Online Free Resources Theory of Knowledge Series Ways of Knowing info@lanternaeducation.com www.lanternaeducation.com
What are Ways of Knowing? Ways of Knowledge All knowledge comes from somewhere. Even if we say it is innate (comes from within us) we still have to say how that knowledge appears. The Ways of Knowing are the methods through which knowledge becomes apparent to us. In the IB there are eight different ways of knowing: Language, Sense perception, Emotion, Reason, Imagination, Faith, Intuition and Memory. Although this might seem like a lot, the good news is that for the IB you re only really advised to study four of them in depth (although it s worth knowing how each of them works). Language Language is defined as a system of signs with meanings. These signs include, but are not limited to: letters, pictures, symbols, sounds and gestures. Language is everywhere, and some aspects can even be considered universal. As well as being everywhere, language is crucial to our survival and success as a species. Despite its omnipresence and importance, language is still full of potential problems. Problem areas crop up like sarcasm, ambiguity (when something isn t clear), irony and translation issues. We all know how a joke in one language might not work in another. Despite its flaws, language is really important for communicating knowledge. As ToK students, we should think about how language communicates knowledge and some of the problems that might creep up when we try to pass on knowledge through signs as symbols. One fascinating topic that you might not have heard of is the debate over linguistic determinism. This is the idea that language determines the way we think. The idea is that because a specific community speak in a certain way, the way they think is structured accordingly. You could argue, therefore, that using a specific language limits our ability to think. Others argue that the way we see things and the way we think about them are not limited to our culture, but are universal. This is an ongoing debate and a really interesting one to consider using in your presentation or essays. Sense Perception This Way of Knowing relates to the way a person uses and understands their senses. Traditionally, it was thought we only had five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. However, as time has passed more and more senses have been suggested. Other senses that it has been claimed that people have include the sense of heat, of pain, of movement, of balance and of hunger and thirst, even a sense of where our body parts are in space has Lanterna Education 2016 2
been suggested. Some of these might seem a little unusual, but try this: in a moment, close your eyes and try to touch your forefingers together. Were you successful? I bet you weren t far off! But only the sense of proprioception (where your body is in space) could have allowed you to do this. One of the big debates here surrounds the idea of empiricism. This term, which you might have heard of, refers to the theory that all knowledge comes from the senses. This is a historical view. Now, it is commonly believed that our expectations help shape our sense experiences. Deciding how perceptions and beliefs influence each other is a fascinating topic for essays and presentations. Illusions are a good illustration of how the brain s expectations influence our sense experiences. Emotion There are two important views of emotion that tend to come up in ToK. One is called the naturalistic view of emotion. This view tells us that emotion is a result of our physical bodies, with physical causes and effects. Charles Darwin was one supporter of this view. One interesting implication of the naturalistic view is that emotions are seen as universal and experienced across cultures. The opposite view to this is that of social constructionists. Proponents of this theory argue that emotions are socially constructed. This would mean that emotions come from our social environment. The social constructionists might point at to an emotion like shame and say that, shame is an emotion based on social ideas of what is right and what is wrong. Without society telling you what actions were wrong you might never feel shame. One question you might consider is whether emotion is a help or a hindrance when it comes to gaining knowledge. You could argue that emotion is a problem when seeking knowledge. For example, you might argue that emotion hinders rational thought and thus distorts reality. However, someone might disagree with you. Somebody could tell you, for example, that without emotions it is difficult to make sense of cultural and social experiences. People with autism, for example, can struggle to understand social situations and to know what it is other people feel. What does this say about the universality of emotions? Reason Most people would tell you that they are reasonable, but definitions of reason vary greatly. There are two things you should understand when thinking about reason as a Way of Knowing. Firstly, is the concept of logical deduction. This allows us to go from starting ideas (premises) to reach valid conclusions. Here s a simple example: Premise 1: Rex is a dog. Premise 2: All dogs have fur (remember this doesn t have to be true) 3 Question: Does Rex have fur? Valid Conclusion: Yes, Rex has fur.
