Priest's religious knowledge - do they believe in God?

Today's post can be used as an RLS for The Core Theme Knowledge & The Knower, and as RLS for AoK Human Sciences, and the Optional Theme Knowledge and Religion. It's about Priests who don't believe in God, and was the most popular post on my old ToK Blog (ToKTrump). There are obvious links with the role of Religious Knowledge in this research.

The Core Theme: Knowledge and The Knower is a very broad unit encompassing a wide range of knowledge questions. It can be a little unwieldy if not focussed onto some key knowledge questions, or a set of themes. I have slowly developed a sense that my student's most illuminating learning in this unit is firstly that knowledge is constructed rather than give, secondly that that process of construction is highly contextualised, and finally that it is not experienced as contextualised by the knower.

It's difficult to find the original study today, however I did find:

A review in The Atheist's Quarterly on JSTOR linked.

A summary on the website Why Evolution is True linked.

The world view of the knower is not experienced as contextualised, but is their "known world". We can draw upon Husserl's view of "Lebenswelt" or lived world here.

Why is The Priests who don't believe in God pertinent to ToK ?

Unstructured interviews of 5 non-believing priests carried out by Dennett & LaScola (2010) are a fascinating, and rare, insight into people who hold one set of beliefs, and yet live their lives by another set of beliefs. This dissonant state gives rise to a compelling set of insights for ToK. Whilst this example may not be 'typical' for most knowers, arguably it is in this somewhat extreme, contrast that we can uncover some of the processes of knowing that are experienced by all of us as knowers. Some of these implications include:

• We can hold contradictory knowledge (and beliefs) at the same time.

• Performativity of knowledge is both evidential and significant ( a behavioural element of knowledge).

• Internal ethical justification of knowledge occurs when the knower is presented with contradictory or inimical knowledge/beliefs/values.

• Even deeply held beliefs and values can change when the knower is challenged with opposing arguments/beliefs/values.

• When deeply held beliefs/values are changed the knower may not change their public behaviours according to the newly held beliefs.

• Beliefs & values (as forms of knowledge) can be known in many different ways by different knowers.

How to use this in ToK:

Core Theme: Knowledge & The Knower.

A quick skim through the KQs of the Core theme Knowledge & The Knower we can immediately see links to many KQs, particularly those dealing with the knower's knowledge in relation to others through interactions. I have allocated KQs to groups of students and asked them to use the research to explore their allocated KQ.

AoK Human Sciences.

The study can be relevant to all of the Hum Sci Knowledge Framework. Of particular interest to me is the link to perspectives and research methods. Specifically the validity vs reliability debate, and the value of extrapolation from a small (& we assume unrepresentative) sample.

Optional Theme - Knowledge & Religion.

Obviously there are a range of interesting KQs which could be explored using the Dennett & La Scola study. Of particular interest is the link between faith & religious beliefs, the role of culture's influence on religious beliefs, the relationship between reason and religious beliefs, etc.

For more ToK Lesson content for Knowledge and the Knower try this link.

For more ToK Lesson content on AoK Human Sciences try this link.

Conclusion.

The Dennett & LaScola research focuses on an atypical and unusual situation in knowledge. However, maybe it is in the strong contrasts found in the unusual cases that we can better understanding the framework and underlying processes of the knowledge held in all other cases.

If you would like more content like this (focussing on useful RLS), or have suggestions for further content please don't hesitate to contact me - Daniel@TokToday.com

Wishing you a great day!
Daniel, Lisbon, Jan 2023

Bibliography & References.

• “Atheists Anonymous.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 34, no. 3, 2010, pp. 77–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41000971. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

• whyevolutionistrue. “Dennett and LaScola Study of Nonbelieving Clergy.” Why Evolution Is True, 18 Mar. 2010, whyevolutionistrue.com/2010/03/18/dennett-and-lascola-study-on-nonbelieving-clergy/. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

Choosing your ToK Essay Question

As the November 2023 ToK Essay title starts it is a good time to revisit advice on choosing your ToK Essay title. During the 10 years that I marked ToK Essays as an IB Examiner I learned a lot about what makes a good ToK Essay. More importantly, how students can write a good essay with minimum stress.

Choosing your ToK Essay Question.

• The questions are called "Prescribed Titles"(aka PT), as they're not actually questions per se. They are knowledge statements, or knowledge questions, which you are invited to "discuss". This means that you need to consider a range of different perspectives arising from the title. When choosing your ToK Essay Question consider whether you have (or can develop) a range of perspectives on the title.

• Do not change, nor amend, a single word of the PT. You must address the question exactly as IB give it to you.

Ensure that you get the exact title from your teacher. Non-IB Sites (such as TokToday) are not supposed to publish the exact titles (they're copyrighted by IB).

Take your time choosing.

Choosing the ToK Essay title which is right for you is at least 50% of the 'battle for success' in the ToK Essay, so take your time at this stage. My students spend 4-6 weeks on choosing the title, it's super important to get this stage correct. In deciding which title to write you are should be trying to clarify:

• What does this question mean to me ?

• Do I have an initial instinctive view about this question ?

• Do I have some ideas about arguments that would help me to answer this question ?

• Do I have a destination for my answer ? (this may change later on, but something at an initial stage will be helpful).

These questions smoothly segue into our second tip on how to choose your ToK Essay Question: Blank Slate.

Know Yourself: Blank Slate those titles.

Try not to be too influenced by other people's voices at this stage of your essay writing process, try to hear your own voice.

Know your own mind, try not to be influenced by the voices of others. Approach the titles as a 'blank slate' - ie no pre-judgment.

Eventually you will have to write your own, original, response to the question. Therefore you don't want to be too influenced by other people's views at this stage (you can explore their views later). You need to be developing your own view(s) at this stage.

Be original.

Many of the best essays that I have read have been where the student developed their own original, and quite novel, argument at this early stage. Now, it may seem rather self defeating for me to tell you to stay away from internet advice sites either before or during the essay, however the particular type of content that I think you should be wary of is content that tells you what the arguments (claims / counterclaims) could/should be, or what real life examples you should use. This directive content doesn't improve your skills & understanding in ToK because you don't have to think for yourself.

Develop your own arguments, and think of possible real life examples to illustrate these arguments, before you start exploring the internet. Once you have your own original framework down you'll be in a good place to start further research. You can now use academic sources, non-academic sources and ToK specific sources to further develop your ideas and range of sources cited. If you wait until you have developed your own ideas before you go to the Internet (& other sources) then you won't be negatively influenced / swayed by the sources that you find. By developing your own ideas you will find writing the essay far easier than trying to develop other peoples ideas. This is why it's so important to spend time early in the essay writing process working on your own claims counterclaims and real life examples.

Know your destination.

Before you finally decide it is useful to have a rough idea of how you will resolve that question. That is a vague idea of what your final answer to the question might be (ie your "destination"). You don't have to know exactly how you are going to resolve the question before you choose the question (as many new ideas and perspectives will be developed during the planning and writing stages.

A rough idea of destination guides the writer like it guides the walker

A rough idea of destination guides the writer, like it guides the walker.

As you write the essay you will develop new ideas, make new connections and develop new perspectives. You will refine your arguments, and you may even change your arguments. This is a normal, and healthy, aspect of the writing process. You may even change your final destination, the important thing when choosing a question - have direction and destination in mind. Far too often I meet students who are "stuck", usually because they are unsure of their approximate final destination. They didn't work on a solution or resolution before they chose a question. - not a good place to be.

A few 'easy ways' to check your understanding of the title:

• Explain the question to a non-ToK student.

• Bring in your Mum, Dad, sibling (or even dog) and explain the title to them.

When they can understand your explanation you can be sure that you now have a solid understanding of the question.

More help is available:

• Check out the ToKToday YouTube Channel for tips (especially the Student Playlist).

• Pick up the E-book How to Write the ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps.

If you need more help to choose your question, or to develop your question then get in touch (daniel@toktoday.com). Click here to book a ToK Coaching session.

Daniel,
Lisboa, Portugal, March 2023

Reflections on May 23 ToK Essay Session

Why write reflections on M23 ToK Essay session ? Well, I’ve been working with many students from all over the world with their May 23 ToK Essays. This is the first time that I’ve worked with students who are not in my school, nor in my ToK class. And that's an interesting learning experience for me - because I don’t know what they’ve been taught, how they’ve been taught, what their teacher’s approach to ToK is, nor where the emphases and reference points are in their ToK knowledge. So, this post is partly a consolidation of reflection for me, but it should also be useful for other ToK teachers, and maybe for ToK students who are about to start their learning.

In essence, in this essay session I’ve gone from Goffman’s participant-observer to observer-participant.

So, what are the reflections on M23 ToK Essay Session (main learning points) ?:

1. Making or building the argument.

A significant issue for many of the students with whom I worked was that they lacked the skills, or knowledge, to build a ToK argument. And this causes many consequent issues. It leads to:

Problems with definitions, I heard a lot of questions such as - “How do I define this key term ? or that key term?” , “I can’t think of a definition for…,” etc

Developing claims or counterclaims, I got questions such as “I can;t think of a counterclaim for this”, or “how can I make this into a claim ?”

And finally problems with identifying RLS - “is this a good RLS for____?”

These 3 problems (definitions, claims/counterclaims, and RLS) come from not having the skills to build a knowledge argument. Let me, briefly, take each one in turn.

Definitions:

In this session we wrangled with definition such as “cannot be explained”, “replicability”, “bubbles” etc

Obviously students should not be using dictionary definitions, but some students are still using dictionary definitions. The definitions are often the basis of the whole essay, if you can’t develop the definitions then writing the essay is problematic. 

There’s a mutually reciprocal relationship between developing the definitions of key terms and devising the knowledge claims / counterclaims.

There's also the problem of some students rewriting the key concepts - I particularly saw this with essay #2 - the vast majority of students I worked with doing this essay had redefined "cannot be explained" as "has not been explained". - there’s an important difference between the two,

Developing claims / counterclaims.

Some students seemed to be stuck in fairly rigid thinking when it came to devising claims / counterclaims. From some students there was a lack of flexibility / creativity in the interpretation of the title. This has made me go back to using more debate in the classroom with my own students, a sort of quasi application of De bono’s thinking hats.

Obviously, difficulty with developing claims / counterclaims can be partly due to a lack of clarity of definitions of key terms, or having dictionary based definitions of key terms.

Problems of identifying or applying RLS.

So this is the question “is X a good RLS for this claim ?”. Some students found it very difficult to identify appropriate RLS to demonstrate their knowledge claims.

