TOK Help?

[fml_ib]

I'm really struggling with TOK. I mean, my class is easy enough to get a decent grade in, but I'm always scraping for an A, and I feel like I really don't know how to approach TOK. I know, it's a little late in the year to be saying this, but I'd really like to get a good score on my TOK essay.

For some reason, my examples in my practice essays seem kind of shallow and seem to lack depth. The topic that I'm working on right now for my next and last essay is "We see things not as they are, but as we are" or something along the lines of that. Any suggestions on how to approach this topic?

[Spency]

I'm really struggling with TOK. I mean, my class is easy enough to get a decent grade in, but I'm always scraping for an A, and I feel like I really don't know how to approach TOK. I know, it's a little late in the year to be saying this, but I'd really like to get a good score on my TOK essay.

For some reason, my examples in my practice essays seem kind of shallow and seem to lack depth. The topic that I'm working on right now for my next and last essay is "We see things not as they are, but as we are" or something along the lines of that. Any suggestions on how to approach this topic?

Let these questions guide you:

1- what are the knowledge claims that are made?

2- how do they "know" what they claim?

3- How can anyone know this?

2 and 3 need to cover the straight up answer then relate it to the disciplines involved, their methods, ways of knowing etc.

It seems to me that you are presenting two ideas in one statement. One being that we all interpret events and things around in a way that reflects an aspect of ourselves. Take a look at some of Jung's work. Jung always theorized that the reason we dislike or like an individual is whether or not they reflect an aspect of ourselves. If a person reflects a quality about ourselves that we don't like then we despise them.

Also what your saying is everyone interprets the world around us in a different way.

These are both pretty loaded questions in regards to TOK. How do we know everyone views the world differently? How do we know everyone sees something of themselves in their environment. (use examples with this one.)

Hope that puts you on the right track. The best thing to do, is to try and answer the questions

Also, here is an essay planning sheet my teacher gave us.

Planning_Sheet_ToK_Essay.pdf

[Sandwich]

Spency had some great ideas, but you should also (if you're aiming for an A) remember that no essay is complete without lots of Ways of Knowing and Areas of Knowledge being neatly slotted in. That's part of the marking criteria

I actually think the essay would be easier to approach from this angle anyway--

For a start every single 'way of knowing' can be treated as interpretation of the world in at least one respect. Most easy to use might be emotion and perception. For the former there's evidently the fact that emotion tinges the way we see things, e.g. objects precious to us, and we give them qualities which they really don't physically have. For the latter there's both the idea that our perception can be confused and also the fact that we construct a world from our perception. I mean, we see objects as things like 'table', 'chair' etc. but they're really a collection of certain kinds of atoms packed together with a particular structure and in a certain shape. So we label things and therefore make it all into our own interpretation. There's an interesting story to go alongside this one which is some guy with brain damage who mistook his wife for a hat because he lost this ability that we have to section up our own 'worlds' (check out the author, Oliver Sacks, and you'll probs find the story somewhere).

As for Areas of Knowledge, science is a brilliant one to talk about. We build up scientific models, but they're always just models of reality (eg Bohr's atom) and not how things ARE. They work for us as people and we can use them to interpret the world, but they are themselves interpretations of the world. Literature is all interpretation and an attempt to analyse the world or present certain ideas.

Conversely you could say that things like mathematics, where they have stuff like pi turning up in myriad places in the natural world, might be considered us finding out about reality as opposed to putting a model onto reality to interpret it. Although numbers are obviously our own invention, there is a lot of natural mathematics.

You can do the Jung thing as a sort-of psychology mention, but I think that, as it's a TOK essay, it's best to plunge right into the examiner's favourite theory of knowledge propaganda

[Demigod19]

[stress][/stress]Hi guys I'm totally confuse with my tok essay (We see and understand things not as they are but as we are) can anyone give me some ideas on how to start writing my essay? thanks a looot and btw i'm to this forum soo greetings peoplee!

[Mahuta ♥]

[quote]Hi guys I'm totally confuse with my tok essay (We see and understand things not as they are but as we are) can anyone give me some ideas on how to start writing my essay? thanks a looot and btw i'm to this forum soo greetings peoplee! [img]http://www.ibsurvival.com/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif[/img]
[/quote]

WTH? A thread that you started on this got deleted because its non sense and you're posting here?

We cant give you ideas on how to start, that is yuor job. All we can do is AFTER you have started, we can give you opinions on certain ideas.

[flsweetheart422]

Two words that would greatly help your essay (or any TOK essay for that matter)are "Objectivity" and "Subjectivity". The actual prescribed title [b]"We see things not as they are, but as we are"[/b] specifically refers to a Sense Perception however the contrast between how we see them and how they are implies the Reason as well. As others before me have stated its important to account for emotions (and sometimes intuition)and their impact on the other ways of knowing. More than anything, emotions impact the reasoning process and you need to discuss that. Although you can talk about sense perception and its won strengths and weaknesses, you need to focus on why the stimuli we perceive is different that "reality". You may want to touch on the definition of reality and explain how its rather subjective and how the various components which constitute its very existence imply different definitions, but don't stray on that tangent too long. All of the reality discussion would refer to the how "we see things not as they are" portion of the title. Then, discuss how objectivity and reality tend to go hand in hand and then you need to explain how everything is subjective and why things aren't cut and dry (problems with sense perception: "how pure is sense perception?" and "What factors can impair sense perception?") Talk about the role of reason and how it only processes information it alone cannot collect or convey. Talk about the role of emotions and how they automatically increase subjectivity and can impact the reasoning process and lead to generalizations. All of that would address the conflict between how we see things and how we can never be completely objective.

With all that said, don't forget to use examples from well chosen Areas of Knowledge and definitely include some personal examples as well wherever possible to gain points in the "Knower's Perspective" part of the criterion.

[Read above]

Thanks to everyone who's been giving advice on this thread; I've been searching everywhere trying to find out how to actually write a ToK essay (we haven't been told how they're being marked at all, which is something of a problem.) Does anyone know what the marking schedule looks like, or what the criteria are?

[sweetnsimple786]

It can be found [url="http://www.ibsurvival.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=101"]HERE[/url], under assessment criteria
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