? What overall position do you take and why?

ToK Essay Prescribed Titles May 2024 Prompt 5

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 08:55:43 GMT

Knowledge and its gatekeepers

Herodotus, the historian, bumps into Pythagoras, the mathematician, in the local market.

Herodotus : Bonjour, my friend. I’ve been pondering a question lately that I believe you, as a mathematician, might have some unique insights into. Do we truly need custodians of knowledge, those who safeguard and preserve our collective wisdom throughout time?

Mathematician : Hola! It’s an intriguing question indeed and I’m eager to explore it with you. From my mathematical perspective, knowledge can often be objective and timeless, existing independently of custodians. But let’s delve deeper. What’s your take as a historian?

Herodotus : Well, I’ve seen how custodians of knowledge, whether they be librarians, archivists, or institutions, play a crucial role in preserving our understanding of the past. They ensure that documents, artefacts, and records are passed down through generations, helping us learn from History and maintain a sense of continuity. For instance, consider the work of historians at the British Library who painstakingly preserve ancient manuscripts like the Magna Carta, allowing us to connect with pivotal moments in history and understand the evolution of political rights.

Pythagoras : I understand the importance of historical records, but let me propose a mathematical perspective. Knowledge, especially in the realm of Mathematics, is discoverable and verifiable independently of custodians. The Pythagorean theorem, for instance, would still hold true even if all historical records of it were lost. Mathematical truths are eternal, waiting to be rediscovered by anyone, anywhere. Take the example of Andrew Wiles, a mathematician who, in the 1990s, proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, a problem that had intrigued mathematicians for centuries. His discovery added to our mathematical knowledge without the need for historical records or custodians, demonstrating the timeless nature of mathematical truths.

Herodotus : That’s a valid point. However, History often deals with subjective interpretations and context. Custodians help us understand not just what happened but why it happened and what it meant to people in their time. They provide the human context that mathematical theorems don’t inherently possess. For instance, consider the work of historians like Howard Zinn, who authored A People’s History of the United States. Zinn’s perspective offers an alternative narrative that highlights the experiences of marginalized groups, giving us a deeper understanding of historical events beyond just the facts and equations.

Pythagoras : I see your point about context, but consider this: Mathematics is a universal language, transcending cultural and temporal boundaries. It’s not dependent on custodians to convey its meaning. If a mathematical proof is valid, it holds true for all people, in all times. Custodians might provide historical context, but they’re not necessary for the core knowledge itself. For instance, the mathematical work of Euclid, dating back to ancient Greece, remains relevant and true to this day, despite the passage of centuries. Euclid’s theorems and proofs stand as timeless examples of mathematical knowledge that don’t rely on custodians to retain their validity...

How might this dialogue develop and in what ways does it overlap with some of the other TOK Essay Titles?

ToK Essay Titles May 2023 Prompt 3

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 11:34:05 GMT

Knowledge bubbles: paradigms and storyverses

Let’s look at two alternative senses in which knowledge might be acquired within ‘bubbles’. One within the Natural Sciences. The other with the Arts.

In a slightly broader definition of the term, a scientific ‘paradigm’ could be visualised as a bubble. Thomas Kuhn defined a ‘paradigm’ as a practical framework which determined how scientific experts built their hypotheses about naturel; how they designed and conducted experiments how they interpreted the evidence these generated and applied the knowledge to solve real life problems.

One key feature of such paradigms is that experts don’t actually ‘know’ they’re working within one. At least, not until someone, or some group, arrives with a vastly different way of doing science. And to do this – to create a revolution that breaks from the traditional paradigm – is rare, since it has to happen from within. For someone to do science differently – to think differently – from everyone else is extremely hard. But not impossible, as Kuhn points out. There have to be a certain set of conditions, both within the paradigm and the cultural context in which the paradigm exists, for revolutions to happen. In the meantime, the new ‘revolutionary’ information and voices within the paradigm are ether excluded or minimally tolerated as ‘fringe’ knowledge. The example of the new knowledge and voices of heliocentricism within the paradigm of geocentricism is well known, so try to find a different one if you explore this point of view in more detail.

If you consider an artwork in any medium as telling a story or having its on ‘storyverse’, a similar point of view can be explored. Samuel Taylor Coleridge explained that in order to access the world of a poem dealing with supernatural events, a reader is required to undertake a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ – a deliberate placing aside of our rational, critical faculties, so that we can wholly enter, both body and soul, into the experience being expressed.

If we generalise this directive to all forms of narrative, it entails that we must necessarily, if temporarily, block out the voice of questioning reason and the information about the real world generated by our common sense intuition. Only by excluding what we know and hear about the ‘natural’ world can we be transported out of the real and into the fictional realm of the narrative. Very often, we aren’t willing participants in this process; stories just seem to carry us away, enchant us or hook our imaginations out of the day to day and into a fiction. When this works well, we return to the real world with ‘new eyes’, so to speak: a refreshed way of looking at the world, perhaps even with transformed values and beliefs. When this doesn’t work so well, we get lost in the ‘virtual’ storyland never to come back to reality (this may feel like schizophrenia) or, at best, we return to the real world full of paranoid, irrational fears and become suspicious of everything around us. This is dualistic effect of narrative transportation is terrifyingly encapsulated in films such as The Matrix, in which the main character has to choose between taking a red pill (come back to reality as it is) or a blue pill (stay within the virtual reality storyverse).

The implications? If we assume that the path to pursue knowledge is determined by reason and tolerance, we have to think again. Both examples seem to point to other, more complex approaches to knowledge which are built on narrow-minded forms of thinking and perspectives. While paradigms in Natural Sciences exist by marginalising new knowledge discovered by so-called ‘rogue’ scientists, ‘storyverses’ within the Arts, seem magically to pull us away from rationality and ‘feed’ on our desire for ever more strange and weird narratives. While we’d like the process of pursuing knowledge to be inclusive and ‘politically correct’, it seems the reality has to be very different. Which doesn’t mean that inclusivity of alternative information and diverse viewpoints need never be part of the process…

ToK Essay Titles May 2023 Prompt 5

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 09:51:17 GMT

Technology & visualising the brain

Sometimes mental health clinicians have a poor reputation for communicating knowledge. Even though we expect experts to be trained in listening carefully and talking to us on a human level. It’s understandable, since much of the time the knowledge shared isn’t always good news: a personality disorder, an addiction that seems irreversible, an invasive test. The list goes on.

However, as part of a medical, and ethical, obligation to inform a patient about the nature of an ailment and a course of remedy, clinicians need to communicate clearly the possible causes for, and potential consequences of, a health problem.

Consider physiological problems with the brain, such as memory loss. One of the first things a medical expert will do is recommend a brain scan. Technological improvements have led to the development of a range of digital tools to help doctors measure brain states as part of building a picture – a map – of brain activity.

PET (Positron Emission Tomography) imagining – sounds like something from Star Trek – is one such tool that enables specialists not only to clarify a diagnosis, but also to communicate and explain to patients and other clinicians what is going on inside the brain. While the technicalities of how PET scans work isn’t so important here, their role as part of the scientific method is significant. First, the tool helps generate observable evidence which can help confirm or refute a particular diagnosis. Second, the photographic representation can be used to highlight similarities and differences between ‘normal’ or healthy brain activity and ‘abnormal’. Finally, even though the images must be interpreted, which brings a subjective element into the scientific process, and can lead to judgement errors, they provide a baseline of ‘evidence’ which can be examined by other experts as part of acquiring ‘second opinions’ on the nature of the symptoms displayed by a patient.

Consider the following images:

Even if there is no obvious or ready treatment for extreme cases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or the Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the visual representations are helpful in allowing both experts and lay people to make sense of specific health conditions.

The implications of this viewpoint are significant: when we’re at our most vulnerable, a clear communication about our health, supplemented by a visual image, can give us some element of control over ourselves and the future. This complementary process acknowledges our agency at a time when we feel helpless and makes a part of any decision-making process. And, if nothing else or even if we’re left with more unknowns, it sustains a hope in the people who are doing their best to help us in a moment of need.

ToK Essay Titles May 2023 Prompt 1

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 09:33:59 GMT

Artistic replication & the power of influence

Read this:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfi ght his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afi re bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick…

Now this:

"What's it going to be then, eh?" There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else…

Both extracts seem somewhat ‘out there’ – the first passage perhaps more than the second. Both are the first 10 lines of stories that caused controversy at the time of publication and beyond. The first passage comes from Finnegan’s Wake , by James Joyce. The second passage is from A Clockwork Orange , by Anthony Burgess.

The reason for the comparison? The idea of ‘literary influence’. How one artist’s feeling for words and expression is shaped by another’s as part of a process of finding one’s ‘voice’, ‘identity’ or ‘persona’.

Very often artists achieve this by means of ‘pastiche’: copying the idioms, tone and phraseology of the writers they admire until they evolve a textual self with which they produce their stories. It’s pretty much how all of us actually learn things during our lives. We copy those around us, especially our family members and eventually our peers and celebrities and ‘influencers’!