Obviously if the claim is not fully understood then it's difficult to find RLS to demonstrate it.

It’s not about the RLS, it’s about the argument that’s being built. I believe that nearly ANY RLS can be used for ANY claim / counterclaim if the argument is well made.  I’ll make a future video where we can take claims at random and match them to random RLS to show how any RLS can be used for any claim if you know how to make the argument.

further, and wider, reflections on M23 ToK Essay Session include:

2. Question Choice. 

I think that essay # 6 on Methodology is by far the easiest prescribed title in this session, followed by essay # 1 on replicability. I won’t go into why I think they’re the easiest in this video, I made an earlier post & video about this linked here

Looking at all the data points that I have Essay #6 and Essay #1 are the LEAST popular titles in the session. I think that Essay #5 (visual representations) is probably the most popular.

Now, I certainly don’t think that we should tell students which essay to take - it’s meant to be their personal authentic reflection. However, Essay #6 & #1 have really straightforward structures, they don’t have multiple assumptions - they’re just straightforward. I don’t know how we get it over to students that they should consider the straightforward essays as little gifts from the examiners ! I find it particularly frustrating that we shouldn't direct students to questions, but those who need the most help often choose the hardest questions !

3. Use of the 12 ToK Concepts.  

Most students with whom I worked were not intentionally using, or referring, to the 12 ToK Concepts. Some of the students didn't seem to be aware that there were 12 core ToK Concepts.

If we put them front & centre it helps to improve focus of the essay, Obviously any of the 12 concepts could be applied to any of the essays. So we need to get students to focus in on 2-3 specific concepts.

I try to get students to identify at least 2 concepts at the beginning of the devising process.

4. Questioning the title for Evaluation Points.

Some students didn’t realise that they can develop strong evaluation points by directly challenging the assumptions in the title.

The most obvious examples of this could be:

Essay #2: what can and cannot be explained may not be exclusive and consistent categories. That which can be explained in one context may not fall into cannot be explained in another context. 

And, what we think can be explained today may become ‘cannot be explained’ as we gain new knowledge.

And I also saw this with Essay #4 (“so little knowledge so much power”), where some students didn’t understand that they are meant to challenge Russell’s assertion, that they need to make the argument that we either have a lot of knowledge, or little power, and all possible combinations thereof.

5. Impact of AI, esp ChatGPT.

I started to see content generated by AI coming through, much of this is easy to spot because the AI tends to write with sweeping introductory sections, and uses fairly vague generalisations with lots of hedging words. Obviously we also know it when we see a change in the tone of language used, or the sudden switch to American spelling and grammar.

There’s a lot to say about AI and the ToK Essay, probably in another video, but suffice to say here that currently AI can’t give us anything sufficiently precise to score well on a ToK essay without asking it precise and directed questions. The skills and knowledge required to frame those questions are at least as demanding as just writing the essay yourself. Currently it’s one of those situations in which it is more effort to use the AI than it is just to do it yourself. However, that may change in the coming years. 

On 27th February 2023 IB gave guidance that AI generated content can be used, it should be cited just like any other secondary source.

6. Too much description of RLS. - link back to building the argument.

And finally, we come to our favourite old chestnut - description of the RLS. I still saw lots and lots of description of RLS which was largely unrelated to the PT, or knowledge claims being developed within the PT. This remains the most common problem at the Essay Draft stage in my experience, however I think that the latest Subject Report said that most of the essays submitted are now focussed on the PT, so teachers must be working hard to iron this out before final submission - well done teachers ! 

If you’re a ToK student , and you’re concerned about too much focus on the PT, pick up my e-book How to write the ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps linked here. The book includes worked examples of how to make an overly descriptive essay more analytical.

So there we have it, reflections on M23 ToK essay session, a bit of learning from the May 23 Essay Session.

I’m looking forward to the Nov 23 titles coming out next week,n Have a great day, stay tok-tastic !

Daniel, Lisbon, March 2023

For other thoughts on ToK Essay:

Why do the best ToK Essays get Mediocre grades?

Unsubstantiated Assertions in The ToK Essay

ToK2022.Net has a good blog linked here

IB's public page on ToK Essay

"Why do the best ToK essays get mediocre grades ?"

Today’s question was requested by a channel viewer, I hope that this situation has never happened to you, it’s certainly happened to me and my channel viewer a few times over the years.

The situation: Your ToK cohort has written essays across the range, at the top of the range are a handful of very able students who have been highly engaged in ToK. They have been enthusiastic, near absorbed, in the essay writing process - having frequent consultations with you, doing extra reading, extending their ToK knowledge beyond the class. They have written sophisticated essays that you have mentored them through. You send the essays off for assessment, and when you get the results these few students are graded at 4-5/10, whilst other competent, but far less stunning, essays have been graded 8-10. Why does this happen ?

I’ll go through some of the reasons why this might occur, and more importantly the steps that we can take to minimise it happening in the future.

Cause 1: Familiarity - missing out the basics.

Undoubtedly you, as the teacher, have been on the ToK journey of essay development with these students. You may have shared in their excitement at exploring new ways to answer the question, you will probably have participated in the development of their knowledge arguments, evaluations & implications with them. You have been a co-constructor, strictly adhering to academic integrity, with them. This leads to a high degree of familiarity with the final essay, its development and its meaning. 

Unfortunately this high degree of familiarity can lead to a potential degree of ‘holism’ on our part - we might see things in the essay which are not evident to those who have not been on that journey with us. For example we might see that definitions, clarifications, and limitations are inherent to that beautifully written knowledge argument because we were with the student at every iterative stage of the integration of those elements into the argument. However, the examiner who has not been on that 6 month journey with the student may not see that background. Now, I’m not saying the examiner is wrong - they mark what is in front of them, I’m saying that the problem lies with our human ability of interpretation - we can’t help but bring all of our schematic knowledge to an essay when we read it - as such it reads very differently to you as the teacher than it may read to a removed examiner. Unfortunately it’s an essay rather than a Viva Voce.

Covering the basics - the Examiners are asked to use Global Impression Marking - a holistic approach, but they are also asked to use an assessment rubric. One of the first things the examiners might do is to check that the basic elements of the assessment rubric are in place in order to place the essay in one of the marking bands. Those basic elements may no longer be sufficiently evident in an essay which has become highly developed over successive iterations. Those elements are evident to the teacher with the background knowledge, but may be too implicit for the examiner. Further, the examiner may have to make assumptions about the student’s understanding of those basic elements in order to credit them. An essay will not fair well if the examiner has had to attribute a number of assumptions to the student when using Global Impression Marking.

2. Tacit Assumptions

A second, possible, cause of the disappointing grade are the tacit assumptions of the teacher regarding the knowledge claims and evaluation points. As the highly engaged student iteratively develops their essay they may accept assumptions in one version of the essay in order to develop their argument in the next version. In the dialogue between the teacher & student it’s possible that the tacit acceptance of these assumptions are lost - obviously to the examiner they’ll just be ‘absent’.  

The challenge for the student is that they only have 1600 words to do something that’s very difficult. For the most able students it is very tempting to conflate arguments, concepts and evaluation points in order to meet the word limit. In doing so they risk somewhat ‘overegging’ the pudding - ie writing something that’s far more complicated than it needs to be, and possibly doesn’t evidence the basic requirements of the essay.

3. Seeds and Tolerance.

The final possible cause of the mediocre grades are to do with the mechanics of the examining procedure, specifically with the Seeding and tolerance processes. In order to ensure the reliability of the marking examiners are given essays which have already been marked by The Chief Examiner (these are called seeds), the seed appears to the examiner just like any other essay, and they have to mark it within 1 mark of the Chief Examiner’s mark to continue marking. If they mark more than 1 mark more / less than the CE mark they are deemed to be out of tolerance, and are suspended or withdrawn from marking for the remainder of the session.

When I was an examiner I was constantly ‘seed wary’ - I think this is the purpose of the system, and it’s a good thing. However, it does make you extra cautious when you see an atypical, or unusual, essay - all of the “Is this a seed ?” alarms go off at full volume. As such you can become extra cautious, only attributing that which is absolutely evident, and solidly justifiable. Now I know that this may not be the case for other examiners, they may not be ‘seed wary’, they may be confident in their assessment of atypical essays - I’m just being honest about my experience - and with most things in life - if it’s like that for you it’s probably like that for others too. 

So, it seems like I paint a fairly depressing picture - if you stopped reading now you could go away with the message that you shouldn’t let your most capable ToK students extend themselves. But that’s not my message at all. There are ways that those students can write extraordinary essays so long as we build in a few safety mechanisms - let’s move onto the solutions: 

Solutions: 

1. Signpost the basics.

The first solution is to have your students Signpost the basic elements (Definitions, Knowledge Arguments, evaluation, real world examples, implications). As the essay is developed they might remove the signpost labels (eg “My knowledge argument is”), but the signposted content needs to remain. They could highlight these basic elements in early iterations of their draft in order to ensure that they keep them in place in subsequent iterations. Before finally hand in you could ask them to recolour those basic elements to ensure that they are still in place.

Further, peer review of identification of those elements would also be very helpful both in the early and latter stages of the essay process.

2. Depth rather than breadth. 

The second solution applies to all students, but may be particularly pertinent for those students who are finding it difficult to fit all of their arguments into the 1600 word limit. Some of the Prescribed Titles contain multiple clauses, a number of assumptions, and various approaches inherent to answering the PT. It is generally better to develop a limited number of arguments in depth rather than to try to answer all possible aspects of the PT with far less depth - i.e. depth rather than breadth. It may be necessary to explicitly state which aspects of the PT will be challenged and why (ie signposting).

This is also of particular relevance if the student is tempted to conflate multiple aspects of the PT in order to cover a wider range of arguments - a general rule of thumb would be to focus on developing a substantial argument to a more conventional interpretation of the PT rather than conflation which runs the risk of an inadvertent rewriting of the PT - which will definitely lead to a mediocre grade, or potentially worse.

3. Blind Assessment & Blind Moderation.

This is possibly the most effective preventative measure that we can take as teachers. If we can undertake blind assessment procedures at the Draft stage, and possibly at final assessment stage we counterbalance some of those familiarity problems. At the most basic level just ask your students to submit their Drafts without their names on them, but obviously far more effective is to swap your class’s essays with other teachers at your school. If you’re the sole teacher at your school, or you have a small cohort then swap essays with others in your ToK network. We started to do this at my previous school a few years ago and the experience was revelatory for our team. We picked up on many problems in the essays from each other’s classes that we hadn’t seen until that point, it was also super useful to get colleagues' ideas on the approaches and content of the essay - this definitely had a significant positive effect on our essay scores. 

