Can someone read my TOK homework and tell me what I did wrong?

[Arthanium]

We have TOK homeworks every week, which are usually about 600 word essays. Our teacher rates them on a scale 0-3 stars, however she doesn't comment or tell us what we did right/wrong. 0 = absolutely worthless nothing garbage, nearly impossible to get. 1 = something is done, but is off topic and doesn't answer questions, 2 = the questions are understood and covered, 3 = the questions are basically answered very precisely and there is no off topic rambling.

Here's an image of the homework Here's the homework.

 

 

Knowledge claims

 

            Susie said 12 + 7 was billion, surely she is wrong! But how can we know that? How is our claim that 12 + 7 equals 19 any more reliable? First of all I’d like to point out that Susie isn’t writing a book or developing a new science theory where 12 + 7 does equal a billion, she was merely answering a question the guy asked, for all we know she could be messing with him. Another example would be me answering a question about Genghis Khan in a history test that I’m not very sure about, versus a historian writing a factual biography about Genghis Khan. I’m not so much claiming I know whatever I answered, if I answered incorrectly I would accept it, rather than saying that the teacher is wrong and I am right. However the historian would try to uncover new historical facts, debunk others and writing history. His claims could be tested, compared with other facts and we could judge them and reliably uncover how trustworthy they are. But this takes time and effort, which we don’t have an unlimited amount of, this is why we often have to make assumptions that some knowledge claims are true, to progress with whatever we are doing. We can easily test how much 12 + 7 is because math has rules which we can reliably use to determine the answer. But if we’re writing a test and we can’t for the life of us remember a formula which we need right now, we might quietly ask our classmate for it. He might give us a wrong one, despite that we would use it and come to an answer. It could be a wrong answer, but in a test it’s better than nothing and the teacher might give you points for your work. Also you won’t spend time trying to remember or deduce the formula, you’ll move on to the next task and be more productive. Here we see that even though we were given a false knowledge claim it proved to be good for us.

            Here I come to my main point. We can test the reliability of knowledge claims (although there is a limit and even in exact sciences we make assumptions) quite well, but it requires effort. Therefore we must have trust in wherever we receive said knowledge claims from, unfortunately for Calvin he trusted the wrong source which gave him faulty information. It is far better for us to find a newspaper we trust, and every once in a while check if they are as reliable as they were before, and with a grain of salt accept their knowledge claims and go on with our lives, with this new acquired knowledge, we can actually use for productivity. Or we could doubt every single word this newspaper say, hell, doubt your own existence along with that too, and try ourselves to determine how true are the knowledge claims. You’re going to spend an enormous amount of time doing that, and end up doing nothing worthwille at all.

            Therefore to be productive and do something in life, we must make assumptions that some knowledge claims are true and go on with that. Like when asking a friend what time it is. Of course if you see a knowledge claim you don’t think is true, and it is relevant (for example a misinformed article in Latvia’s biggest newspaper), feel free to test the truthfulness of it yourself or with the help of others, and debunk them, which would be a good deed.

[Arthanium]

Oh, I forgot to mention, she gave me 1.

[kw0573]

I think your teacher may be focused on another knowledge issue, specifically how the main character (Calvin) rejects his classmate's answer which is the same for a different question. It is a problem of the assumption that different questions (esp on a test) should have different answers. Perhaps your teacher was hoping to direct you to lines of heuristics. It's the same problem with seeing 3 or more B's in a row on multiple choice answer sheet.: people often think to himself, wait something's gotta be wrong here.

Some general tips, even if the intended k.i is on ways to test for truth (from what I understood in your response)

1: Do not mention an external connection in the first few sentences (ie Genghis Khan). ESTABLISH YOUR MAIN POINT FIRST, then make any connections you feel necessary.

2.  His claims could be tested, compared with other facts and we could judge them and reliably uncover how trustworthy they are.  This is a very good point but you need to elaborate a bit more. It should be made clear that this is your focus, instead of hiding it in the middle of a paragraph.

3. "but in a test it’s better than nothing and the teacher might give you points for your work."You are trying to test truth claims, and this sentence throws off all possibility of you continue to verify validity in your essay. This would've been a perfect time to introduce the last frame of the cartoon and say "no wait that's answer to another question" (see my point before making this list). 

4. "newspaper we trust" Kinda goes off the main story in the cartoon. Complete analysis in the real life situation first then go make these connections, which are appropriate if made at the right time in the essay/response.
5. The last paragraph is a bit overly generalized. As an analogy, we can maybe say we can climb a mountain if we can climb a hill, but it doesn't mean we can climb to the moon. What I mean is you should spend about 50 - 60% discussing the real life situation, then digress into a valid generalization. As your assignments get longer, you will find yourself spending less time on the particular real life situation but for the time being it's good to spend bit more.