This form of ‘copying’ is the broad sense of the term ‘replicability’ in this Title. From one point of view, such ‘replication’ leads to the creation of original works of art which make us see the world anew. From another point of view entirely, such copying borderlines on artistic plagiarism, fraud or forgery.

The ethical dimension of such fraudulent copying can also be viewed from two perspectives. On the one hand, you may have heard of recent cases in which musicians have been accused of ‘stealing’ musical riffs wholesale from one artist and using them in their own songs ( Ed Sheeran ). You may also know about painters who copy the masters as part of a heist to replace an original with a forgery. On the one hand, forging art works as an ironic ruse to undermine arrogance and evil seems almost justified – this is the story of ‘The Last Vermeer’ abou t an artist who ‘stole’ art from the Nazis without them ever realising it…

ToK Essay Titles May 2023 Prompt 3

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 14:57:22 GMT

How art transcends ‘bubbles’ that exclude us.

Everyone knows (or should know) the origin story of Labbi Siffre’s song ‘Something Inside (So Strong)’. At least, you’re about to know its relevance to this Essay Title about acquiring knowledge through ‘bubbles’.

From one viewpoint, the song in itself – arguably artworks in general – expresses Siffre’s personal knowledge about the South African apartheid regime during the 1980s. Siffre also used the inspiration for the song to make sense of his own life as a gay black man having grown up in a society which at that time marginalised such voices as his.

Hence the opening lines, ‘The higher you build your barriers / The taller I become / The further you take my rights away / The faster I will run’. The ‘barriers’ symbolise the community that excludes voices. They are a mark of the sometimes palpable (apartheid), sometimes more elusive (institutional racism or homophobia) that drives human relationships. Women might label this in terms of a ‘glass ceiling’. Religious people might call it, as in the song, the ‘walls of Jericho’. Behind these walls lies the so called ‘promised land’ where the excluded people (the Jews in the biblical story) can live in harmony and peace with everyone else. Their voices can be finally heard. Their stories can become known.

From another point of view, the song takes on a shared concern. This is part of what made it into an anthem for other minority groups who felt misheard or invisible. Notice how in the early part of the song, the ‘I’ represents an individual voice, expressing a resilience; a determination that it won’t stay excluded; a desire to come face to face with the excluders. By the end, it has become the voice of a group – a community – ‘Brothers and sisters’ – which asserts its self-worth, yearning for justice and equality. The chorus in the song is an expression of the need for inclusion, presumably because only including the stories and voices of the minority can bring wholeness, a true history of a society and a robust self-knowledge or identity of a people. Presumably the appeal to ‘Brothers and sisters’ isn’t only to those people who have been excluded. It is also to some of those behind the barriers – within the bubble – who are tuned in to the destructiveness that exclusion can create.

So what is this ‘Something Inside’ that’s ‘so strong’? We can only speculate: the human spirit; the connection of love and all the other virtues associated with this; open-mindedness and tolerance… All of the things within us that help us prevail over the injustices and harm that comes from excluding others in our quest for knowledge.

The singer himself offers a clue in a rare interview: This is my song ..

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompts 5 & 6: Part 4

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:18:39 GMT

Certainty and confidence: the power of faith

There is a branch of knowledge, akin to pseudo-scientific knowledge like ‘flat Earth theory’, in which one can seem to have absolute certainty and full confidence, because the truth of that knowledge is somehow ‘guaranteed’ or ‘underwritten’ by a higher power. Faith-based knowledge.

In the Christian context, the definition of ‘faith’ comes closest to our definitions of ‘confidence’ in previous posts. For example, in Hebrews (11:1), ‘faith’ is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (our italics.)

On the one hand, this ‘assurance’ and ‘conviction’ is something that believers do not question – it is implicit in every thought or feeling relating to religious matters, from the words of the Bible to the way we live our lives according to its words. We are emotionally invested in God, fully trust in Him, and are confident that He will fulfil His promises. There is nothing intellectual or reasoned in this knowledge. On some level, we might describe it as ‘blind faith’. An example often given to illustrate this comes from the Bible itself: the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac at the request of God.

On the other hand, the idea is that knowledge grounded on such faith doesn’t require the kind of verification or refutation by empirical evidence demanded by the Sciences. This would be pointless since faith based knowledge claims are about a world ‘not seen’. That is, such knowledge is not knowledge of the empirical world of nature; it is knowledge of a world beyond nature.

For this reason, people who claim to know things based on ‘faith’ explain this knowledge in terms of complete certainty – there is no room for doubting the words of a sacred text like the Bible, as it is the Word of God. This certainty is not simply an aspect of the human mind; it is built into the very knowledge expressed by the words of scripture. We can’t doubt these words since they come from, in the Christian tradition at least, an all-loving and all-good God who would never deceive us. Indeed, from this perspective, religious knowledge never has to be ‘proven’ or ‘tested’ in the scientific way, because it is not based on the experience of the senses. It would be ridiculous to ask for ‘proof’ for religious knowledge claims like ‘Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead’, since such knowledge is based on faith not empirical evidence. In philosophical terms, this is not a statement of fact that requires verification for its truth content; it’s more a ‘speech act’ expressing indubitable belief in, and commitment to, a specific way of life as expressed by the Christian value. When I claim to know with complete certainty that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, I’m expressing an unquestioned belief in Jesus’ teachings and an implicit confidence that I want to live my life according to Christ’s values as recorded in the Bible.

So what does all this mean for our key concepts?

1/ It means that we can allow for some level of ‘complete certainty’ in our religious knowledge claims and cannot (or should not) request for empirical evidence to confirm or refute such knowledge. This might make some of us very uncomfortable!

2/ It means that we can, to some extent, always be ‘confident’ in what we claim to know, partly because religious knowledge, as encapsulated in sacred texts, is not ‘always provisional’. What is provisional is our interpretation of it over time.

Of course, all this begs the questions: Is there ever room for religious doubt? Can we ever lose our faith? The answers are, respectively: ‘Yes, there is’ and ‘Yes, we often do’. But that’s a different story…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompts 5 & 6: Part 3

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 09:36:57 GMT

Certainty and confidence: the maths conundrum

Now, consider a clichéd example when we seem to have the utmost certainty and confidence in knowledge and they both seem to be moving in the same direction: 2 + 2 = 4. On the one hand, this is something you cannot doubt, isn’t it? You know this with 100% certainty. On the other hand, a mathematician could point out that this is only the case if you’re counting in Base 10. Things are much less certain if we did the same sum within the framework of Base 3, for instance.

You might counter by arguing that certainty in Math is based on self-evident axioms – basic statements that are assumed to be true and actually can’t be proven to be true. These axioms are foundational principles mathematicians use to build theorems. This is how Pythagoras was able to construct his famous theorem. Using this example, we can know with ‘complete certainty’ that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. The rules of logic determine the truth, hence the accuracy and certainty of this knowledge is guaranteed by means of reason. In fact, unlike in Science, which is hindered by the problem of induction and the fallibility of the senses (perhaps even leaps of logic sometimes in those so called ‘accidental’ discoveries), there is no need to go into the messy real world to seek empirical evidence to support or refute mathematical knowledge. You just have to inspect the axioms within the Pythagorean theorem; trace the logical connections between them and you’ll know a priori that this knowledge claim is true. No room for doubt here surely. And plenty of room for confidence. In fact, we can be so confident of this truth that we can apply it to solve real world problems in determining distances and constructing buildings.

However, if you know the history of Euclidean geometry, you’ll know that even this truth is only ‘certain enough’. You’ll know that when the mathematicians Lobachevsky and Riemann counter-intuitively denied the fifth (parallel lines) postulate of Euclidean geometry, this didn’t lead to a contradiction; it didn’t lead to uncertainty and, strangely enough, it didn’t put a dent into the initial confidence in Euclidean geometry. The resulting non-Euclidean, or, ‘hyperbolic’/‘elliptical’, geometry generated equal certainty and confidence in the new knowledge. It allowed experts to apply Pythagoras’ ideas to three dimensional surfaces in which the internal angles of a triangle add up to…either more than 180 degrees (elliptical geometry) or less than 180 degrees (hyperbolic geometry). The practical benefits of this knowledge, to navigational instruments for example have been immense.

So, just like in the Sciences, what appears to be absolute certainty in math knowledge is still open to doubt. The confidence we feel in math formulae and logic is justified but this isn’t always easy to sustain. This means that even math experts may feel a certain lack of confidence in their own rational abilities to prove a theorem, relying instead more on imagination and intuition as part of the process of gaining knowledge…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompts 5 & 6: Part 2

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 09:30:11 GMT

Certainty and confidence: thinking about methodology

So how do we untangle this potential problematic knot in our concepts?

The idea is that knowledge has both a subjective and objective element to it. That is, knowledge exists on a ‘spectrum’ – a sliding scale, if you like – of objective reason and subjective emotion; of certainty and confidence which do not always go in the same direction.