So, that’s my experience, and my suggestions for solutions. If you have differing experiences, or other solutions I’d love to hear them in the comments section. Today's blog was suggested by a TokToday subscriber, if you have questions or content that you would like me to cover please don't hesitate to get in touch (Daniel@TokToday.com),

Have a great day,
Daniel, Lisbon, Jan 2023

5 (more) essential tips for marking the ToK Essay Draft.

This post comes in response to feedback from a video that I made on marking the ToK Draft Essay (we’re all starting in different places on this ToK journey) - those a little further on their ToK Journey as I focus more on the actual assessment of the content of the essay.

Now, I can’t replicate an IB Cat 2 workshop, neither would you want me to, so what I will do is run through 5 big checks that I make of the content of the essay when I’m marking the Draft.

1. Is the focus of the essay on knowledge arguments or on RLS ?

Most Draft Essays that I have seen have far too much RLS content, they’re overly descriptive of the examples used, and dedicate far too many words to the RLS. This is entirely understandable - DP students have probably spent most of their educational career being assessed on the accuracy of their understanding of content. In ToK we’re asking them to do something a little different - we’re asking them to look at the construction of that content - this is a leap that many students find difficult to make. We can use the rough 80-20 rule here: 80% knowledge to 20% RLS description.

I usually ask students to highlight knowledge & RLS content in different colours on their Draft essays to help them to have a visual representation of the difference.

2. Are definitions consistent throughout the essay ?

Most students realise that the definition of concepts and terms is key to being able to write the ToK Essay. However, students will often change their definitions, or even forget about them during the writing of the essay. Changing definitions can be a strong evaluation point if they find that an earlier definition was insufficient, but this must be done explicitly, and shown to be grounded in the exploration of the PT. 

Recent examiner’s reports have advised that students define terms within each AoK rather than at the beginning of the Essay - this is a good way of reducing the risk of inconsistency in definitions within the essay.

3. Rough Band Placement. (pyramid)

The essay assessment instrument has 5 ‘bands’ or ‘levels’, IB have provided characteristics for each band. I think we can consider broadly what we will find in each essay band - I call this the assessment pyramid.

General talk through the pyramid, as shown in Canva Slides. 

Now, I know that this is just a further precis of the assessment rubric itself, but sometimes there’s a wood & trees problem -  this is my attempt to see the wood.

4. Signposting & LTQ.

Sometimes the Draft Essays can be super confusing: concepts, AoKs, Knowledge Arguments, RLS are all mixed together, sometimes contradictory, often incoherent. If they’re confusing for us as teachers imagine what they’re like for the Examiners. A simple way to start to unravel is to ask the student to signpost the key elements of the essay. I ask them to add sentences which show me where the main elements are, for example:

“My Knowledge claim in AoK ____ is…,”

“This is supported by the RLS ________”

“An evaluation of this argument is _________”

And most importantly by adding a sentence at the end of each paragraph that starts with:

“Linking back to the prescribed title this means that……,”

Signposting the main elements, and explicitly linking back to the question means that there is very little risk of the essay being assessed in the lower 2 bands. It ensures that the student has the basic elements in place to get at least 4/10, which means they’ll pass ToK. 

Signposting also helps the examiners who are serially reading essays written in a range of styles, of varying quality etc. The examiners are looking to award marks, this is much easier to do if students have signposted the content in their essay.

If the signposting is a little clunky after they have developed their essay it can always be taken out before final submission, just like stabilisers on a kid’s bike.  

Team work makes the dream work.

5. Team Work:  

My final tip is teamwork. Assessing ToK Essays is no easy task, it’s complicated for everyone - I’ve seen senior examiners significantly disagreeing over the marks awarded to an essay. So, it’s important to remember that no ToK Teacher is in this on their own. Work with other ToK Teachers either in your school, or in your local ToK network. If you are the sole ToK teacher in your school, and there is no local ToK Network get in touch with another DP school- I have always found colleagues to be generous and welcoming.

In collaboration with other ToK teachers you can problem solve, moderate, and standardise. You can pick apart exemplars and share previously assessed essays. No one expects you to have all the answers, this is a synergistic process, and we’re all in this together. 

I hope that you found those tips useful. If you have any suggestions for further content please don't hesitate to contact me, Daniel@TokToday.com.

Have a great day!
Daniel, Lisbon, Jan 2023

ToK Essay Titles as Philosophy..,

I know that ToK is not Philosophy, and I know that it's bad form to use the term 'philosophy' when talking about ToK, and I know that you don't have to be a philosophy teacher / student to teach / learn ToK.

BUT

there do seem to be some interesting philosophy parallels, and I'm interested in philosophy - so here goes...,

Q1: Is replicability necessary?

I'm certainly seeing Black Swans and White Swans (thank you Mr Popper), but I'm also asking - maybe this is the classical logic of truth functions in philosophy. (remember those afternoons in Logic 101 pondering that if all men wear a blue hat, Sam wears a blue hat, is Sam a man?)

or is it an ends vs means question (without the ethical - moral implications)?

Q2 - Is the explained or unexplained more important?

Is this Schrodinger's Cat?

or is this Rumsfeld's Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and unknown unknowns?

Is it Realism vs Anti-realism?

Or is it Empiricism vs Rationalism, are all of the questions empiricism vs rationalism?

Q3 - Do bubbles matter ?

I'm imagining a tree falling in an empty forest without anyone there to see, or maybe hear it.

Or am I hearing aSocratic dialogue on the relationship between ignorance and evil, and the involuntary nature of evil acts ?

Or is this Plato's and Pareto's Elite Theory ?

Q4 - Are we astonished that so little knowledge can give us so much power?

I'm seeing angels dancing on a pinhead, but that's not actually philosophy, nor ToK.

I'm seeing more map metaphors and low hanging fruit metaphors.

Is this the Process Philosophy vs Substance Metaphysics? Sort of Dewey & James vs Quine & Schaffer?

Q5 - Are visual representations helpful in the communication of knowledge.

Do I see the metaphor of the map sailing back over the horizon..., oh long lost metaphor how we have missed you! Where did you go?

Or maybe it's about Structuralism, Semiotics, Sign and Symbol - Levi-Strauss come forth and elucidate, illuminate and educate!

Q6 Does methodology determines knowledge produced?

This is empiricism - rationalism, it's got to be that old chestnut- is knowledge discovered, or is it constructed ? Judging by views on my videos this is the least popular ToK Question this year, yet in my opinion it's the easiest question posed. Maybe our ToK students love a challenge !

Maybe it's Foundationalism vs Coherentism, I'm sort of drawn to the idea that it's about the degree and form of justification required to consider something as knowledge.

End thoughts

I apologise if I have missed some glaringly obvious philosophical question, my excuse is that my degree is in Economics, not Philosophy. If I have missed some obvious philosophy I would love for you to add your thoughts and insight in the comments section.

I initially posed this post as a bit of fun, however as a ToK teacher I have always found it useful to look at some of the philosophy behind the questions. It helps me to give more advice to students on the sorts of sub-questions that could extend their thinking. It also helps me to guide them in developing counterclaims.

If you want to watch my videos on the M23 titles they can be found at this link.

If you want a guide on how to write the ToK Essay - check out our e-book (linked).

If you want to know about the ToK of the individual Essays check out the blog posts (there's one for each essay)

If people are interested I can put together a post going into more detail on the philosophical questions mentioned in this post, just let me know.

Enjoy your ToK writing and thinking,
Daniel,
Lisbon, Dec 22

Replicability again, ToK Essay 1 May 23

ToK Essay 1 May 23 (Is replicability necessary in the PofK ?) is, in my opinion one of the more straightforward essays in the May 23 session (the other straightforward one being Essay 6). My first thoughts, & video, on this essay can be found at this link.

In this blog I go into more detail on some of the types of replicability that you may wish to consider, which will allow you to give more specific detail, and gain a higher score on this essay.

General musings on 'Replicability'.

In general, replicability is an important aspect of the scientific method and can help improve the production of knowledge. When a study or experiment is replicable, it means that other researchers can obtain the same results by following the same procedures. This increases confidence in the validity of the findings and allows the results to be more easily integrated into existing knowledge.

Let’s look at 4 types of replicability:

1. Conceptual replicability

This refers to the ability to reproduce the concepts or theories that are used in a study.

This is the ability to replicate the underlying conceptual framework or theoretical basis of a study, rather than just the empirical methods. Conceptual replicability is important as it allows researchers to 'test' the validity, and reliability, of particular concepts in various different contexts. For example if Managerial scientists have identified the concept of consumer confidence they could test it on different sets of consumers, different categories of retail environment etc.

Conceptual Replicability is also important for improving the production of knowledge as it allows for the development and refinement of theories and conceptual frameworks

2. Methodological replicability.

This refers to the ability to reproduce the methods or procedures used in a study.

When a study is methodologically replicable, it means that other researchers can obtain the same results by following the same procedures. This increases the reliability of the research results. It will then increase the confidence in the validity of the findings and allows the results to be more easily integrated into existing knowledge. In this way, methodological replicability can help to improve the production of knowledge by ensuring that the results of a study are robust and can be reliably reproduced. Such reliability and validity is of particular importance where health, safety or human rights are concerned, as such methodological replicability is core to the methods of knowledge production in the Human and Natural Sciences.

Methodological replicability also allows other researchers to build upon the findings of a study, which can facilitate the development of further research, new theories and insights. Much scientific knowledge is produced by networked teams of researchers working in different locations, methodological replicability enables them to build upon each others findings, thus increasing the speed and effectiveness of knowledge development.

3. Statistical replicability.

This refers to the ability to reproduce the statistical analyses and results of a study.

Statistical transparency in the results of the research allows peer reviewers to check the statistical calculations made. They can look at the variations in the results arising from various trials to analyse whether any variations are naturally occuring, caused by extraneous variables, or caused by undetected elements of the independent variable.

The degree to which statistical replicability is necessary, or even possible, will very much depend upon the Area of Knowledge under consideration, the purposes of the knowledge production, and the context within which the knowledge production occurs.

4. Practical replicability

This refers to the ability to apply the findings of a study in real-world settings.

