perseptioun

[ihearttok]

hey guyss

so i have to write this HUGEEEE essay on perseption but i have noooo idea what to talk about!! what do you think i should do? i neeed help!!! lol

[Vahl]

Learn how to spell it for a start .. ?

(You might want to figure this out yourself, we can't just give you some perfect outline)

Edited April 2, 2010 by Vahl

[masochist]

Could you give some more detail? 'Perception' is very broad. I guess you could talk about senses and idk how emotions/experiences alter them. Am I going in the right direction? Is this what you're meant to discuss?

[asptok]

hey guyss

so i have to write this HUGEEEE essay on perseption but i have noooo idea what to talk about!! what do you think i should do? i neeed help!!! lol

Well Mr./Ms. Ihearttok, you've got yourself quite a predicament on your hands.

But asptok is here to help you! Hooray!

In ToK, essays on perception are expected to contain a wide variety of your standard ToK topics, ranging from Areas of Knowledge to other Ways of Knowing.

However, one among these stands out as undeniably essential. Can you guess what it is?

Thats right! Perceiving vs. Perceiving as important.

Any and all ToK examiners will expect you to address knowledge issues concerning what we perceive as important in society and what we dismiss as unimportant.

For example: In what ways do experts in western society define what we perceive as important?

A lot of times we see something, but don’t register it as important…there are plenty of things that we pass by on a daily basis without really perceiving as important. Why do you think this is? It would be helpful to compare yourself to a person from another culture here, because you may see something as important that another person doesn’t see as important.

You may also want to discuss the times where we can’t always trust our perception. Optical illusions, for example, show us that our perception does not always give us reality.

Other than that all we can do is wish you luck on your essay and hope you learn to grasp the true beauty at the heart of ToK. You should know that these aren’t the only things you should put in your essay though! You’re going to have to do some thinking on your part as well!

Best,

Emma and Ben

[beatricedoingtok]

hey guyss

so i have to write this HUGEEEE essay on perseption but i have noooo idea what to talk about!! what do you think i should do? i neeed help!!! lol

Well Mr./Ms. Ihearttok, you've got yourself quite a predicament on your hands.

But asptok is here to help you! Hooray!

In ToK, essays on perception are expected to contain a wide variety of your standard ToK topics, ranging from Areas of Knowledge to other Ways of Knowing.

However, one among these stands out as undeniably essential. Can you guess what it is?

Thats right! Perceiving vs. Perceiving as important.

Any and all ToK examiners will expect you to address knowledge issues concerning what we perceive as important in society and what we dismiss as unimportant.

For example: In what ways do experts in western society define what we perceive as important?

A lot of times we see something, but don't register it as important…there are plenty of things that we pass by on a daily basis without really perceiving as important. Why do you think this is? It would be helpful to compare yourself to a person from another culture here, because you may see something as important that another person doesn't see as important.

You may also want to discuss the times where we can't always trust our perception. Optical illusions, for example, show us that our perception does not always give us reality.

Other than that all we can do is wish you luck on your essay and hope you learn to grasp the true beauty at the heart of ToK. You should know that these aren't the only things you should put in your essay though! You're going to have to do some thinking on your part as well!

Best,

Emma and Ben

Although asptok has discussed most of what you could potentially cover in a ToK essay, there are many different angles from which you can approach the subject.

Perhaps it might help to remember that one of the objectives of the IB is to consider your entire Diploma program and all the courses you take and somehow integrate it into your essays. When talking about perception, one angle you could take that stands out is "to what extent perception allows you to know truth in the different areas of knowledge".

If you take biology for example and compare it to history, you can soon come to a conclusion that perception is much more necessary as an observation skill to know truth than in history where reason is more prevalent.

Of course, just mentioning this may not be enough to convince most ToK teachers and so using a counter example may help in making your argument stronger.

For instance if you are saying that perception is the most important way of knowing to know truth in biology, you can talk about how sometimes even then, there are filters of perception created by experience and authority that may prevent you from seeing the truth.

For instance when doing a lab, the biology teacher or textbook often gives you some indication of what the outcome of your experiment will be and therefore, it is that particular feature of trend that you will single out from your results, almost ignoring any new element. Therefore, you could argue authority defines what we perceive as important.

Naturally you would also include the knower's perspective aspect of this issue as asptok has already mentioned

This is but one angle from which you can approach an essay on perception and there are many others. Hope this helps in your quest to find the truth and understand the mechanisms of ToK

beatricedoingtok