That is, someone can claim to know something with a high level of confidence but this can be demonstrated (objectively) to be highly doubtful or uncertain. A recent (ancient) example is the knowledge claim that the earth is flat. Now, a ‘Flat Earther’ may not believe, or even accept, the evidence you present to justify the alternative view but, nevertheless, the point remains: according to the available empirical evidence, gathered, tested and peer reviewed by disinterested experts, it is highly improbable that the Earth is, in fact, flat, no matter how much we may, according to definition 2 of ‘certainty’, be ‘subjectively certain’ that it is flat. So you see, in this example, confidence and certainty move in opposite directions. We can have a high level of confidence in knowledge without its necessarily being accurate or true. Whatever it is that is driving a Flat Earther’s confidence levels, it isn’t the same thing that’s driving the certainty level of the knowledge claim.

Now in the last passage, we used some terms that hint at the factors which drive the certainty of scientific knowledge. For example, ‘empirical’, which means that the kind of evidence that helps drive the ‘certainty level’ toward truth and accuracy needs to be observable by means of human perception. However, we know in our TOK studies on optical and aural illusions, that perception is not always reliable and can lead us to create a distorted map of the world. Our further studies on the ‘map metaphor’ will have reinforced this idea. This leads to a bit of a paradox: even though we know that our senses aren’t fully trustworthy, they allow us, in a scientific context, to produce knowledge claims of which we can and are certain. However, in this context at least, we must think of the truth of knowledge, and our certainty of it, in terms of ‘probabilities’.

The next term was ‘experts’. These trained knowers work individually and in groups to establish – ‘justify’ – knowledge, so as to establish the certainty of knowledge by means of various methodologies. Statistical analysis is one of these methods which enables experts to establish – wait for it – ‘confidence levels’ or ‘error bars’ when judging the truth of scientific knowledge. In this way, scientific knowledge can give us simultaneously ‘objectively certain’ knowledge about which we can be equally ‘subjectively certain’ or confident.

Another key term – testing’ – implies the use of the ‘falsification principle’. That is, the job of a scientific expert is never really to ‘prove’ or support a hypothesis with the available evidence. The problem of induction makes this difficult. An expert’s job is to design experiments to disprove a hypothesis. If a hypothesis can withstand such attempts at refutation – by the designer of the experiment as well as in peer review – then it is accepted into the scientific community with an element of certainty and confidence. For now.

These are just a couple of aspects of the overall scientific method. The main engine that drives this method is the ‘disinterested’ or ‘skeptical’ questioning by scientific experts of what we know already as a means of discovering new knowledge and refining or rejecting old knowledge. One of the key effects of this process is that scientific knowledge is always (Prompt 5) provisional and experts never seek complete (Prompt 6) – or 100% certainty – but only desire to be ‘certain enough’. The aim is to cultivate a healthy level of doubt about knowledge as a check or balance for overconfidence. You never know, even the experts can be mistaken…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompts 5 & 6: Part 1

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 11:00:56 GMT

Certainty & Confidence: A key distinction

As you dig into the definitions of these two key terms in these prompts – ‘confidence’ and ‘certainty’ – you’ll start to see that they appear to overlap in meaning. At times, you might even think they’re synonymous and can be used interchangeably. But take a step back. There is a relationship between the concepts but they are not the same.

In this post, we take a look at the nuances of meaning that show some similarities and, importantly, differences between ‘confidence’ and ‘certainty’ that might enable you to adapt your responses to each title more carefully.

Before we begin, let’s take a couple of Shorter OED definitions to see if we can construct a working sense of a distinction between the two concepts.

a/ ‘certainty’: ‘1. The quality of being objectively certain… 4. An undoubted fact; an indubitable prospect; a thing or person which may be relied on (to do)’.

b/ ‘confidence’: ‘1. Firm trust, reliance, faith (in); 2. Assurance arising from reliance on oneself, circumstances etc…’; 3. ‘A source of trust‘.

A first impression is that ‘certainty’ and ‘confidence’ seem to be different in that the former concept deals in ‘objectivity’ when it comes to knowledge whereas the latter deals in ‘subjectivity’ (‘reliance on oneself’).

Certainty might be a property of knowledge itself, existing independently of what we personally think or feel; a property that makes knowledge ‘reliable’ or ‘robust’; a property we might refer to as ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’. As definition a/ implies, we can know something with certainty, by establishing its truth value objectively by means of reason. Different AOKs do this in different ways, using different methods and conceptual tools and frameworks to achieve a level of ‘objectivity’. Some common ideas here are how experts ‘justify’, ‘prove’ or ‘support’ knowledge by means of different types of ‘evidence’ in establishing the truth or certainty of knowledge. We achieve a level of certainty by means of a rational approach when, as implied by the Latin root ratio, we proportion our belief in a knowledge claim according to the available evidence. We’ll come back to this later.

Confidence seems to be a property of human minds; a property that is fundamental to the way we emotionally experience the world of knowledge; a property like ‘trust’ or ‘faith’ on which we rely to give us a personal connection to the world of knowledge; a property which might also feel like ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ to us. As definition b/ suggests, we can have an implicit confidence in knowledge, to the point at which we’re convinced of its true or false nature, when we are personally invested in it. Quite, often reason or evidence or proof have nothing to do with our sense of confidence in what we claim to know. In fact, to others, our level of confidence may appear downright exaggerated and irrational. There are studies which suggest that we have a strong tendency to underestimate or overestimate our confidence in knowledge. We’ll touch on such studies later.

In a broad sense, the two terms seem to fit neatly into the TOK conception of shared and personal knowledge. Shared knowledge brings with it the quality of certainty, established by experts through reasoned handling of evidence. Personal knowledge generates different levels of confidence, shaped by our varying experiences and emotional exposure to different ideas in different cultural contexts. Neat and tidy distinction, yes?

Now let’s go back to the OED definitions. We deliberately left out a couple of entries for each definition, because this is where the overlaps between the two concepts are signalled and could cause confusion (bold font ours):

a/ ‘certainty’: ‘2. The quality or state of being subjectively certain ; assurance, confidence; certitude.’ !

b/ ‘confidence’: ‘4. Assured expectation; the state of feeling certain (of)’ !

Doesn’t this just mess up the distinctions we outlined above? This is often the source of much of the confusion around the two concepts. The bamboozling effect is intensified if we read further down the column in the entries on ‘confidence’ and see that statisticians often analyse data in terms of ‘confidence coefficients’. Just a second, surely statisticians are renowned for the ‘objective’ presentation of data, so shouldn’t this be called a ‘certainty coefficient’? It seems that even the experts use ‘certainty’ and ‘confidence’ interchangeably. Or do they…?

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompt 1

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 15:59:46 GMT

The accuracy vs the paradigm criterion

Experts within a discipline constantly challenge and question each others’ knowledge. It’s part of the very process of reaching consensus in disciplines like Climate Science, for example. We can sometimes identify a ‘line’ – if not always a ‘clear’ one – between those who dispute and those who accept the knowledge that human behaviour is a major cause of global warming by testing that knowledge. We do this by means of applying the correspondence truth scale. This involves focussing on the empirical evidence presented to support one or the other view and measuring the accuracy of the knowledge. We can then decide on which side of the line we stand and how justifiable this position is. Assessing where the line is – the value of knowledge – between accepted and disputed knowledge in this way is often a slow and painstaking process of refinement and incremental change. An often used example to illustrate this process is the development of the theory of the atom. From Dalton’s theory to Thompson’s then to Schroedinger’s model, at each stage of the development of the model, Scientists were able fairly precisely and clearly to draw line between which model could be accepted or disputed until consensus was reached.

However, in other cases, disagreements about knowledge aren’t simply a matter of determining the accuracy of knowledge. Disagreements occur when the discipline itself, not just the knowledge within it, is in a state of change; when the existing paradigm of the discipline is about to shift. A paradigm is, in a broad sense, the way experts do their job in the pursuit of knowledge. More narrowly, a paradigm involves specific processes or methods that shape how experts question existing knowledge; how they gather data to support hypotheses and how they communicate their results both within and outside of their communities. In short, a paradigm is less about establishing accurate knowledge than about ‘problem solving’. An expert’s goal isn’t about describing a phenomenon in a realistic way; it’s about challenging the very nature of how others within the knowledge community actually do their work – the very process or methods they use to pursue knowledge.

A shifting paradigm is hard to identify in the moment of its shifting. It’s usually only with the advantage of hindsight that we can see what was happening. From such a historical perspective, what we can infer is that when the whole methodology, purpose and aims of a discipline begin to shift, the line between accepted and disputed knowledge will be extremely vague. There may be a situation when the same knowledge is accepted and disputed simultaneously by different factions within the same community. Experts working within the traditional paradigm will continue to do things the way they would normally do them in their pursuit of knowledge and hold onto old knowledge. However, the experts belonging to the new paradigm will find revolutionary different ways of pursuing knowledge and these new ways yield new discoveries; new knowledge.