The ability to replicate methods and findings in laboratories, or other controlled settings, may help us to isolate and identify cause and effect relationships. In doing so we are increasing the reliability of the knowledge produced. However, to increase the validity of the knowledge we need to be able to show that it has real world viability (what psychologists term "ecological validity"). As such the research will be replicated in a real world setting, subjecting it to many of the uncontrolled for extraneous variables which can, potentially, effect the research results and findings. However, by putting the research into a real world setting researchers are able to refine both the processes and the outcomes for more practical application in the future.

Exactly how practical replicability would be carried out very much depends upon the area of knowledge under consideration, the purpose and the focus of the research.

Counterclaims for the above types of Replicability can be developed by looking at Dr Ulrick Schimmack's excellent blog The Replication Index. Without going into detail on each of the counterclaim concerns raised by Dr Schimmack these include unconscious bias, implicit bias, latent variables, confirmation bias, selection bias, outlier bias, Ad Hominem Fallacy, Straw Man Fallacy, Correlation-Causation Fallacy - I could go on.

The key task in Essay #1 is to tackle the idea of necessity in the production of knowledge. I spend some time doing this in the previous blog post on this essay, and in a lot of detail in the essay notes on this question which can be obtained from the link in the video description

If you have questions, or would like more details on this essay, please add in the comments below, or feel free to email me at Daniel@toktoday.com.

Enjoy your ToKWriting,
Daniel,
Lisbon, Dec 2022

ToK Q&A December 2022

ToK Q&A: I’ve been receiving questions from ToK students around the world. I love to answer your questions, so I thought that I’d take some of the most frequently asked questions, and bundle them into a video. 

Question #1 : "What makes a good object for an Exhibition?"

This is a very straightforward question to answer, the May 2022 Subject Report makes it very clear. The best objects are ones that have some personal relevance to you, that bit’s easy. However - the personal relevance should also have a link to the prompt, it should have a knowledge link. So, if you’re answering the prompt “why do we seek knowledge?”, and your object is your childhood soft toy. The link is not because it was your favourite soft toy, the link could be because you first became interested in the motivation to seek knowledge when you read the “Made in Great Britain” label attached to the toy’s toe.

Going back to the original question - what makes a good object, I would say that the object is far less important than the way in which the object is used - the way in which you use the object to explore the knowledge link.

This is a similar answer as to what makes a good RLS in the Essay - but we’ll save that for a later post.

Q2: "Is it OK to include diagrams in Essay 5 May 2023 ? - the essay about Visual Representations"

The short answer to this question is yes it is, the slightly longer answer is why would you want to include diagrams ? Let me explain a little - if you include a diagram / chart it is your written explanation of that diagram / chart that the examiner will assess, not the diagram / chart, but it’s use in the exploration of the prescribed title. In my opinion if you are getting into the detail of explaining a specific chart / diagram you are probably spending too many words describing the RLS rather than exploring the PT.

Remember the PT is about knowledge rather than the specifics of any particular RLS - focus on trying to establish principles about knowledge production rather than analysing the RLS. I think that this particular PT is about the word ‘helpful’ rather than ways in which visual representations may or may not be accurate. If you want more information on Essay 5 you can watch my video for more details.

Q3: "I need to get a high score in ToK, but I am worried because it’s such an open ended subject - What if the Examiner has a different viewpoint to me ?"

OK, first thing is don’t worry, I don’t want you to waste energy on anxiety - if you work closely with your teacher, follow their advice you should get a good score in ToK.

Let’s briefly look at the two ToK assessments, and you should see that a good score is very achievable.

The Exhibition is marked by your teacher, and moderated by IB. Very rarely do IB moderate the teachers grade by more than 1 mark. Therefore, in most cases - what your teacher gives you for the Exhibition is the score that stands. So, you need to work closely with your teacher if you want a good score in the Exhibition, ask for, & listen to, their advice, pay close attention to the Draft feedback.

Let’s look at The Essay - The Essay is marked by an external IB Examiner, but The Examiner’s don’t mark the Essay according to their personal opinions. They have an assessment rubric that identifies specific things that they are looking for. Your teacher can you give you a copy of this - it’s called “The ToK Essay Assessment Instrument” - if you include the things that they are looking for in the rubric you should get a good score. Don’t worry - that’s wasted energy - just communicate with your teacher - they will show you how to get that high score.

Q4: "How can I write counterclaims ?"

So, first of all - there’s no requirement to write claims & counterclaims. There is a requirement to ‘explore’ the prompt, and to include knowledge arguments, evaluation of these arguments and implications of those arguments. The use of claims and counterclaims is just a useful way of structuring those requirements that some people find helpful.

Personally, I think that using the claim & counterclaim structure does help most students for most essays to meet the requirements - so I generally recommend it (you can see more on essay structures in the card I put above). 

That said, the difficulty that some people find in writing the counterclaim comes from, I think, a belief that the counterclaim has to be the direct  opposite of the claim - this is not the case. The counterclaim should be an alternative perspective of the claim, not necessarily the opposite, and this leaves you the opportunity to explore a number of possible counterclaims.

Let’s look at a simplified example: if your claim was that all swans are white. Your counterclaim does not necessarily have to be that not all swans are white. Your counterclaim could be some swans are sometimes white, or some swans are white when it fits their purpose, and so on. The counterclaim can be a variation of the claim as long as it introduces alternative knowledge arguments.

Q5: "Can students see the subject reports ?"

For those of you who don’t know - the subject report is a report written by the Chief Examiner after the exam session - it’s super useful as it explains what the examiners are looking for, and some of the common mistakes that they saw in the previous exam session.

The answer to the question of whether the subject report ids available to students  is yes, as far as i understand it students are allowed to see the ToK Subject - I’m not aware of any guidance from IB to the contrary, ToK teachers - if you know any contrary guidance please let me know. I have always shared the subject reports with my students, and used them to help them to prepare their ToK assessments - if I shouldn't have been doing this I’ll now be in trouble !

Check out the May 22 Subject Report (in diagram form) at this link (Essay), and this link (Exhibition).

OK, that’s enough for the December Q&A, we'll have another one in January. If you have questions that you would like me to address in future Q&As please don’t hesitate to send them to Daniel@TokToday.com.

Scientific Anomalies & the production of knowledge.

What can scientific anomalies tell us about the production of scientific knowledge ? Today's blog post outlines a real life situation that can be used as an example in AoK Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and various themes. We can use it to explore a few key ToK ideas:

(i) Why is knowledge categorised into AoKs, and are those divisions useful ?

(ii) Is the scientific method inherent to producing scientific knowledge ?

(iii) Does Peer Review ensure the reliability of knowledge ?

(iv) Are there self-sustaining gatekeepers imposing a knowledge hierarchy within the AoKs ?

Starting points - Robert Jahn at Princeton.

You can read background on Professor Jahn's academic history at Wikipedia - he was undoubtedly a very accomplished academic in Physics. What is of interest to us is his research in Parapsychology.

Image Citation: “Robert Jahn, Pioneer of Deep Space Propulsion and Mind-Machine Interactions, Dies at 87.” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/11/30/robert-jahn-pioneer-deep-space-propulsion-and-mind-machine-interactions-dies-87.

Research in Parapsychology.

In the 1970s and 80s, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, led by Robert Jahn, conducted a series of experiments on the so-called "anomalous effects" of human consciousness on physical systems. Essentially he was looking at an effect called Psychokinesis - the ability of the mind to affect the external physical world. These experiments, which were largely funded by the US military, aimed to investigate the possibility that human consciousness could affect the behaviour of random number generators, machines that produce sequences of random numbers.

The experiments conducted at PEAR were designed to be highly controlled and rigorously scientific, and they followed the scientific method in their approach. However, the results of these experiments were not always in line with expectations. In some cases, the results seemed to indicate that human consciousness could indeed affect the behaviour of random number generators, but in other cases, the results were inconclusive or seemed to contradict previous findings.

These anomalies at PEAR raised questions about the nature of human consciousness and its potential relationship to the physical world. Some critics argue that the anomalies observed at PEAR were the result of flaws in the experimental design or data analysis, while others suggest that they may indicate the presence of unknown forces or phenomena that are not currently understood by science.

Despite the controversy surrounding the experiments at PEAR, the work of Robert Jahn and his colleagues has contributed to our understanding of the relationship between human consciousness and the physical world. Their research has provided valuable insights into the potential capabilities of the human mind, and has sparked further investigation into the mysteries of consciousness.

How can we use this in ToK ?

ToK Question:

(i) Why is knowledge categorised into AoKs, and are those divisions useful ?

The Knowledge Frameworks of the AoKs describe why knowledge is categorised into AoKs. We look at the Scope, Perspectives and Methodology of knowledge to decide how it should be categorised into AoKs.

However, there is some dispute about these divisions (eg see the work of Basil Bernstein as explored by Suellen Shay). Jahn's work clearly shows a crossover between the Physical and Human Sciences. It also shows a deep integration between the two science AoKs and AoK Mathematics.

It could be argued that whilst the AoKs may provide us with a convenient model to organise knowledge in ToK they don't necessarily bear much correspondence with the construction and application of knowledge in the real world.

ToK Question:

(ii) Is the scientific method inherent to producing scientific knowledge ?

The Scientific Method and Scientific Knowledge are often presented as being mutually inclusive elements. ie scientific knowledge is scientific because it is produced using the scientific method. Whilst this may be the case for the vast majority of scientific knowledge there are cases in which the scientific method has not been used to produce scientific knowledge. The main reasons for this would be that either the knowledge has been discovered (sometimes accidentally), or the knowledge does not avail itself of scientific testing (such as rare events / phenomena), or the technology does not yet exist to apply scientific testing procedures.

Jahn's work was testing something beyond the normal scope / parameters of the physical sciences. It is possible that we are yet to develop the technology to test the sort of energy fields that he was interested in. The ToK point here is that knowledge production is, to a degree, limited to the technology available at the time (eg we couldn't test the effects of ultra violet lights on plants until we were able to identify and control ultra violet lights).

ToK Question:

(iii) Does Peer Review ensure the reliability of knowledge ?

Jahn showed a small significant effect over a large number of trials. Such findings would have the potential for changing the basic premises of Physics. However, his methodology was widely criticised by many of his peer physicists at the time (again you can read about this on Wikipedia). Further, many Peer Review bodies refused to review Jahn's research on the basis that it did not constitute 'science' (see this article).

As such, this does appear to show that Peer Review ensures reliability of knowledge. However, there are two immediately apparent drawbacks to this system. The first is that peer review ensures reliability within the scope by which reliability is defined at that time, in that particular discipline / AoK. The ways in which reliability is defined and tested may change by context, time and purpose.

