TOK essay on Ways of Knowing

Give the essay in to your TOK teacher on Thursday March 3rd 2016
Write 600 - 1400 words
Advice on how to approach the essays.
The ways of knowing, as defined by the IB TOK course, are: perception, reason (or logic),
emotion, intuition, memory, imagination and language. Authority (second hand knowledge)
is also important, but it is itself dependent on one or more of the others. Make sure you
understand exactly how all these words are used in TOK. Perception, here, does not mean
opinion. Logic does not mean what seems natural. That is called common sense.
Before you write the essay, read the relevant sections from the textbook, but do not merely
copy out sections without attribution. Put ideas in your own words or in quotation marks,
giving the source. Good students will read more widely on the topic than just the text book.
You also need to include examples from other subjects you study and from non-academic
areas; the more original the better. Read the essay criteria on the TOK website to see what
you should be aiming for. You need to have a clear argument but you also need to deal with
counter claims and different perspectives, in other words, to consider what could be said on
the other side of the case.
Choose one of these titles:

1. Can reason and perception really be separated as ways of knowing?

Normally TOK and philosophy contrast these two approaches to knowledge: the empirical and
the rational, and you will need to explain at the start how they are different. However for this
essay you will also need to consider how they are linked. Think about the ways in which our
perception uses cognition, about how sense data needs to be organised to be meaningful. If
we had no preconceived ideas about what we were looking for our observations would be
random and not get us very far. Then think about how reason is dependent on sense
experience. Logic requires premises with which to reason, and where do they come from if
not from our own or other peoples experiences?

2. Are we more effective as knowers when we are less emotional?

A suggested approach to this essay would be to first discuss the reasons why you might
answer yes and then deal with the situations when you might answer no. Look for general
points to make and examples to illustrate your case.

3. Which ways of knowing are most reliable in helping us decide if a

knowledge claim is justified?
First think about what ways of knowing there are. Do they operate independently? Notice
that the title doesnt require you to select only one that is reliable. You might come to the
conclusion that some are more reliable for some purposes/situation and others for different
ones. You could relate this question to areas of knowledge too. Which subject areas tend to
use which ways of knowing? Be careful, because there is lots here that you have not
covered yet in the course.

4. What did Aldous Huxley (1947) mean when he observed that Words
form the thread on which we string our experiences? To what extent is
it possible to separate our experience of the world from the narratives
we construct of them?

This is quite a difficult title. First understand the metaphor. There are two questions here. In
the second one you are asked to use language to talk about non-linguistic experiences of the
world (what would these be?). What sort of narratives are meant here? Which areas of
knowledge involve constructs and narratives? (probably all!) You can consider concepts too.
In the knowledge framework you are asked to think about how language is used in each area
of knowledge.