In short, the 'accuracy criterion' to help draw a line between accepted and disputed knowledge is helpful when old knowledge transitions into new knowledge. Some of the old knowledge may still be retained in the new knowledge but in a changed way. The line might be clear to begin with but during the transition phase between old and new knowledge, this line becomes blurred. The 'paradigm criterion' helps to draw a line between accepted and disputed knowledge when new knowledge either completely overturns and replaces old knowledge or induces different way of pursuing knowledge. The old knowledge is still 'there', so to speak, but either obsolete or explains things in a limited way. The line can't be drawn clearly at the time of the paradigm shift but in hindsight, we can see more clearly how we needed to let go of the old knowledge to achieve something new.

You can imagine the kinds of examples that illustrate this idea: geocentricsm/heliocentricism; Newtonian gravity/Einsteinian gravity; relativity/quantum theory… Of course, these are all examples of scientific paradigm shifts. Explore such shifts in other AOKs…

How are these examples different from the Climate Science example above? Well, it’s mainly to do with the fact that a paradigm shift isn’t do to do with ‘scientific realism’: describing the natural world with increasing accuracy. A paradigm shift is more to do with disputes about, and the acceptance of, how science is done – it’s methodology – rather than arguing solely about which theory best explains reality. Having said this, recall that during what is labelled ‘the Copernican Revolution’ in astronomy, it so happened that the experts who disputed the geocentric model of the universe did so not only because it was an inaccurate representation of nature, but also because this model wasn’t the product of a newly evolved process of ‘science’. So creating an accurate descriptive model of the universe and refining the methods of achieving this probably go hand in hand when trying to establish a criterion to differentiate between accepted and disputed knowledge.

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompt 2

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 14:41:40 GMT

The sensus divinitatis

Ever since Hume’s invitation in the 18th Century to proportion our ‘belief to the evidence’ in the production of knowledge, the slow but gradual erosion of religious knowledge has continued. If the justification of knowledge is based on providing the empirical evidence of the senses to support it, then surely it’s irrational to believe in the existence of God. Firstly, because there is no such material evidence. And secondly, even if there were, we probably wouldn’t know what it looked like. Hold on, the objection might arise. What about experience of miracles? Surely, this is evidence enough to justify knowledge of God’s power in our lives. Evidentialists might reject this appeal, arguing that miracles are notoriously anecdotal and eyewitness testimony is not entirely reliable. Moreover, the idea of miracles is based on a strange view of cause and effect relationships. That is, how could you ever ‘prove’, strictly speaking, that non-physical forces can ‘cause’ physical things to happen?

In the late 20th Century, thinkers began to question such evidentialist objections to religious knowledge, developing the view that it is rational to believe in God’s existence even though the kind of empirical evidence required for justifying this knowledge is unavailable. Alvin Plantinga reintroduced an idea originating in the thinking of John Calvin during the Reformation. Calvin proposed that we have a sensus divinitatis – an awareness of God – with which we are born. He calls it various things – an ‘awareness’, an ‘understanding’, an ‘inscription’ amongst other things – but let’s be clear: the sensus is not to be confused with faith. The sensus is not, in TOK terms, a fundamentally new way of knowing. This more ‘nativist’ idea implies that we are born with knowledge of God. Knowing God is the default position for humanity. If someone says that she doesn’t know God, then various things must have happened. Either the sensus has been damaged or the sinful nature of the world is clouding her knowledge.

Plantinga underlines the implications for a contemporary understanding of the idea. He argues with an analogy. From the evidentialist view, our sensory apparatus brings us the fundamental empirical evidence with which to build and justify knowledge. We ground our scientific knowledge, for example, on basic beliefs which go unquestioned and actually can’t be proven by empirical experience, such as the belief that relationships of cause and effect exist. Based on the assumption of causality, we are able, through further experimental processes, to generate physical evidence which allows us to explain how gravity works. From the new ‘reformed’ perspective, the sensus divinitatis is a similar apparatus that brings us fundamental direct experiential evidence with which to build and justify specifically religious knowledge about God. So for example, the belief in the existence of God is like the belief in causality. Based on the basic belief that God exists, we are able, by means of interacting with the natural world, to yield evidence which allows us to explain how miracles work.

Plantinga’s next move is to change the terms of explaining how knowledge is produced. Our sensory apparatus generates physical evidence to 'justify' knowledge. The sensus generates evidence to 'warrant' knowledge. This subtle difference between the production of religious knowledge and all other knowledge draws significant objections, perhaps the most humorous of which is ‘The Great Pumpkin’ counter claim. What do you think?

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2021 Prompt 5

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 11:02:40 GMT

Climate change and confidence

This title is a potential minefield of ambiguity, not least because it overlaps with Title 6 about the nature of uncertainty. For example, we can be certain that an event, like the recent US Presidential election, actually occurred but lack confidence in how we remember the twists and turns of the process. We can be uncertain about the future of our lives in a Covid world yet remain confident that we’ll adapt as best we can to whatever happens. Such confidence is personal and individual, subject to our moods and expectations at the time. It ties in with our attitudes and whether we generally take an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on life.

How does this work with knowledge? Well, Archimedes’ ‘Eureka moment’ seems to exemplify a strong confidence in what he suddenly recognised about the physics of mass though it would take some time and further experimentation and theorising before he could be certain. What he thought he knew about physics was about to change but he couldn’t announce his confidence before testing his theory.

This points to a distinction that could be helpful for a discussion of the title. Try to differentiate between personal or ‘psychological confidence’ and ‘epistemic ‘confidence’ (there’s a parallel distinction with the notion of ‘certainty’.) Psychological confidence is bound up with our emotions and changes with our changing moods and circumstances. Epistemic confidence is built into the very process of knowledge production and acquisition. On the one hand, when we are confident in what we claim to know, this means we not only believe in this knowledge but we’re also secure in being able to support this by means of some evidence. This ‘fixes’ or ‘steadies’ the initial emotional confidence we experience. On the other hand, our confidence is enhanced or undermined to the extent that what we claim to know is validated or rejected by others – our peers – in the pursuit of knowledge. In short, epistemic confidence, and certainty, are bound together within an interpersonal process. Within a knowledge community, experts engage in questioning each others’ knowledge claims to test them for their veracity. When our community agrees with our knowledge, the certainty of it, hence our confidence in it, rises. And vice versa if they disagree.

Of course, problems occur when you place this abstract discussion within the context of specific AOKs with concrete examples. When I learn that the Pope is open to the idea of gay marriage, can I now be so confident in claiming that gay marriage is wrong? Can I adapt and be confident that it’s right? This would surely mean that I would have to reject my old knowledge and emotionally and spiritually embrace the new knowledge. Believers might argue that my confidence here ought to be sustained not by any appeal to evidence but by my ‘faith’ that the Pope’s change of perspective is shaped by God. In fact, it could be argued that the Pope’s change of perspective is a test of the community’s faith.

Within the context of the N and H Sciences, the distinction between confidence and certainty is sometimes blurred, owing to the way in which both experts and non-experts muddle the concepts. However, this article on climate science goes some way to untangle the concepts and explain how scientists generally measure confidence and certainty levels within a field in which knowledge seems to change so rapidly.

In presenting data about the nature of anthropogenic causes of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , distinguishes between two scales. First, there is a scale of ‘confidence’ which has qualitative measures, shaped by the “type, amount, quality and consistency of evidence”. Second, there is a scale of ‘certainty’ which is measured in terms of probabilities by means of the methodological tools of “observations, modelling results of expert judgement”.

This way of framing the two related concepts has two advantages. First of all, it leads to more consistency and clarity in communicating the data relating to climate change. And secondly, the terminology generates clear feedback to help experts pin point whether or not a specific area of climate research needs further investigation or if their data gathering techniques are flawed.

The ultimate aim is, of course, is that clarifying our concepts in this way helps us reach a scientific consensus about a global issue which we may or may not survive. The last two paragraphs of the article neatly sum up the wider implications of why it’s so crucial to measure scientific confidence and certainty.

ToK Essay Titles May 2021 Prompt 2

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 14:15:07 GMT

History, endtimes and moral progress

One way to differentiate between ‘change’ and ‘progress’ is to think of whether or not a change in knowledge is goal orientated. For example, when Fleming discovered penicillin, scientists would eventually talk of Fleming’s breakthrough as real ‘medical progress’. This is because it is one of the goals of the medical sciences to save as many lives as possible without harming others or the environment in the process. Even when a goal, such as this one, isn’t entirely pragmatic, we can still point to ‘progress’. Consider the recent developments in theoretical physics at institutions like CERNE. The scientific community’s knowledge of fundamental particles which make up the Universe may have little practical value (for now), but there has still been progress in this field of research.