The second concern (implication) is that the narrow definition and application of reliability may be marginalising valuable new knowledge which does not stand up to peer review. Research into such new knowledge may not be further developed due to dismissal at an early stage of development.

ToK Question:

(iv) Are there self-sustaining gatekeepers imposing a knowledge hierarchy within the AoKs ?

Jah, and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR), experienced marginalisation and even ridicule by the scientific community, as well described in this article from the Harvard magazine Crimson,and this article from The New York Times.

We could look at such reactions as stemming from a body of practitioners who agree upon the scope and methodology of knowledge production within their AoK. On the other hand we could also consider their reactions as ensuring their hold over power and authority within their AoK - a classic gatekeepers hierarchy.

The work of Professor Jahn and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab, provides ToK students with a rich seam of insight into the production of knowledge at the highest levels of scientific research. It is particularly useful because the participants were willing to step away from that which is deemed to be conventional in their field. It is in the contrasts with normal operations that we can sometimes best see what constitutes normal operations.

Daniel,
Lisbon, Dec 2022

More on AoK Natural Sciences at this link.

ToK Essay 5 May 2023: What is meant by "helpful in the communication of knowledge?"

Since writing the essay notes, and making the video, for ToK Essay 5 May 2023 (Visual Representations) I have been returning to the phrase “helpful in the communication of knowledge”. I feel that more unpacking of this term will be useful for students writing this essay.

For the wider (more introductory) notes on ToK Essay 5 May 2023 see this video, and pick up the detailed notes from here.

In this blog post I look at 3 perspectives that students could use to approach / unpack this term:

1. Ways of understanding the typology of knowledge (Zuckerfeld, 2017)

2.The role of symbol and signal in the communication of knowledge.(Berry, 2019)

3. The role of meaning in the communication of knowledge.(Hornsby & Stanley 2005).

My starting premise for all of these perspectives is that in order to judge whether something is helpful we have to decide what its purpose is, in this case we have to decide what the purpose of the communication of knowledge is in order to judge whether visual representations are helpful. This post focuses on the question - what are some of the possible purposes of the communication of knowledge ?

Perspective 1: The Typology of Knowledge (Zuckerfeld 2017).

Students could explore whether the communication of knowledge is helpful for the individual knower or for the development of the Area of Knowledge as a whole. Different types of knowledge will be helpful for one, the other, and sometimes both. Obviously, this distinction will be further differentiated by the various factors of context.

When looking at the individual knower in ToK there is always the danger of falling into a relativist argument that fails to make any substantial statements. To help to avoid this I point students towards the idea of ‘intersubjective realities’ (Zuckerfeld, 2017) - the idea that knowers share common knowledge (which leads to language, culture etc).

It is in these intersubjective realities Zuckerfeld argues that we can find some answers to the purpose of communication of knowledge - at either the level of the knower or at the level of the AoK. Zuckerfeld describes 5 main types of inter-subjective knowledge to which we can apply the use of visual communication in order to assess its usefulness.

Types of Knowledge

(i) Recognition Based Knowledge

This is the institutional based knowledge (both formal and informal) (such as work & education) which enables location and hierarchy. This is value based, and as such visual representations are only useful in so much as they consolidate values based comprehension. 

(ii) Linguistic Knowledge.

This includes not only formal language, but also informal language (such as slang & dialect) and non-human language (such as computer coding). Students could argue that language itself is a form of visual representation (emojis are obvious etc). The argument for ‘helpfulness’ seems clear here, however, strong counterclaims could be developed around misinterpretation and the contextual nature of meaning. The strength of formalised semantic (rather than visual) based language is standardised interpretation, as such a strong argument could be developed for the unhelpfulness of visual representations.

(iii) Organisational Knowledge.

This is knowledge which increases the specialisation and precision of process and understanding. Such knowledge allows for high degrees of human expertise, which arguably increases the effectiveness of knowledge. Zuckerfeld includes the internet, and social media such as Facebook & Youtube under this typology. Arguably Visual Representation only adds value here (ie is ‘helpful’) when it can convey greater meaning than written or spoken words.

(iv) Axiological Knowledge.

This is knowledge which defines the knower’s identity. Zuckerfeld argues that this is experienced as individual, but is increasingly consumption based. Strong arguments for the role of visual representations helping to quickly convey meaning could be developed for this type of knowledge.

(v) Normative Knowledge.

 This is formalised, externalised, standardised knowledge such as laws, academic content, and rights. This is highly networked, social and public knowledge. As such a student could develop strong arguments that visual representations are helpful in the communication of aspects of this knowledge, if not so much in the production of this knowledge.

Perspective 2. The role of symbol and signal in the communication of knowledge.(Berry, 2019)

Berry et al look at the Digital Humanities as an emerging field of AoK Human Sciences, arguing that the prevalence of digital communication of knowledge requires us to redevelop the Human Sciences. Obviously, much digital communication is in the form of visual representation, and as such Berry’s article can add much depth to the Human Sciences element of ToK Essay 5 May 2023.

Berry starts with vivid analysis of the problems caused by the digital communication of knowledge at both the level of the Knower, and the development of wider (AOK) social knowledge. He borrows the term ‘disorientation’ ( the difference between the human ordering of time and the digital representation of time) from Stiegler (Stiegler 2008)  to describe the effects of this vastly increased digital communication of knowledge. ToK students could develop this concept to look at the effects of visual representations in Human Sciences of the representation of the more qualitative aspects of that studied.

Berry et al propose that GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) as a representation of big tech has led to a commoditization of human experience in which symbolic lived reality has replaced been replaced by the signal of the communication. As such, all knowledge becomes data which can be directly compared, calculated, and standardised. Again, ToK students would have to be careful not to spend too many words on descriptions of the negative effects of digitalisation of knowledge, but rather focus on the challenges that this poses for AoK Human Sciences which were primarily developed in a pre-digital era.

This argument then develops into the description of what they call “The Second Machine Age” in which the digitalisation of knowledge leads to high levels of anxiety and alienation. An age in which emotions are no longer represented symbolically, but become commodified signals. This argument provides a rich framework for ToK students to unpack the ideas of both visual representations (representing what ? and in which ways ?) and helpful (to whom ? and for what ?). Again, they borrow from Stiegler the idea of the “Grammatization” of culture, which could easily & equally be applied to visual representations and knowledge in the PT.

Encoding-Decoding

A core part of their argument is that in the digital age knowledge has to be encoded before it is communicated. This has two consequences: (i) the knowledge is now constrained by its compatibility to the platform of communication (ii) the decoding of the signal depends upon the receiver who is further removed from the signaller than in a pre-digital age. This argument could be developed to demonstrate the unhelpfulness in the communication of knowledge in the Human Sciences, especially in Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology. More pertinently, it is maybe an argument that those Human Sciences need to be redeveloped in order to take account of the new forms of visual representations in the communication of knowledge.

A final point of interest of their argument is a development of Drucker’s paper on digital scholarship in which she argues that “tool making has replaced hermeneutics”. Essentially she’s arguing that the production of the representation of knowledge (signal) has replaced the meaning (symbol) of that knowledge. In terms of PT#5 this could be developed as a strong argument (counterclaim ?) that the visual representation is now the knowledge itself, the visuals no longer represent the knowledge, they are the knowledge.

Perspective 3: The role of meaning in the communication of knowledge. (Hornsby & Stanley 2005).

Hornsby & Stanley (2005) take a linguistic approach to the purpose of the communication of knowledge. This is useful to us as we can think of written knowledge as being a visual representation of knowledge, and contrast it with verbal knowledge. Obviously, both are means by which knowledge is communicated.

Hornsby & Stanley make a distinction between Semantic Knowledge (knowledge conveying meaning), Practical Knowledge (knowledge enabling us to act), and Procedural Knowledge (knowledge which tells us how to do something). Their starting point is that Semantic Knowledge is Practical Knowledge, and that within practical knowledge we have the realisation of semantic knowledge. They argue that practical knowledge is developed through speaking rather than visually. This is useful for students writing ToK Essay 5 May 2023 because it provides a counterclaim to the helpfulness of visual representations . Obviously students writing this answer will have to place this theory within the Areas of Knowledge concerned (Hum Sci & Maths), however it has direct relevance within both AoKs.

Hornsby & Stanley argue that spoken language is more meaningful than written / visual language because with spoken language the meaning of the communication is integrated with the understanding of the knowledge in real time, in situ. As such the sender of the knowledge is able to adjust the message in response to the receivers comprehension in situ. They develop this argument to show that the semantic structures associated with spoken language (knowledge) are different to the semantic structures associated with written (visually represented) language (Knowledge). Again, this can be used as a counterargument against the helpfulness of visual representations, for example in the communication of knowledge in the maths classroom.

What about the communicator ?

The third string of their argument is the emphasis they place on the communicator in the production and packaging of the knowledge. The communicator shapes the semantic meaning of the knowledge in the production of the message. With visual representation of the knowledge that shaping must be done hypothetically, however with spoken communication of knowledge it can be done organically in response to the receiver. 

A fourth position in their paper which can be applied to ToK Essay 5 May 2023 is the type of knowledge best described by visual representations. They argue that visual representations of knowledge best describe procedural knowledge, and that this is typical in both the production, sending and reception of the knowledge. Such procedural knowledge, they argue, is best developed as semantic knowledge in a spoken environment (e.g. think about ‘reading it out loud to make sense of it’).

Their article goes onto develop an argument concerning a ‘meta-meaning’ enshrined within spoken language (knowledge) as opposed to written / visually represented language (knowledge).

What I have presented here are 3 perspectives on ways in which we can understand the purposes of the communication of knowledge in order to judge whether visual representations are helpful. Obviously, all that I can give in the scope of this post are brief overviews of the research cited. Full references (plus doi references, or JSTOR references) are included below should you wish to read the original articles to get more details for your ToK Essay.

Should you have any questions or thoughts please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at Daniel@TokToday.com.

Enjoy your ToK Writing!
Daniel, Lisbon,
December 2022 

References.

• BERRY, DAVID M., et al. “No Signal without Symbol: Decoding the Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, University of Minnesota Press, 2019, pp. 61–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvg251hk.8. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.

• Drucker, Johanna. “Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 85-95. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2012.

• Hornsby, Jennifer, and Jason Stanley. “Semantic Knowledge and Practical Knowledge.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. 79, 2005, pp. 107–45. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106937. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.

• Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time: 2 Disorientation. Translated by Stephen Barker. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2008.