Going from premises to conclusions like this is called logical deduction. Earlier it was noted that deduction leads to valid conclusions. This does not mean that the conclusions are true. What it means is that if the premises are true then the conclusions will be true. Here s another example. Premises 1: Peter is a man Premises 2: All men have eight legs Question: Does Peter have eight legs? Valid conclusion: Yes, Peter has eight legs. Remember that this might not be true, people don t usually have more than two legs! However, the conclusion is still logically valid because it follows from the two starting premises. Second is the concept of logical induction When we used deductive logic above we made general statements (about men and about dogs). We used these to show something specific about a man (Peter, showing he had eight legs) and a dog (Rex, showing he had fur). With inductive logic we take a specific example to tell us something about the general. For example, you might have noticed that most windows are made of glass. We could say the following: Step one: All the windows I have seen are made of glass Step two: Therefore all windows are made of glass Notice that inductive reasoning can involve probability. You might think that because you ve seen so many windows and they were all made of glass, that all windows are made of glass. However, there is nothing stopping a window from being made of plastic or of jelly. You should know something about logical induction: it is what we call inferential. This is that it makes a statement which is not strictly provable. There s no way I can prove that all the windows in the world are made of glass. The idea that they are is just inferred from my experience. This notion of inference helps separate deductive and inductive reasoning. Imagination Try the following: Think of your favourite piece of music. Now imagine dragging your fingers across a chalkboard. Now imagine plunging your hand into a bucket of sand and feeling the grains crunch between your fingers. And now taste the difference between lemon and lime which is more sour? There was no sand; there was no lemon. And yet, in response to a set of completely imaginary events, your mind produced very real physical reactions. This quote from author Olivia Fox Cabane points out the power of the human imagination. What is being described here is the what we traditionally call imagination : the ability to form a mental representation of a sense experience without the normal stimulus. There is Lanterna Education 2016 4
another form of imagination, however. Propositional imagining is the idea of imagining that things were different than they are an example being that the cold war had never ended. You should always link your ToK essays back to real life. One way that you can do this when discussing imagination is to talk about medical conditions that might affect the imagination. One condition, such as schizophrenia can give some insight into what delusions and extreme examples of imagination can lead to. Faith When you re talking about faith, one effective approach is to discuss what faith means. To some people their idea of faith might be religious, for example faith in God. Faith in God is called theistic faith. However, religious faith is not necessarily theistic. Buddhists typically believe in reincarnation but do not have faith in any God. Faith can also be secular, try and think about all the different things we can be said to have faith in. Commitment to a concept can be an expression of faith, but needn t be religious. People can be committed to an idea or a philosophy that guides their idea, they can be said to have faith in it. Contrasting what faith means to a religious group, for example Hindus, and to believers of a secular philosophy such as humanism can be really productive. Faith is a way of understanding the world, underpinning the way we choose to interpret things. If you wanted to be really critical in your ToK work you should think about the complex relationships between the Ways of Knowing, like faith and reason. Some people might claim that faith and reason cannot be reconciled, that they are totally different ways of looking at the world, which often conflict. However, many religions see faith and reason as interdependent. Natural Theology teaches that God can only be known through reason, which He gave to human kind. Exploring these different perspectives might be very effective in your ToK work. Intuition Reason, can be defined as using a rational process to arrive at knowledge. Intuition is quite different from this. Intuition is having an immediate sense of knowing, without any prior thinking. After a footballer kicks a ball toward a goal, an expert at the game might know whether there will be a goal or not. The fact that this person has reached this knowledge without having to consciously calculate the outcome shows that what is being used is his or her intuition. But how is this sort of knowledge possible? Psychologists believe that the unconscious mind is able to make many more observations than we consciously can in any given situation. All this data would be too much for us to think about consciously. However, 5 we are able to process it on a subconscious level. This is often described as having a gut feeling about what is going to happen, or what the solution to a problem is.
Intuition can be defined as immediate awareness; it is a very powerful way of knowing because what we would call flashes of insight may come from our capacity for intuition. Imagine taking a sofa and trying to fit it through a doorway. If you were to look at the sofa you could probably make an instant judgement about whether it would fit through. This is using your intuition (and perhaps some of the other WoKs as well). Computers do not have any capacity for intuition, they are forced to use logic and analytic processing or thinking. This means that for a computer to decide whether your sofa would fit through the door, it would have to try every possible way of fitting the sofa through. The computer would have to calculate whether the sofa would fit through on its side, its end or even diagonally. Using intuition, you can tell instantly. If this is a strength of intuition, what do you think might be a weakness of this WoK? How reliable is this Way of Knowing, and how well can it be used to justify your actions? Is the phrase I just know very useful in a debate? Memory Memory is a Way of Knowing that many students overlook. This gives you the opportunity to say something unique if choosing to discuss it in your ToK essays and presentations. As with the other WoKs, a starting point to your discussion might be to define what memory actually is. We need to go beyond definitions such as knowing what happened before as these are not very helpful for critically examining memory. One way of defining memory is as the faculty which allows us to retain information and reconstruct past experiences although like everything else in ToK, it is up to you to think about this definition critically! If you do choose to discuss memory in your work, it might be worth referring to an ongoing discussion surrounding the status of this Way of Knowing. Some argue that memory is not actually a Way of Knowing itself. They claim that memory is simply the recollection of things we already know. In response to this it might be worth considering two relevant points. One point comes from the psychology of memory. Many people, when thinking of memories, imagine a tape that is recorded as we live our lives, and played back when we wish to remember something, however, this is not really the case. Whenever we notice an experience it is encoded into the memory. However, each time we recall that memory we re-encode it. That is, if you remember an experience from your childhood, it is not the original experience that you are recalling. Instead you are accessing the memory which was encoded the last time you thought about that thing. This theory helps to explain why memories are not completely reliable if you were to photocopy a photograph every time you wanted to look at it, and only were able to keep the copy, how much detail would remain? Lanterna Education 2016 6
A second point worth considering is the importance of memory in gaining new knowledge. We do not gain new knowledge in a vacuum. Our past experiences affect how our new experiences are interpreted. Because of this, memory is a huge part of how we gain knowledge at any moment in time. If you want to discuss memory, it might be worth talking about illnesses that affect our faculties. Dementia affects many people as they grow older, and it is particularly important not to forget Alzheimer s which affects a growing proportion of many countries with aging populations. You might consider using these illnesses to think about how memory might not be a particularly reliable Way of Knowing. It might then be worth discussing how billions of people rely on their memories every day of their lives. For more free resources, head to lanternaeducation.com/ib-resources 7 Lanterna Education 2016