There is a parallel in the Arts. Some Arts are goal oriented in a practical way: they aim to change people’s perspectives by teaching them about the world and its ways. For example, Titus Kaphar’s paintings engage in a ‘truth telling’ project to help us remember the lives of unseen, marginalised people from the past, who lived in the era of slavery and discrimination in the United States. The goal here is to foster tolerance of difference and, as with Fleming, time will tell if Kaphar’s aesthetic innovations will be classed as ‘progressive’. Other artists pursue art for its own sake – for the joy and beauty of making art. This leads to different kinds of formalist genres where technical skill overshadows any content or message the art might have. Examples abound: from Jackson Pollock’s ‘drip’ paintings to John Cage’s ‘silent’ piece, 4’33’’. While these changes in approaches to artistic composition might not immediately affect how WHOLE communities of artist work, they nevertheless mark a more personal progress in the artistic careers of the artists themselves.

In RKS, this line of thinking can be explored in different ways. For instance, the break from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, was certainly a dramatic change but was it ‘progress’? Yes, if you consider that one of Luther’s goals was to make religious faith (and the benefits that went with it, like education) more accessible and personal to the poor masses, rather than a haven for the rich and privileged. On another level, within the Christian framework of sin and redemption, a person’s ‘moral progress’ can be measured in terms of how she aligns her individual will to God’s Will. God’s Will is a good in itself, emanating from his nature as omnibenevolent, and allows one to measure the changes in one’s life towards the ultimate test of one’s moral progress: whether or not one gains access to heaven in the after-life. At least, two problems remain. First, how do we KNOW what God’s Will is for us? Religious experts can help here. And second, is the threat of not getting into heaven strong enough to make us progress morally in this life? A question to address in another post! So far, we’ve been discussing ‘personal’ moral progress. What about the moral progress of the group?

The term ‘eschatological’ can be of help in this context. In specifically Christian terms, ‘eschatology’ describes beliefs about the end of history and the final destiny of human kind. The world we live in is imperfect, so the story goes. God’s final judgement is to destroy the old order and bring humanity into a new order in the afterlife. Religious or moral progress for mankind is defined by our ability to withstand the tribulations of history until the moment of Apocalypse. However, thinkers distinguish between ‘historical’ and ‘mythical’ eschatology to allow for exploration of stories about the end of the world which don’t belong to this traditional Christian framework of thought. These two approaches imply different conceptions of TIME. In a primarily historical eschatology, time is thought of in linear terms as progressing from a starting point to an end point within the same continuum; from disorder and chaos to order and harmony. In a mythical eschatology, time is more cyclical in which the ‘endtime’ repeats or returns to the original state of order and harmony in which mankind lived. Both storytelling frameworks allow an equally interesting way of differentiating between change and progress of individuals and groups in the context of morality…

ToK Essay Titles May 2021 Prompt 3

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 14:36:45 GMT

Christian Angelology

At Christmas, when you go carol singing and bellow out at the top of your voice, ‘Hark the herald angels sing…’, it would be no surprise if you gave no thought to the fact that there’s a complex classification of angels within Christian religious thought. You thought you were just having fun but the label ‘angels’ signals something deeper at work…

The three ‘spheres’ of angels is itself subdivided into another three ‘Orders’ or ‘Choirs’. Hence, we end up with nine different kinds of angel, each with its own set of jobs and powers within a hierarchy, at head of which is God.

The idea is, of course, that humans need something to mediate God’s intentions and plans, so the ‘ hierarchy of angels ’ acts as a kind of ‘celestial media network’ to transmit messages from God to us. Labelling each sphere and choir, is a way of making the complex process of divine messaging more coherent and simplified. Each part can then be seen separately but also as part of a whole machinery of godly communication.

The overall effect of such labelling is quite a beautiful – symmetrical – organised pattern of knowledge which enhances, rather than constrains the believer’s understanding of how God works within the world of His creation. The subsequent narrative built around such labelling is a way of making sense of the often ‘mysterious ways’ in which God communicates His Will for each individual human soul within the context of the wider Plan He has for them. And the labelling has also been a source of inspiration for the Arts, Ethics and Human Sciences…

It seems that ‘labels’ or concepts, language as a whole, are intimately tied with our thought processes. Human minds need to find order within a natural or supernatural world of randomness. Not only this, but there’s also a need to arrange the world, social or divine, into a hierarchy in which the different levels involve different authority statuses and responsibility. In this sense, labels highlight, to some extent, how knowledge is power…

ToK Prescribed Essays November 2020 Titles 3 & 5 Part 2

Sat, 02 May 2020 12:58:02 GMT

‘Novum Organum’ vs ‘Spiritual Diaries’: The Light and Dark Twins

Both Dee and Bacon were driven by a key assumption shared by the intellects of the time: an undying faith that the universe was not random. They believed that behind the suffering and misery and shortness of life, there was an order just waiting to be known. Man was central to this enterprise and as such not only as ‘the most important thing in the universe’, but also as the pivot around which this knowledge ‘revolves’. Bacon’s faith was in humanity’s enduring capacity to know nature and thereby control all aspects of it, the social, economic and political, which laid the path for the innovations of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century. Dee’s faith was in bringing to birth a new order into the world grounded in divine principles but with humanity as the driving force of this movement. Some historians argue that this is how Queen Elizabeth used Dee's knowledge to justify her own imperial ambitions and pave the way for the later Colonial dominance of the English.

The difference between them lies in the fact that while Bacon saw the problems of this assumption, Dee did not appear to do so. Bacon saw the problem of human blind spots when it came to applying the principles of science effectively. What today we call the central ‘biases’ that undermine our ability to gain or produce knowledge originate in Bacon’s thinking about the ‘Idols of the Mind’. Bacon’s method allowed the possibility of human error, assumptions and prejudice. He understood that future scientists would take his ‘principles’ and resolve their problems to adapt them to new environments.

Dee, for all his scientific thinking and knowledge, is an almost forgotten exponent of scientific questioning. Perhaps his over-reliance on magic, obsolete tech and theatre undermined his pursuit of new knowledge, because it was delivered as an ‘absolute truth’ with no further questioning allowed. For a time, nevertheless, it was popular at court and he became a personal consultant to Queen Elizabeth. His shiny, black ‘scrying glass’ exists, however, in the British Museum. It encapsulates the origin story of how too much knowledge came to revolve around us and the problems this can cause. When you look at the surface of the glass, all it seems to do is reflect back a shadow silhouette of yourself. Rather than being a portal to another world of knowledge, perhaps it is also somehow a metaphor for our own blinkered approach to how we come to know what we know…

ToK Prescribed Essays November 2020 Titles 3 & 5 Part 1

Sat, 02 May 2020 12:57:54 GMT

‘Novum Organum’ vs ‘Spiritual Diaries’: The Light and Dark Twins

The Elizabethan Age in England was as full of tensions as any other historical period in any other country. With new renaissance ideas taking root, such as ‘humanism’, which promoted the centrality of the human mind in the universe, there emerged a kind of dissonance between what we already knew and what we did not know. What we already knew was based on the power of religious knowledge to shape all aspects of life. What we did not know and were about to was the power of scientific knowledge to give humans more independence and control over their lives.

In this turmoil of transition from the ‘old’ to a newer ‘modern’ world, emerged two English contemporaries of Shakespeare: John Dee and Francis Bacon. While both men were obsessed about how to discover new knowledge, the questions they asked in acquiring this knowledge came from very different places.

Bacon is considered to be the father of modern science, whose ‘Novum Organum’ sets out the principles of thinking which have evolved into the scientific method as we know it today. He proposed a repetitive process of observation and evidence gathering, aimed at testing our hypotheses about how the natural world works, using the available technology of the time. Part of this process is our ability to ask questions about what we already know as a way of refining our hypotheses and making our knowledge of the natural world increasingly closer to the truth. This slow but steady process of incremental edits of what we already know prefigured Popper’s idea of scientific ‘falsification’ and explains how knowledge evolves over time towards more accuracy.

Dee is considered to be a ‘Magus’, existing in the murkier world between the old superstitions and the new science. His ‘Spiritual Diaries’ encapsulate a mode of questioning based not on books or what people already knew in their minds but on a ‘method of divination’, asking angels for answers to his most pressing need to know what no one else knew. His approach was, strangely enough, meticulously scientific in a broad Baconian sense. With the help of a piece of new-old technology of his time, the Aztec manufactured ‘Obsidian Mirror’, Dee was able to build new knowledge by combining observations he made during ‘scrying’ sessions (talking one-to-one with angels). He would follow this up with deep analyses of the data to work out which were true revelations from angels and which were the tricks played by demons. In this sense, Dee himself showed he believed in the progress of knowledge, whether or not this progress was ‘real’ in the scientific sense.