• Zukerfeld, Mariano, and Suzanna Wylie. “The Typology of Knowledge.” Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism, vol. 2, University of Westminster Press, 2017, pp. 53–98. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6zd9v0.7. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.

Did photography change painting?

Today's post can be used as a real life example for AoK The Arts, Knowledge and Technology, and possibly other elements of ToK. There is an associated video linked here, and below. We look at how the invention of the camera, and development of photography may have changed painting (and vice versa).

Did the invention of the Camera change painting?

Until the mid 19th Century painting aspired to a super realistic re-creation of reality - the more realistic the painting the better the art & artist. This was mainly because painting was the main way that we capture a record of the physical world, rich people (such as lords of the manor) would pay artists to produce flattering portraits of themselves, their families, their land and their animals. Then in 1839 the camera was invented, and suddenly we had a new technology that could capture precise and accurate representations of the physical world. No more need for portrait painters, good bye realistic representational art, and consequently we see the rise of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, post surrealism etc. Conclusion the camera fundamentally changed visual arts - convenient huh ? it’s a comfortable little story of how technology changes knowledge, it’s also a little too convenient, maybe a crude oversimplification, or simply wrong.

Let’s dig a little deeper…, 

We’re going to have to use the terms knowledge and technology somewhat interchangeably. Where technology ends and knowledge begins is open to much discussion, and not really the main focus of this post. We will broadly accept that technology is the physical tool of knowledge. For the purposes of short hand convenience we’ll consider them as mutually inclusive factors. 

The ToK question : does new knowledge replace old knowledge?

The applied ToK question: does new technology produce new knowledge which replaces old knowledge produced by old technology ?

The real life situation: Did the new technology of photography displace, or change, the old technology of painting because it was better at accurately recording images ?

Let’s quickly run through 3 perspectives:

Perspective 1:

The archetypal / crude depiction that new technology supplants / replaces pre-existing technology.

This was the argument made at the beginning of this video - and it was real fear in the mid 19th C:

Lei Qin argues that some painters thought that the emergence of the new technology of photography in the 1840s would spell the end of their art form, she quotes the French painter Paul Delaroche upon seeing a camera said this: “As from today, painting is dead!”.

This replacement argument is often made at the beginning of a new technology - for example as home video machines became popular in the 1980s it was thought that they would replace cinema, emails would replace paper letters, planes would replace ocean liners etc, Sometimes the new technology does replace the old technology (think horses and cars), but often it only changes the use of the old technology. Which leads us to our second perspective:

Perspective 2: New Technology changes pre-existing technology.

Elena Martinique argues that photography radically changed painting and art (Martinique). She particularly argues that the impressionists (such as Monet, Sisley, Degas and Cezanne) were particularly influenced by photography. Photography allowed artists new ways to examine the relationship between space, light and form. Photography allowed landscape artists such as Courbet and Daubigny to depict details such as the ways in which light filters through trees, or how water curls at the crest of a wave. Figurative impressionists such as Manet often used photographs of landscape to inform the backgrounds of their paintings.

In 1851 the French Government initiated the Mission Heliographique, a project in which 5 photographers were hired to document the monuments and architecture of France. Their photographs were later used by impressionist painters to inform their painting, this can be seen in Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral and Pissarro’s paintings of the Boulevards of Paris.

So, this perspective is that the new technology modifies or changes the pre-existing technology. Non art examples might be that planes did not replace ocean liners, but led to the rise of leisure cruises, emails did not replace paper letters but just increased the value of a handwritten letter, digital music did not replace vinyl records, but made the vinyl a niche status symbol and so on.

Now we could get into the definition of the word replace, and discuss the function of the technology in the production of knowledge, but we’ll have to save that for future videos, because our 3rd perspective introduces a more radical perspective.

Perspective 3: Pre-existing knowledge eventually changes the new technology. 

After the introduction of film based photography in the 1840’s early adopters of this new technology started to realise that the capacity for photography to produce new, innovative and even abstract representations of the world was far greater than it’s capacity to capture realistic views of the world.

Remember the 5 photographers hired by the French Govt in 1851 - well 4 of them were trained artists. When they submitted their photographs to the Commission des Monuments Historiques it became obvious that rather than capture survey images showing the state of old French monuments they had actually made many artistic photographs contrasting line, shape, form and other artistic devices.

Throughout the 1800s photographers started to realise that as a form of visual communication photography could communicate more than accurate realism, they started to adopt many of the visual design methods of painters to communicate message, meaning, context and emotion. Henry Talbot Fox’s image The Open Door is a conscious effort to make a photograph in the style of the 17th Century Dutch school. In the intervening years photography has developed as an art form far beyond the mere capturing of reality. 

So, in this perspective pre-existing or old knowledge changes the new knowledge, and this question is not really about technology, it’s all about knowledge.

The original question itself is wrong (first rule of ToK: question the question). Photography and painting are maybe better thought of as different expressions of the same function of knowledge - that function / purpose being visual communication, or they can be thought of as two completely different & separate forms of knowledge & technology. As such we can develop some analytical knowledge perspectives, these are knowledge counterclaims in the ToK World:

Knowledge Counterclaim 1:

We’re actually not comparing two technologies that produce even similar knowledge for even similar purposes. As Pierre Bonnard argues that: “ “The question is not the painting of life, but making painting come alive.” This perspective argues that the purpose of creating photographic knowledge is completely different to the purpose of creating painted knowledge. The knowledge producers are constructing that knowledge to fulfil different needs.

Knowledge Counterclaim  2:

Verisimilitude - does photography actually reproduce reality as we experienced it ? Is what we know about a scene just how light has fallen on a flat image sensor ? Photography can remove context, emotion etc Arguably the painter better captures our knowledge of place & time by being able to manipulate the physical elements in order to better capture that which is present. It may be that painting is the more representative art form because painters can convey meaning, context, emotion. How often have you seen a photo of yourself which does not accurately represent your experience of that event ?

Knowledge Counterclaim 3:

Maybe the images tell us more about the people who constructed them than about the scene that they are supposedly recording. Both paintings and photographs are constructed in a particular way. The artist & photographer bring their interests, purposes, biases, judgments, culture, values and truth to how they construct the image. The image is actually their interpretation of the scene not a replication of the scene. As such the knowledge created by each technology is knowledge about the knowledge producer rather than the scene captured.

Knowledge Counterclaim 4:

What about the wider context of the development of the new technology of photography ? The 19th C was a time of rapid industrialisation in Europe, material wealth quickly increased, and people started to enjoy leisure time and surplus wealth. Arguably, photographic knowledge was a compatible product of this context. Rather than photography replacing painting, it could be that the social context changed and painting was no longer well adapted for the new industrialised context.

What is clearer than a well focussed photograph is that once you dig below the surface of a convenient, and comfortable, knowledge relationship you find that influence, interpolation and implication are far more intricate and involved than they might first appear.

ToK Teachers can find lessons for AoK The Arts at this link, and this one (on the Arts & Ethics).

Daniel,
Lisbon, December 2022

Works Cited

• Duggan, Bob. “How Photography Changed Painting (and Vice Versa).” Big Think, 7 February 2013, https://bigthink.com/articles/how-photography-changed-painting-and-vice-versa/. Accessed 22 November 2022.

• Grøtta, Marit. “Reading/Developing Images: Baudelaire, Benjamin, and the Advent of Photography.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 41, no. 1/2, 2013, pp. 80–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23538443. Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.

• Martinique, Elena. “How Did Photography Influence The Impressionists?” Widewalls, 12 October 2019, https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/impressionists-photography-museo-thyssen-bornemisza. Accessed 22 November 2022.

• Qin, Lei. “Some thoughts about photography's influence on painting | CCTP 802 – Art and Media Interfaced.” Georgetown Commons, 27 March 2018, https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-802-spring2018/2018/03/27/some-thoughts-about-photographys-influence-on-painting/. Accessed 22 November 2022.

• Willette, Jeanne. “Mission Héliographique, Part Two.” Art History Unstuffed, 30 January 2015, https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/mission-heliographique-part-two/. Accessed 25 November 2022.

ToK Essay 4 May 2023: Astonishing (revisited)

ToK Essay 4 May 2023 presents us with a quote from Bertrand Russell that it is “astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power”. This video is a short addition to my main thoughts on this essay title which can be found here.

Initially I thought that this essay title was about the relationship between the amount of knowledge we have, and the power afforded to us by that power. However, the more I think about it the more I think that the interesting, maybe central, point of this essay is about the affective adjective ‘astonishing’. Here are 4 arguments why this essay could be about the astonishment that Russell expresses:

1. Attitude to knowledge.

The quote is centrally about our relationship to knowledge, about our attitude to knowledge. It’s not about the measurable knowledge and the power commensurate to measurable power. The ToK Essay does not invite you to go into an autobiographical exploration of Bertrand Russell, so at the danger of tempting students to do so, let’s just briefly touch on Russell’s philosophy. Russell was a pioneer of the use of analytical logic in philosophy, in later life he became an anti imperialist, and was concerned with the use of power to subjugate fellow humans. As such he was wrangling with reconciling a philosophy based on logic against human behaviours based illogical prejudices or biases. 

In this context we can start to interpret the quote as implying a degree of complacency, self possession, even arrogance in our attitude to our knowledge. The astonishment may come from our complacency in not wishing to know more, or our willingness to act despite having such limited knowledge. 

Positivism and empiricism.

The key point is, I think, a commentary on the overwhelmingly positivist and empiricist age within which we live. The 20th & 21st centuries are periods within which positivism and empiricism have triumphed over all other forms of knowing to such a degree that the idea that a scientific fact is superior to any other form of knowledge is hegemonic, aphoristic and near absolute. Our context is so imbued with positivist empiricism that I even heard a Christian religious leader on BBC Radio 4 this morning use scientific proof in order to illustrate the limitations of faith based  belief. 

The potential dangers of positivist empiricism is that its premise is that everything has an explanation, and therefore, consequently, everything can ultimately be controlled. Or maybe, the premise is not the danger, but the exercise of that control with limited explanations (aka knowledge) is the danger. (for example Russell became increasingly concerned with the danger of nuclear weapons later in his life).

Arguably Positivist empiricism gives us a certain arrogance from our perceived place in the world and our ability to control that around us.

Human as progenitor rather than human as derivative - that’s astonishing arrogance. 

2. Context bound knowledge.

Russell starts with the premise that “we know so little”, we can fully understand his point - Science and Maths have shown us (through their particular methodology) that our knowledge is incredibly limited. Faith based knowledge, and indigenous knowledge systems, commonly posit that know little, and invite us to welcome that limitation. However, the experience of the positivist age is the exact opposite. Arguably, our lived experience of the modern world is that we know a lot, possibly that we are on the verge of knowing everything - listen to how people use phrases such as “it is a scientific fact”, “scientific research shows”, “that has not been scientifically proven”. It’s the use of science as absolute truth, universal truth - ie we know, or can know, everything.

So, if we take my first premise that most people assume that we know a lot (rather than a little) maybe the quote is implying that both our knowledge and power are incredibly context bound.

Context bound.

All knowledge is bound by its context. What we know today is everything that we know - the unknown is experienced as unknowable, and therefore it feels like we know a lot, or at least have the capacity to know all that we don’t know. 

However, the problem with this argument is that it treats knowledge as an external reality waiting to be discovered - it treats knowledge like unknown areas of a map that we are yet to explore (this is the symptom of the positivist empiricism from which we all suffer). We could take a more rationalist perspective, that knowledge is internally constructed. As such we are merely limited by our imagination, our open-mindedness, our ability to both observe and to identify that which is significant. In which case the astonishment may come from our limited inclination and impetus to construct more knowledge. To rephrase Russell again - It is astonishing that we live in an age in which we have so much power alongside such wilful ignorance. 

3. Assumption - Knowledge gives us power.

I interpreted the quote as implying that there could / should be a relationship between knowledge and power: Knowledge gives us power. A viable ToK essay could go down the route of looking at what types of knowledge give different types of power - this would be particularly effective if it were based in the Frameworks of the Areas of Knowledge. Again, if taking this approach I would strongly recommend linking it to the idea of astonishment.

However, we could also take a more critical approach. We could argue that the link between knowledge and power is tenuous at best, and possibly non-existent in some circumstances. 

This argument would be constructed around the idea that power comes from a wider range of factors than knowledge (eg attribution, habituation, compulsion, culture etc). 

Or conversely we could argue that the relationship between knowledge and power is inverse.

Starting from a premise that by knowing more we also become more aware of the extent of our ignorance we could argue that increasing knowledge can be disempowering. Again if we look at knowledge and power as being culturally contextual then to gain knowledge external to that cultural context could be disempowering (as power is culturally defined). Further, If we define power in terms of personal utility, satisfaction, even happiness we can construct an argument which is sometimes commonly put as ‘ignorance is bliss’.

If these arguments were to be applied to the Russell quote we can develop a set of counterclaims that it is not astonishing 

4. “...CAN…” it’s a proposition.

The quote proposes that little knowledge CAN give us so much power, so arguably Russell is not arguing that this is the current de facto state of being, it could be interpreted as a potential possibility. Now, that’s not how I originally read the statement - I originally read it as little knowledge AFFORDS us so much power, but it could be argued as a proposition.

If we interpret it as a proposition then the implication of the quote could be that there is not a direct causal link between knowledge and power - the arguments of perspective 3 swing back into view.

Further we can link this back to the dominance of positivist empiricism - in a scientific age - we have the opportunity to have so much power without necessarily having to gain so much knowledge. It could be posited as an argument for our current forms of knowledge construction. Maybe, it is astonishing that in an age characterised by the dominance of a posteriori reasoning  we use power in an a priori manner.

So, there we have it  - 4 arguments how this essay could be primarily about astonishment. Of course, there is no single correct answer to this essay title (nor any of the other titles). Your task is merely to write a well argued essay which provides a clear, coherent and critical exploration of the title. 

If you want more detailed notes on this essay you can pick up the detailed essay notes from this link.

Unsubstantiated assertions in ToK Essay

One of the most frequent mistakes that I saw in the ToK Essay as a ToK Examiner was students writing unsubstantiated assertions. An unsubstantiated assertion is a claim, or statement, which is made without any substance (obviously). Rectifying this mistake is the one of the easiest things that students could do to move from the 3-4 mark band to the 5-6 band.

Let's look at an example:

Scientific knowledge is always objective, and therefore is more important than any of the other types of knowledge.

typical sentence from essays awarded <5 marks.

The above sentence is very typical of the essays that I would see in the 1-4 mark bands. The sentence not only contains 2 unsubstantiated assertions, but also an absolute statement (which is also not a good characteristic).

"Scientific knowledge is always objective": this is an unsubstantiated assertion. We might ask questions such as how do we know this ? where's the evidence ? This statement is also an absolute statement ("always"). Again, we might ask how we know this ? and where's the evidence ?

" Scientific knowledge...., is more important than the other forms of knowledge": Again, this is an unsubstantiated assertion as no evidence is given, it is stated as a fact rather than a claim/argument.

How to avoid unsubstantiated statements.

Unsubstantiated statements are fairly easy to avoide by using any of the following:

1. Cite research, or evidence, which demonstrates the statement.

2. So, in the case of the statement that "Scientific knowledge is always objective" if you can find research that has shown that scientific knowledge is always objective cite it. (Obviously, it's highly unlikely that you would find such research...,).

3. Quote someone who has put forward your claim as an argument.

4. Find a theorist/researcher/writer who has put forward the same claim as the one that you are making and quote them. This gives your argument 'substance'. Eg Jones (1984) argues that all scientific knowledge is objective. (I made up Jones 1984 because no person with credibility would claim that all scientific knowledge is objective, don't make up sources in your essay because the examiners will find you out !).

5. Use a hedging statement.

6. A hedging statement is a word, or statement, which makes the assertion propositional. Examples of hedging statements are: "it could be argued...,", or "one perspective is that...,"

Conclusion.

Changing unsubstantiated statements to substantiated statements is a very easy way to quickly improve the quality of ToK essay writing. Of course it won't necessarily bring coherence, analysis and pertinence to the essay, but it will help the essay move to 4+ marks.

If you want more help writing the ToK Essay you can pick up the e-book at this link, or look at other services offered at this link.

Enjoy your ToK writing!
Daniel,
Lisbon, Nov 2022

ToK Essay Tips

The most frequent ToK Essay Tips that I have to give to my students is to get them to change their writing from describing the real world to discussing knowledge. Today's post is just a little aide memoire that ToK Teachers can give to their students to remind them to write about knowledge. It may save you a conversation or two !

The image can also be downloaded as a PDF here.

Have a Tok-tastic day!
Daniel.

ToK Essay #4 M23: Astonishing !

The video guide for ToK Essay #4 May23 is published on Youtube today (and linked below). There are so many assumptions in this title that it was a challenge to work out where to start. In the end I went with a scaffolded approach. I started with the traditional, straightforward, approach, and then developed more sophisticated ideas into the latter stages of the essay.

Astonishment.

As I wrote the Essay Notes for ToK Essay #4 M23 (linked) I became increasingly aware that the response of astonishment could be the central idea in the essay rather than the debate between little knowledge and lots of power. As such the essay notes ran to over 6,900 words - they contain at least 4 main ways to approach the essay (and probably many more). Consequently the video is also far longer than I would have hoped for. Most people watch a video for about 25% of its duration, I find that trying to keep it snappy & on point is a real challenge - but the juicy bits of this video are in the last 5 minutes.

A few of the characters who join us in the video for Essay Guide #4 - trying to keep it light & accessible!

Other guides:

You can find the video guide for Essay #1 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #2 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #3 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #5 linked here.

Tell me what you think!

I welcome feedback on the guide for ToK Essay #4 M23, or any of the other videos, notes, or ebooks. My mission is to produce accessible ToK Resources so please let me know what you need and what I could improve.

In the meantime, have a great weekend!
Daniel,
Lisbon, Portugal

ToK Essay #5 May 23: Visual Representations

The video guide to ToK Essay #5 May 23: Visual Representations has been posted on YouTube today (and is linked below). This essay was a real challenge for me to summarise in a short video. When I wrote the Essay Guide Notes (linked) I found it to be a very wide ranging subject, and the notes ran to over 6,300 words !

Visual Representations.

The focus on visual representations seems fairly straightforward, they're tangible things such as maps and graphs. However, the knowledge links are a little more obscure in this essay than in the others. The essay question specifies that we look at visual representation in terms of the communication of knowledge. This lends itself to the purpose, and maybe, context of knowledge. I also played around with ideas such as the simplification of knowledge (harking back to a PT a few years ago), but this seemed to be a potential diversion.

There's such a wide range of visual representations that students can look at, in some ways it's a possible diversionary danger. It's important that students stay focussed on whether those representations are 'helpful' in communication. I have tried to think of 'helpful' in terms of the purpose and context of knowledge.

The Knower & Knowledge.

The focus on visual representations in the communication of knowledge seems to link well with the core theme of The Knower & Knowledge, and that's mainly where I ended up. It gives us good links to the ToK Concepts of Interpretation, Explanation and Evidence. The (re)introduction of The Knower into the ToK course gives students a lot more scope in their ToK Essays to go beyond the production of knowledge that they were largely constrained to in the last syllabus.

You can find the video guide for Essay #1 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #2 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #3 linked here.

If you want more detailed notes on the Knowledge Questions and arguments raised in the video then please check out the detailed notes available here.

If you want help with your ToK Essay or Exhibition then please check out the Student Support page linked here.

You can always contact me at Daniel@ToKToday.com,
stay Tok-tastic!,
Daniel

ToK Essay #3 Bubbles video guide posted

The video guide to ToK Essay #3 May 23 (the essay about 'bubbles') has been posted to YouTube today (and is linked below).

I like this essay, I think that it comes at an appropriate time, and gives the students an opportunity to reflect on echo chambers (bubbles) in both academic and wider life. I chose to focus on the academic sphere, as I think this is a safer area for discussion than venturing into social media. I assume that some students will discuss social media, but that feels a bit risky to me.

I had lots of 'old person' jokes running through my head when I saw the concept of 'bubbles' in the essay. Fans of West Ham Utd will be delighted to see their club song has made it to the ToK Essay arena. Some people may have thought of references to Michael Jackson (again I thought it safer to steer clear of that reference). However, I did put a gentle joke in the video (an "Easter Egg") - see if you can spot it. People from London, UK will have an advantage !

You can find the video guide for Essay #1 linked here.

You can find the video guide for Essay #2 linked here.

If you want more detailed notes on the Knowledge Questions and arguments raised in the video then please check out the detailed notes available here.

If you want help with your ToK Essay or Exhibition then please check out the Student Support page linked here.