Continue to Part 2…

ToK Essay Title Nov 2020: Prompt 1

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 07:56:55 GMT

A Surveillance Society and the Censorship of Knowledge

Whether it’s a personal disagreement between people or two experts disagreeing over a technical aspect of knowledge, one thing seems to be certain. The resolution of the disagreement can only happen if there is some sort of open-mindedness in both parties to see the other’s side of the story. The ‘essential’ aspect of the title seems to point to the need to balance one’s perspective and to cultivate an atmosphere of compromise in order to reach agreement or consensus.

In expert knowledge communities, for example, disagreements usually happen when individuals or groups challenge the existing consensus. After a length of time, the disagreement may (or may not) be resolved though the new consensus may have changed from the original consensus in some aspects.

Numerous examples exist to illustrate this dynamic. Consider, Einstein’s disagreement with Niels Bohr about the nature of how small particles behave in the quantum world. Even as quantum physicists built theories to explained the randomness of the quantum events, Einstein resisted giving equal attention to both sides with his famous outburst, ‘God does not play dice!’

Even though Einstein was never fully convinced, this title is good advice when lives are at stake; when knowledge is used or abused in its application; when people cross moral boundaries in order to pursue knowledge.

Just consider for a moment the following example of an issue from the world of Technology and Media which should concern us all: surveillance and the right to privacy.

In 2013, Edward Snowdon released secret files as evidence of a secret government scheme to build a massive knowledge base of every citizen’s personal details. He was forced to go into hiding because this completely went against the conventional thinking that Government is always looking out for the best interests of its citizens and would never dream of spying on them.

Snowden’s act of ‘whistleblowing’ generated major disagreements between those who supported him and those who were against him. On the one hand, those for Snowdon argue that personal privacy is a Human Right built into the very Constitution and Government should respect this as a matter of law. On the other hand, those against him argue that the knowledge gained by Government will help them weed out the evildoers in the community, so if citizens haven’t done anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about.

Does their disagreement 'need' to be resolved? Yes, because it raises two highly important issues. Firstly, the issue of whether the Government should have limits placed on its power. And secondly, the issue of whether some knowledge should be censored from public view for their own good.

Is it 'essential' to give ‘equal attention to both sides’? Well yes, for otherwise how can the issues of privacy, Government power and censorship of knowledge ever be resolved? Political scientists and politicians have to work together to reach some sort of compromise or trade-off which a/ makes Government clearly accountable for its decisions and actions but b/ gives them enough latitude to do what is in the best interests of its people. The general public also have a responsibility in this process. How willing are we to allow knowledge about our personal lives to be made readily accessible to third parties who are not transparent about telling us what they will do with it?

If the world of social media is any evidence, we are very willing to give up our privacy…

As yet, Snowdon is still in exile and the disagreements about these issues continue to rage in the public domain…

ToK Essay Title Nov 2020 Prompt 2: Part 2

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 12:10:26 GMT

What if...? Hypotheticals

In a historical context, counterfactual thinking or ‘virtual history’ engages in ‘what if…?’ speculations about the past as a way of imagining a multitude of present scenarios based on an altered timeline of the past. For example, ‘If the Civil War in the USA hadn’t turned out as it did, what would have happened to slavery?’

However, within the professional community of historians , such thinking is a two edged-sword. Some experts think that ‘what if…?’ hypotheticals are disengaged from the foundations of historical methods: the evidence of primary and secondary sources. However, other experts believed that such counterfactuals can help historians more awareness about HOW they use such evidence in the first place and about their own methodological blind spots. These experts argue that a counter factual analysis of the past breaks the myth that history is deterministic. The nay-sayers argue, however, that counterfactual thinking engages the imagination more than rational analysis and belongs in the field of fiction.

Now, we know that fictional writers, especially science fiction and fantasy writers, naturally think in terms of counterfactual or ‘possible worlds’. This explains in part the success of shows like Star Trek, films like Back to the Future and more recently, the Harry Potter series of books. Now these are not simply escapist fancies. They tell us something both about the culture in which they emerged as well as about the hopes, fears and desires of human beings living during those times. Which brings us to the final point of this post and a closer connection to knowledge…

Stories are particularly good at shaping the mind’s perspectives. In a movie or a gaming situation, we suspend our disbelief about the world we’re about to enter, enabling as to accept the wild and strange events that we’re about to experience. On another, more evolutionary level , stories help us to picture future scenarios, partly as a way of getting to grips with our present circumstances and partly as a way of preparing for unknown future outcomes.

Lewis Dartnell’s book, The Knowledge , seems to bring together, in a way particularly relevant to our present lockdown circumstances, all these different aspects of hypothetical thinking mentioned in these posts. Imagine, he invites us, a post-apocalyptic situation in which only a handful of survivors remained to kick start everything again. He asks: ‘What key knowledge would you need to start rebuilding civilisation from scratch?

This is a fascinating exploration of a ‘what if…?’ situation with clear practical implications, not only for rebuilding a civilisation, but of perhaps building one on another planet in some intergalactic future. There are also far reaching issues linked to the preservation of knowledge at present, something that indigenous cultures who rely on the oral transmission of knowledge have struggled with for a long time. And it is a reflection on the cornerstone of the TOK course: how we use and abuse knowledge and know-how over time…

ToK Essay Title Nov 2020 Prompt 2: Part 1

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 14:46:37 GMT

What if...? Hypotheticals

In general terms, the ‘if…then’ clause in a sentence expresses a statement about cause and effect. For example, ‘If I eat too much junk food, I become ill.’ The correlation between the cause (junk food) and effect (illness) is not always 100% absolute and, in scientific terms at least, lies on a probability scale from ‘Probably True’ to ‘Probably Not True’ and can be tested by means of experimentation. Sometimes, such clauses are formulated into ‘hypotheses’ about how the world works or even as ‘predictions’ as part of theories.

In a more philosophical context, the ‘if…then’ clause, often formulated in the conditional tense, signals a more ‘counter factual’ logic when analysing issues of causation. What makes a statement counter factual is that the antecedent – the ‘if’ part of the clause – is false (ie. literally goes against the facts) but the subsequent – the ‘then’ part of the clause – does not have to be false.

Examples:

‘If Donald Trump hadn’t been elected as President, the world would be more at peace.’

‘If leopards changed their spots, I’d do that bungee jump.’

‘If you survived when I throw you into the river tied to a weight, you’d be a witch.’

In each of the cases, the antecedent/cause is false: Trump DID win; leopards CAN’T change their spots and people DON’T tend to survive drowning in the given circumstances. However, the subsequent/cause ‘could’ still turn out to be fact: the world still has a chance for peace; I ‘might’ still jump and other non-supernatural kinds of bewitchment may manifest themselves in people…

We don’t want to go too deeply into the ins and outs of the logic of counterfactual thinking about causation (click the link to discover more) but one thing to say is that a key idea to emerge from philosophical approaches to counterfactual logic was that of ‘possible worlds’.

In a psychological context, the ‘if…then’ clause, or ‘if I had only...’ statement, expresses a form of ‘hypothetical thinking’ which makes use of the idea of possible worlds in philosophy. As a way of dealing with past events or actions which cannot be changed, we can at least confront the consequences of those actions. One way of doing this is to imagine what range of effects might have occurred had any of the variables in the past been different. We can do this by modifying one of the facts from a past event or action and assessing the vastly different consequences of the change.

For example, you can reflect on your current financial situation by imagining how things would be different: ‘If only I hadn’t spent all my savings on that old car…’ The consequences can be better or worse than what actually happened: ‘…I wouldn’t constantly be getting it repaired and losing more money…’ or ‘If I’d not saved up so much in the first place, I’d be in debt’. The resulting emotions can be either more or less hurtful/pleasurable than what you originally felt. Perhaps, guilt, regret and frustration in the first example; relief and gratitude in the second.

On a practical level, this counterfactual approach can help release emotions you might not let yourself feel at the time or it can give you a clearer sense of where blame or responsibility lies in the situation...

ToK Essay Titles May 2020 Prompts 2 & 4: Part 2

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 09:43:37 GMT

The ‘negative way’ of describing the divine: Part 2

So far, we’ve explored the idea of describing something in negative terms in a very abstract way. What does kataphatic and apophatic description look like? Two good examples are the sixteenth century Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola and the mystical work of an unknown author of the fourteenth century who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing .

The ‘apophatic’ tradition of mysticism in the Christian context has its parallels in eastern mysticism too. Lao-Tse opens the mystical poem, Tao Teh Ching , ‘the Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao’, suggesting that the Tao , the way of all being, is beyond the human ability to describe things. Similarly, in the Buddhist scriptures, Buddha describes nirvana , the goal of Enlightenment, in terms of what it is not: not only is nirvana beyond ordinary human existence, it is also something which cannot be described or explained in terms of images or concepts we commonly use to share human experiences. Finally, in Hindu scriptures, like the Upanishads , the ultimate reality of Brahman which the knower seeks is also beyond human description and comprehension. Brahman is hidden behind the forms of nature and the names we give to it and only reveals itself to those who practise the strictest discipline in the rituals of prayer and contemplation required to find union with it.