You can always contact me at Daniel@ToKToday.com,
stay Tok-tastic!
Daniel

ToK Essay 2 May 23: Can or cannot explain

The overview video for ToK Essay 2 May 23 can or cannot explain is posted today (and linked below).

I'm trying to be a good IB Learner by improving my skills and knowledge as I produce these videos. I have listened to feedback on the first video, and lowered the volume of the music on this video.

These overview videos are only intended to give students a flavour of a few of the debates which could be explored in these essays. There are, of course, many more arguments and perspectives which could be included.

Just 4 of the characters used in the video guide for essay #2, we've got to have fun with this !

The video guide for Essay #1 is linked here.

If you want more detailed notes on the Knowledge Questions and arguments raised in the video then please check out the detailed notes available here.

If you want help with your ToK Essay or Exhibition then please check out the Student Support page linked here.

You can always contact me at Daniel@ToKToday.com,
stay Tok-tastic!
Daniel

ToK Subject Report "at glance".

My aim was to distill the May 22 ToK subject report down to only one page. I wanted to create the "Subject Report at a glance". I then realised that it made more sense to have one page for The Essay, and one page for The Exhibition.

In the May 22 ToK Subject Report the section on the Essay is rather succinct. Earlier Subject Reports contain most of what needs to be said about the ToK Essay. The analysis of the Prescribed Titles gives us an interesting insight into how the examiners interpret the questions, but it is fairly question specific.

The section on The Exhibition is the really interesting part of the May 22 ToK Subject Report. Obviously, this is the first report with details about The Exhibition. It helps us to start to firm up many of the questions that we had earlier.

We get much clearer guidance on issues such as the appropriateness of objects, what constitutes justification, and what is evidence. The point that I made earlier about students having 3 different arguments (1 per object) seems to have been agreed in the report.

To be honest, it's very difficult to distill into one page.

I would strongly recommend that every ToK Teacher read the section on The Exhibition in the original form.

However, I completed my 'at a glance' versions as aide memoir. They could be useful to share with your students.

Get your ToK Subject Report infogram (PDF Version) at this link (it's free).

If you have any questions, or thoughts, about the May 22 ToK Subject Report please leave them in the comments below, or email me at Daniel@TokToday.com.

Check out the pre-subject report video that I made on The ToK Exhibition here, a post-subject report video will be coming out soon.

Have a great day!
Daniel,
Lisbon, October 22

How do I Write Claims & Counterclaims in ToK Essay?

There is no explicit requirement in the marking criteria for the ToK Essay to structure it using claims and counterclaims. The only instruction is that you use "arguments". There is no clear definition of what is meant by an "argument", however I have found over many years that using a claim-counterclaim structure is a successful way for students to fulfil the requirement for 'arguments'.

The Sports Metaphor of the ToK Essay

Sports metaphor for the essay.

At the outset the ToK Essay can be thought of like any competitive sport (eg Tennis, Basketball, Football etc), there are two sides competing for a single aim, deploying various tactics & strategies to achieve that aim.

In terms of the ToK Essay the two sides are the sides of the debate arising from the Prescribed Title (perspectives or "Claim" and "Counterclaim"), these two perspectives are competing to 'prove' or confirm the answer to the Prescribed Title. The tactics and strategies of sports teams are like the sub-arguments in the ToK Essay.

OK, enough of the sports metaphor - I hope you get the idea that the essay is a competition of ideas. The implication of this is that your essay can't be descriptive, it must be analytical and evaluative.

Claims & Counterclaims.

The Claim-Counterclaim structure has been used by many students over the years to introduce an argument structure into the essay. This structure allows you to focus on the knowledge issues arising from the PT, and to easily meet the requirement to introduce evidence supporting the arguments (claims & counterclaims). Before I go further into this debate let me highlight a few riders:

1. There is no prescription for the perfect number of claims / counterclaims to be included in the Essay - you will just have to choose the appropriate number for the essay that you are writing.

2. There are other ways to build arguments into your essay eg Hypothesis-Antithesis, Single strand development etc. I use claim-counterclaim as I find it the most accessible for students, and it has proven to be successful.

What is a claim ?

A claim is a position developed from the Prescribed Title. It could be the PT itself, or it could be a knowledge issue arising from the PT. Generally, a claim argues in the same direction of the PT. The claim allows you to start to unpack one (or more) of the strands of the arguments underlying the PT.

Let's look at some examples taken from (slightly altered*) PTs of recent years:

*these are slightly altered because IB retains the copyright of the PTs.

1. The Claim is the PT itself.

PT: Observation is the most effective form of knowledge production.

Discuss this approach with reference to two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim:Observation is the most effective form of knowledge production in AoK History.

This PT is very straightforward, the PT is in itself a single clear knowledge claim. As such it doesn't require unpacking any further to form a claim. There are a number of assumptions underlying the PT, and implicit claims that could be developed from the PT. However, I think that (for most students) to further develop the claim would run the risk of altering the PT itself (see 3 Easy Wins on the ToK Essay). In this case using the unaltered PT as the opening Claim would best give you the opportunity to write a very high scoring essay.

2. The Claim is a strand developed from the PT.

PT: If each Knower creates a unique and individual interpretation of knowledge it is impossible to create universal standardised meanings.

Discuss the challenges this presents in two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim: Individual interpretation of knowledge does not prevent standardised meaning in AoK Natural Sciences.

This PT starts with a proposition ("If....,"), and therefore invites the student to engage with that proposal. In order to engage with it you will need to find a starting point for your exploration, that starting point is the claim (obviously you don't need to agree with the either the claim nor the counterclaim, they are merely tools for exploration).

In this example you have to extract the starting point (claim) from the proposal (in the PT), the claim is a strand developed from the wider PT. There are many other claims which could have been developed from this PT. The claim that the student chooses will depend upon the AoKs chosen to consider, and the arguments the student wishes to put forward. The success of the essay will depend far more on the exploration of the claim rather than the claim itself.

In this example my argument would be that language determines interpretation (yes, I do like Wittgenstein), and therefore if a universal language is used (as it is in the methodologies of AoK Nat Sci and AoK Hum Sci) then universal meanings are created regardless of the interpretation and application of that meaning. I would be careful to define meaning as externally derived knowledge and interpretation as internally derived knowledge.

3. The Claim is a possible implicit argument underpinning the PT.

PT: Is there a trade-off between disbelief and the successful production of knowledge?

Discuss with reference to two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim: Disbelief is an essential component of the successful production of knowledge in AoK The Human Sciences.

This PT is a straight up binary question, it could be taken as a closed ended question but if you responded to it with a simple yes/no answer you wouldn't get many (if any) marks. The PT requires that the student identify at least two arguments that could underpin this question, and set these up as the claim-counterclaim. There are many possible arguments underpinning this question which could well serve as the claim-counterclaim.

This type of claim is not very different to #2, the main difference being that in #2 the claim is likely to be more evident in the PT, whilst in #3 the claim is implicit (not stated) in the PT. I include it here to show students that the claim (& counterclaim) may very well have to be a less obvious sub-strand of the PT, obviously depending on the PT itself.

What is a Counterclaim ?

The Counterclaim is generally the rebuttal of the claim, ie arguing the opposing point of view from the claim. However, the counterclaim can sometimes be a variation of the claim, depending on how you have structured your essay. Further, the counterclaim needs to make sense in terms of your overall essay argument. I will take the (somewhat altered*) PT's from above, and develop possible counterclaims to the claims already stated.

* The PT's are somewhat altered because IB retain the copyright to PTs used in exam sessions.

1. The Straightforward Counterclaim.

PT: Observation is the most effective form of knowledge production.

Discuss this approach with reference to two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim: Observation is the most effective form of knowledge production in AoK History

Counterclaim: Other forms of knowledge production are the most effective forms of knowledge production in AoK Mathematics.

In this case the Counterclaim is made in the second Area of Knowledge under consideration (AoK Maths). The direct rebuttal of the claim would simply be "Observation is not the most effective form of knowledge production in AoK Mathematics", this would be a perfectly reasonable counterclaim that a student could develop a good answer from. However, I chose a slight variation on the claim in order to not neglect the effectiveness of observation as a means for producing knowledge. Further, the counterclaim chosen allows me to open the discussion up to other forms of knowledge construction.

2. Counterclaim as a development of the Claim.

PT: If each Knower creates a unique and individual interpretation of knowledge it is impossible to create universal standardised meanings.

Discuss the challenges this presents in two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim: Individual interpretation of knowledge does not prevent standardised meaning in AoK Natural Sciences and AoK Human Sciences.

Counterclaim: The methodology of knowledge production has little influence over meaning and interpretation in AoK Natural Sciences and AoK Human Sciences.

In this instance the counterclaim is a development from the claim rather than a direct rebuttal of the claim. This is easier done because I have made the claim in both of the AoKs under consideration. The counterclaim follows on from the argument developed in the claim (about the scientific methodology used in Nat Sci & Hum Sci, and the difference between interpretation and meaning).

In many instances this development of the claim into a counterclaim can allow for a more nuanced essay response, however it is important to ensure that the arguments presented in the claim are evaluated in the counterclaim.

3. Counterclaim as a variation of the Claim.

PT: Is there a trade-off between disbelief and the successful production of knowledge?

Discuss with reference to two Areas of Knowledge.

Claim: Disbelief is an essential component of the successful production of knowledge in AoK The Human Sciences.

Counterclaim: Disbelief can both promote and hinder the successful production of knowledge in AoK The Arts

In this example the Counterclaim is neither a direct rebuttal, nor a development from the claim. Here the counterclaim is a variation of the claim. I am able to do this as my overall argument on the PT is "it depends on which AoK we're looking at", and as such I am able to present slightly different arguments for each of the AoKs under consideration. As long as I fulfil the overriding requirement of the ToK Essay Assessment rubric (to provide a full and critical exploration of the PT), I should still be able to attain a high score on this essay.

Of course I could have chosen a counterclaim which is a direct rebuttal of the claim (eg Counterclaim: Disbelief is an obstacle to the successful production of knowledge in AoK The Arts). This would be equally valid, and if well written could also attain a high score. However, I chose this variation solely to show you the different types of counterclaim that could be developed.

There are more good tips on how to improve your ToK Essay on IB Mastery (linked)

If you want further help on planning, structuring or writing the ToK Essay then consider buying the Ebook How to write your ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps. If you would prefer personal help please feel free to contact me (Daniel@ToKToday.com), or check the Student Support Pages to see how to make an appointment.

Daniel,
Lisbon, Portugal.
September 2022