Let’s end by returning to the distinction between kataphatic and apophatic descriptions of the Divine. Remember that they are two parts of a whole process and that we only have our limited human language to help us make sense of God. Thus, in terms of the affirmative, positive theology, every word we use to describe some quality of the human world of experience can be used analogously to describe God: ‘good’, ‘whole’, ‘light’ and ‘truth’. However, in the very saying of these descriptions, the seeker of God realises that God transcends all such descriptions. In terms of the of negative theology, unsaying through use of words such as ‘darkness’, ‘void’, ‘emptiness’ and ‘nothingness’ acknowledges that God is wholly Other to anything the human mind can contain, something unimaginable.

The words become signposts to the state of unknowing in which the Divine fleetingly reveals itself, as T.S. Eliot poetically wrote towards the end of Little Gidding : ‘Not known, because not looked for/But heard, half-heard, in the stillness/Between two waves of the sea.’ Sometimes the experiences is more muted, as Ludwig Wittgenstein seemed to imply poignantly about reaching the limits of language in his Tractatus : ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

ToK Essay Titles May 2020 Prompts 2 & 4 Part 1

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 09:43:32 GMT

The ‘negative way’ of describing the divine: Part 1

We’ve grown used to thinking about knowledge in binary terms, between which there seem to be sharp defining lines. Knowledge must be made up of ‘descriptions’ of things and ‘explanations’. Claims about the world are thought to be either ‘true’ or ‘false’. We categorise people as having either ‘knowledge’ or ignorance’. And while, sometimes eccentric people come along, like Socrates, and claim that the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing, there is a tradition of thought that exists on the boundary between knowing and not knowing; in a place and time described us ‘unknowing’.

In the context of monotheistic religious thinking – the Christian, Judaic and Islamic ideas of faith – there is a mystical approach to the idea of describing God known as the via negativa or ‘negative way’. There are two key assumptions that set the foundations of this ‘apophatic’ tradition or ‘negative theology’. First, God cannot be known through the limited language and rational mind of humans. We just don’t have the brainpower or words to encapsulate his limitless Being in a comprehensible way. And second, we can only know God’s Being by means of describing what he is ‘not’. The Greek word apophasis means ‘negation’ or in terms of the method of ‘negative theology’, the process by which we start to ‘un-know’ what we think we know about 'God'. Another sense is to think of the expression apo phasis , meaning literally ‘speaking-away’ or ‘unsaying’.

This line of thinking advances as follows. On the one hand, ‘unknowing’ is not the same as ‘not knowing’ or ‘unbelief’. It is an experience of the divine, not a rational or logical mode of arguing someone into a belief in God. To know God is to cleanse the mind of explanations, arguments and persuasions about what he is, in order to reach union with him. On the other hand, ‘unknowing’ is not the same as the ‘absence’ of knowledge since there is an ultimate goal which is to know God. However, to achieve knowledge of God by unknowing means to surrender the self to him. In this surrender, the self isn’t dissolved and doesn't lose its identity, but maintains an enhanced spiritual identity in its mystical union with God. To know God is to let go of one’s self or mind by synchronising it with him.

Now, the mystics realised that this creates a problem of langugage: in order to describe God’s being in terms of what he is not, we must still use our limited human concepts like ‘God’, ‘Being’, ‘not’ and the male pronoun ‘Him’. This aporia or dilemma is unavoidable. Already, in order to assert that ‘God is beyond all description’, we have labelled what is beyond all human labels, so the mystic would insist that we have already lost sight of the essential unknowability of the Divine. So how do we break out of this circularity?

One approach is to suggest that the apophatic language of negation or ‘unsaying’ must be balanced by its opposite, kataphatic language, in which positive descriptions are made of God. The Greek term kata phasis means ‘speaking with’ or ‘saying’ something in more affirmative terms. This process of affirming or ‘saying’ what God is and simultaneously ‘unsaying’ it is part of the discipline of reaching union with God. Of course, this leads to another aporia : the balancing ‘unsaying’ which negates the previous positive assertion about God is itself a ‘saying’ which needs to be unsaid. It is within this dialectical tension between affirmation and negation – the poles of kataphatic and apophatic language – between saying and unsaying that the mind is on the edge of knowing and not-knowing; it is in a state of unknowing and encounters what is beyond knowing, God. Somewhere, within the vortex of words and thought and feeling, the self is given a glimpse of the Divine, but it is so fleeting that it must be refreshed with ongoing acts of unsaying…

ToK Essay Titles May 2020 Prompts 2 & 4 Pt 2

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 18:58:32 GMT

Making the strange familiar: Part 2

Consider the language of the stories of the Bible, for example. Can we confidently argue that the descriptions and analogies help both to explain and justify knowledge?

On the one hand, believers argue the story of the flood must have been based on true events as we find similar stories in other religious texts. The flood was a significantly catastrophic event throughout the earth to have compelled the imaginations of humans strongly enough for them to have recorded it. Thus sacred texts are seen also to be historical documents in part; primary sources to help reconstruct a historical narrative of the past. And in fact, this is how ‘ geomythologists ’ use such descriptions or analogies to explain key geological events. In this way, descriptions or stories are used to ‘validate’ if not fully ‘justify’ knowledge which can’t be done by existing scientific approaches. However, when a similar line of argument is made to support the idea that according to the timeline of biblical events, the earth is only 4000 years old, are we to take this literally?

On the other hand, atheists argue that the story of Noah is only that – a story, a fiction. It might be very entertaining and engage us imaginatively and emotionally into a completely different world from our own. Furthermore, we can take whatever moral we want from the story, such as ‘the endurance of human hope in the face of adversity’, but this does not make the events of the story real or true historical knowledge. However, such arguments often detract from the sense that such Biblical myths helped our ancestors to make sense of a random universe and gave them an emotional strength to survive disasters.

Let’s come round to the previous post again. What do you notice about each of the expressions: ‘iron horse’, ‘floating mountains’ and ‘flying saucers’? They are deeply metaphoric. Metaphor or storytelling, it seems, is crucial to our ability to make sense of the world (understanding), especially our experiences of it. Metaphor fills the gaps, so to speak, in our more literal & factual attempts to grasp order and meaning in what we see in our universe. The North American Indian, seeing a giant, metallic object, racing towards him, breathing smoke and screaming violently, can only grasp what he’s sensing by comparing this unbelievably strange experience in terms of something more familiar to him. Analogy or metaphor helps to suspend our incredulity about the world and reach for knowledge and understanding that slips through our more literal/factual (rational?) approaches.

Which begs the KQ: to what extent is imagination an integral part of building knowledge? Or the more ethical KQ: should knowledge, grasped imaginatively and presented in metaphorical stories, be rejected with a corresponding rejection of the knowledge?

If the South American Indians had collectively accepted the ‘floating horses’ hypothesis, might they have taken more seriously the threat of the invading Spanish ships? A ‘what if?’ question, the answer to which we’ll never be able to know.

On another level, what happens when we can’t tell the difference between our fictions and the reality from which they are made? What if we believe a fiction to be true...?

ToK Essay Titles May 2020 Prompts 2 & 4 Pt 1

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 18:47:02 GMT

Making the strange familiar: Part 1

While a description of something can be made both factually and figuratively, usually only a factual description is seen as being helpful in making explanations of things. Figurative descriptions are often seen to be ‘messy’ and get in the way of giving clear and objective reasons as to how and why things are as they are. But look at this…

Question: What do the expressions ‘ iron horse ’, ‘ floating mountains ’ and ‘ flying saucers ’ have in common?

Answer: They are part of a description or story told in response to something seen for the first time – an attempt to explain or make sense of something unfamiliar and unknown and never experienced before.

The ‘iron horse’ was, allegedly, how a Native North American Indian described the first train that was seen moving across the North American plains. A ‘floating mountain’ (Section: ‘Spanish Contact’) was, supposedly, how the native South American Indian spies described the oncoming ships of the Spanish invaders. And, ‘flying saucer’, as everyone may know, is how the Western media first publicised the phenomenon of UFOs. Now, imagine how each of these assertions were received by the general population: with understanding nods of approval and general acceptance? With undoubting certitude and unquestioning acknowledgement? Nope. Most probably with a lot of hilarity and not merely a pinch of condescending irony.

So you see, the implied distinction between ‘description’ and ‘explanation’ is not always so clear cut and the above examples evidently counter the title quote, especially as regards building new knowledge.

In short, figurative descriptions give us flexibility in making sense of the world, especially when trying to explain to ourselves strange, new experiences for which we struggle to find the right words with which to express them.

Justifications go further than explanations because they require us to align our reasons for why we claim to know what we know with a body of physical evidence that supports those reasons.

However, there is a problem. Some skeptics reject a knowledge claim, not simply on the grounds that it is asserted without evidence, but because the evidence presented is framed in highly analogical terms and is thereby somehow diluted as far as justification of knowledge is concerned. In other words, evidence presented in the form of figurative language is not the best vehicle for justifying knowledge.

When justifying knowledge claims in the Bible, believers often argue that we shouldn’t take the words of the Biblical stories too literally, because this detracts from their symbolic message or teaching. However, atheists sometimes argue that after you’ve stripped the metaphor away from the language of the stories, there’s nothing of factual substance left in the message which we could reasonably argue represents knowledge. These alternative arguments support not only the idea that there is a ‘sharp line’ between description and explanation (Title 2), but also that analogy aids understanding but not justification (Title 4).

See the next post to think through the idea…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2019 Prompt 6

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 11:31:35 GMT

Pigcasso's truth in painting

Throughout the history of art, artists have sought to find ‘significant truths’ about humans and our place within the wider cosmos by searching for the ideal of aesthetic Beauty. This unchanging, permanent and almost divine quality of a work of art was considered to be the defining feature separating great Art from more mediocre works. The big question was, of course, is ‘Beauty’ actually ‘in’ the work itself, or something we project into the work of art? In short, how can anyone objectively know what is or isn’t beautiful?

German Idealist philosophers of the 19th Century theorised that the aesthetic quality of an art work, the idea of the ‘sublime’, wasn’t a ‘thing’ to be perceived, it was an experience to be felt. Well, this neatly fits in with the Romantic movement which underlined the subjectivity of art. Later, practising artists, like Tolstoy and George Bernard Shaw, argued that art derives its meaning by its didactic nature. That is, art teaches us religious or moral lessons in an attempt to make us more virtuous citizens.

There is a particularly social edge to all significant art, because raising awareness of social ills and changing society for the better is the main goal of artists. Other practitioners, like Oscar Wilde, suggested that the meaning of art was purely private. That is, artists produce art for themselves and any meaning or significance it holds for others is purely accidental or a by-product. This self-interested aspect of significant art was part of a movement which underlined that the purpose of art was to produce pleasure and entertainment for its own sake. There is no other utility in artistic production.

In one form or another, this idea stretches back to Plato, who argued that the work of an artist was only to represent the world of appearances and not reality. Plato distrusted artists and, for this reason, had no place for them in his Republic.

So what has all this to do with Pigcasso and the association with Swatch? Has Pigcasso found a ‘significant’ truth in her pursuit of artistic knowledge? Have the management of Swatch suddenly discovered a ‘significant truth’ hidden in Pigcasso’s art that we have all missed? Pigcasso’s art seems, like the best avant garde movements, to break free from any attempts to categorise it as ‘sublime’, ‘didactic’ or even purely ‘art for art’s sake’. Whatever ‘intentions’ lie behind the art works, they will forever remain a mystery to us.

This search for meaningful intentions on Pigcasso’s part might involve us with the ‘intentional fallacy’. But surely we are right to ask ourselves whether or not accepting such art as significant in any sense suggests that we’ve really reached the limits of imagination, ours if not the pig’s! And then there’s the possibility that Swatch has simply exploited a quirky situation for commercial gain rather than sharing with the world the supposed ‘surprising’ qualities of the pig’s art.

Even if Pigcasso’s artistic estate is paid a juicy commission for every limited edition Pigcasso Swatch sells, do we now need to be morally concerned about the rights of animal artists? This might sound like a trivial pursuit of ethical knowledge. However, in the realm of art and ethics, it certainly makes distinguishing between what is significantly true or not all that much harder…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2019 Prompt 5

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 10:03:51 GMT

Doubting Thomas, scepticism & knowledge

Jesus was by all accounts an extraordinary being. Extraordinary things happened to him, nothing more so than his resurrection after being crucified. Hence, when news of this amazing event reached his ears, Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples, responded like a modern day sceptic: “unless I shall see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my fingers into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John, 20:24-9). In spite of witnessing Jesus do some pretty wild things while he was still alive, like bringing Lazarus back from the dead, this strangely morbid request for concrete, physical evidence seems out of place.

The incident has generated much debate as to the meaning of Thomas’s reaction. Didn’t he already believe in the divinity of Jesus? Why should he question his faith? In the alleged words of Carl Sagan, what Thomas wanted was some ‘extraordinary evidence’ to support an ‘extraordinary claim’. That is, Thomas was not going to accept the claim about resurrection simply through eye witness testimony. He wanted first-hand experience of seeing the nail holes and feeling the wounds in Jesus’s body.

Caravaggio’s painting gruesomely depicts how Thomas got what he asked for and, at the same time, imagines that he probably got more than he bargained for! The impact on Thomas was, nevertheless, instantaneous. He believed. His knowledge and faith now reinforced, Thomas’s life took on new meaning and purpose. He became the Apostle who took the teachings of Jesus into the East and founded the Christian mission in India.

But what about us? Isn’t Thomas supposed to be the perfect TOK role model: the one who questions knowledge claims? Aren’t we supposed, like Thomas himself, to question the reliability of eye witness testimony and not take things on the basis of personal anecdotes? The problem is, of course, that Thomas had the privilege of coming face to face with the resurrected Jesus. All we have is a third party story by John which recounts Thomas’s own discovery of extraordinary evidence of Jesus’s resurrection. We don’t have access to this or any other such concreted evidence. So shouldn’t we remain true to the spirit and letter of Thomas’s own scepticism? From a religious perspective, probably ‘No’.

God’s response to Thomas gives a clue as to why we should remain open to the possibility of the extraordinary without requesting extraordinary concrete supporting evidence: “Because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” One interpretation of these words is that we must embrace the possibility that we will never get the kind of hard physical evidence that Thomas received in our quest to know Christ. This means that in some ways Christ is never fully knowable and will remain a mystery. In other words, Thomas’s own doubts become a permanent symbol of the divine mystery of God’s creation and all the associated wonders of His work. What remains is for us to bridge that doubt and uncertainty by opening ourselves up to faith as a justification of religious knowledge.

The Christian Scriptures point to two sense of ‘faith’ that encapsulate this idea. First, faith is described as ‘a conviction of things not seen’ (Hebrews, 11:1). That is, believing something without grounding it in the evidence of the senses. Second, ‘faith apart from works is dead’ (James, 2:26). That is, believing is not simply an intellectual acknowledgement of, or justification for, something more than human; it is a commitment to act on your beliefs. Initially, Thomas may not have had faith in the first sense, but he more than made up for it by showing faith in the second sense. In short, his immediate scepticism neither diminished, nor undermined, nor jeopardised his later successful production of Christian knowledge through his missionary work in the Eastern lands…

ToK Essay Titles Nov 2019 Prompt 4

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 09:22:22 GMT

Kekule's dream and Pasternak's sketches

Imagine the scenario. A young Kekulé travelling on a bus and suddenly enchanted by atoms dancing before his eyesight. Later that night he spends the hours sketching the images from his daydream. This is the backstory of his later, more famous, ‘ ourobouros ’ dream which formed the basis of his discovery of the structure of the benzene molecule. It’s a story that has become the stuff of myth and the example itself is quite clichéd. Still, both experiences have in common the process of serendipity that is sometimes part of the knowledge production process. However, it isn’t as simple as observing then writing down the observations.

In an 1890 lecture, in which Kekule recounted these episodes, he was keen to invite his colleagues to ‘dream’ as part of the scientific search for truth. Nevertheless, he was careful to assert that simply writing down or publishing these dreams without testing them through ‘waking understanding’ is futile. In other words, the kind of insight that emerges from such accidental moments of lucidity is just the start of the knowledge making process, not the end. We don’t have ready-made knowledge through simple observation. We have, in the sciences at least, to scrutinise the observations, test them according to a rigorous process of experimentation and reasoning and prediction. Once the initial observations have been filtered through the scientific method, we can write up our theory and present it to the wider community for peer review.

The arts, on the other hand, are all about observation in the broadest sense of encompassing all five senses. Consider the ‘lightning sketches’ of the post-impressionist painter, Leonid Pasternak. Like the phone carrying, photo snapping general public of today, he would always have his art materials to hand, so that he could capture an experience in a particular time and place in all its immediacy of the moment. Just like our need to encapsulate a memory in a visual form, Pasternak’s sketches achieve the same purpose, though realism in representing reality was not his ultimate aim.

So what’s the difference between him and us? Pasternak’s daughter, Lydia, recalls how “observing and drawing were for him a natural necessity, like sleeping and breathing…”, suggesting how an expert artist’s trained eye is somehow compelled to see the world and, in the very depiction of it, whether through writing or drawing or any other medium of expression, to filter that world through his own perspective. Of course, this changes the world; it becomes transformed in the art work and is coloured by the emotions and biases of the artist. This is inevitable and, to some extent, desirable. Why? Because one test of the quality of an artwork and the knowledge of life it represents to its audience is that to enter the world of the art demands an imaginative effort, during which we must temporarily place aside any questions or doubts we may have about it. Another test is that once we leave the world of the art and return to our own day to day world, we see things differently. Through our engagement with the art, our own perspectives will have been changed forever…