Critical Thinking & TOK require you to consider this:

Nothing can be taken for granted

All information should be questioned.

We must separate factoids from facts

Ultimately

TOK suggests to us that there is no truth. There is nothing that can be taken for granted and all information should be subjected to scrutiny. Everything from the moon landing, to carbon dating, to periods in history, to believing your own eyes and even to accepting that 2+2 =4.

So ‘truths’ and ‘facts’ are discarded in TOK.

Instead we only have:

“KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS

Knowledge Claim:

As you are watching, ask yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1CpNoI4WGc

What is being claimed?

1.Who produces the information, why and for what audience?2.What is the producer’s bias and agenda?3.Does the knowledge claim have a source you can check?4.Think about what information has been left out.5.Has the information been edited or manipulated6.Is the claim logical?

Should I believe it?

How valid is the claim? What is the evidence?

The Problem of Knowledge Claims

Evolution: Phoebe and RossAs you are watching, ask yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXr2kF0zEgI

What is the knowledge claim by Phoebe? By Ross? Is Ross right to claim ‘evolution is irrefutable’? Is Phoebe right to continue to doubt despite

the evidence Ross presents?Who do you think has the strongest argument?Why?Evangelical Christians make the knowledge claim ‘God created the world in 6 days’ are they wrong? Why?

So, what should we believe?

TOK is more concerned with how you believe something

and that whatever you believe, you should try to support your beliefs with evidence and be able to consider and respond to criticisms of your views.

Bibliography

http://knowledgetheory.blogspot.com

Certainty

It is often thought that certainty is what distinguishes knowledge from mere belief

When you know something you are certain it is true and have no doubts about it

When you merely believe something, you may think it is true, but you are not certain

Carry out the activity on the handout – Good Reasons

Consider 4 examples

1. I know Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969

2. I know that strawberries are red.3. I know that if a is bigger than b and b is

bigger than c, then a is bigger than c.4. I know that murder is wrong.

Can we be 100% certain that these statements are true? Or is there an element of doubt

4 Ways of knowing

1. Language

2. Perception

3. Reason

4. Emotion

A Quick look at each of the ways of knowing – language, perception, reason and emotion – suggests that they cannot simply be taken at face value.

Can we really be certain of anything?

1. Language

Language enables us to acquire knowledge from other people and we claim to know a great many things because we have been told them or we have read them somewhere. However, the authority of other people is not always a reliable source of knowledge, and even the so-called experts ‘get it wrong’ sometimes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el-TKmGSmb4&feature=related

Discuss the short clip – Is this attempt to explain pain and suffering in our world a reliable source of knowledge? Why? How does it stand up to critical enquiry?

2. Perception

Much of our knowledge is based on personal experience, but our senses sometimes deceive us. For example if you are colour blind you may not see strawberries as red.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vz_YTNLn6w&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVhJ8pXKaKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDLLf_WCyZ4&feature=related

3. Reason

Some philosophers have claimed that reason gives us greater certainty than perception. In practice, however, people do not seem to be very good at abstract reasoning and they are liable to make all sorts of errors. To illustrate, assuming that some dentists are drunkards and no cyclists are drunkards, does it follow that some cyclists are dentists? The answer is that it does not – but we may well struggle to see that this is true.

4. Emotion

Some of the things that we claim to know strike us as intuitively obvious or are based on our gut feelings. The trouble is that what is intuitively obvious to me may not be intuitively obvious to you and gut feelings are far from being a sure guide to the truth.

Consider the following example – What is the right thing to do?

Radical doubt

So far we have raised some preliminary doubts about knowledge that is derived from language, perception, reason and emotion. But following the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) There is perhaps one statement that you think is absolutely certain – namely that ‘I exist’. Surely that is something that cannot be sensibly doubted.

Watch video – Mark Steel lectures – Descartes part 2. Discuss Descarte’s famous slogan ‘I think, therefore I am’.

The Matrix

Watch the clip from the film The Matrix

Could the Matrix exist? Would we be able to tell if we

were living in the Matrix? How can we tell whether the

world we see around us is real or just an illusion?

Is the Matrix bad? Would you mind living in the Matrix?

Do you think it is seriously possible that our lives could be just an illusion?

Do you think some areas of knowledge are more certain than others?

Illusion

Some philosophers have speculated that the whole of life might be a dream or an illusion. Perhaps we will awake in a few minutes and realise that we have been having the strangest dream in which we were a creature called a human being, living on a planet called earth. Although such a radical supposition does not prove that you do not exist, it does suggest that your life might be completely different from what you thought.

Brain in a vat scenario

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ursdoT66JlU

Watch this clip and discuss the ideas.

Relativism

Sometimes people react to this lack of certainty by embracing a position known as relativism. According to relativism there is no such thing as an absolute truth that exists in an objective way independent of what anyone happens to believe is true. Instead, truth is relative and may be different for different individuals or for different cultures. So rather than say that something is true or false in an unqualified way, the most we can do is say that it is ‘true for me’ or ‘false for you’. Since there are no grounds for saying that one opinion is better than the other, we must therefore conclude that all points of view are of equal value.

Is it right for women to dress like this according to their religious teachings?

Or this according to their own wishes

Problems with Relativism

Despite its attractions, relativism leads to as many difficulties as equating knowledge with certainty. Consider the possibility of whether or not the world is round. According to a relativist we would have to say that it is true for me and false for a member of the flat earth society. But surely there is an objective fact of the matter independent of what I or anyone else might happen to think? After all the earth cant be both round and flat. In view of this, I think what people really mean when they say something is ‘true for them’ is that they believe it to be true. However, just because you believe something to be true it doesn’t mean that it actually is true. A young child might believe the tooth fairy or santa claus to be true.

What should we believe?

We have seen that neither common sense, nor certainty, nor relativism can give us a quick solution to the problem of knowledge. So what should we believe? There is no simple answer to that question, and TOK in any case is more concerned with how you believe something than with what you believe. Whatever you believe, you should try to support your beliefs with evidence and be able to consider and respond to criticisms of your views.

The role of judgement

Since we live in a world in which there are few black and white certainties, you will probably have to rely on more on judgement than proof in deciding what to believe. One important aspect of good judgement is the ability to balance skepticism with open-mindedness.

The role of judgement

Watch the following clip – Alien invasion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EVMQ8HrSIo

Using your judgementand trying to be both open-minded and skeptical – Do you think aliens have visited planet earth?

Read the newspaper articles Central Questions Do you believe this article? Why or why not? Does it matter if what you believe is true?

Preliminary Questions Do you consider the source to be reliable? Are there any features of visual presentation which incline you to

accept or reject before you even read the article (size of headline, photographs or advertisements)

Are there any features of the language used which influence your judgement (sensational phrasing, quotes from experts, use of statistics)

Does the article seem plausible – does it make sense in terms of what you already know?

Does the article present any evidence that can be checked or tested?

Does it matter if you are wrong in your judgement? What are the consequences of false beliefs? Does any body get hurt?

Danger of gullibility

Tabloid Headlines

Danger of scepticism

In conclusion

We need to find a balance between being open to new ideas that challenge our current way of thinking, and keeping in mind that human beings are credulous animals who are sometimes willing to believe strange things on the basis of slender evidence.

Reasonable knowledge

In trying to determine whether or not a knowledge claim is reasonable 2 criteria serve as useful guides.

1. Correspondence and 2. Coherence

1. Correspondence

For a belief to be reasonable there should be some positive evidence that corresponds to it.

Imagine someone claiming that there are little green men living on Mars.

If you were to challenge their belief, they could claim ‘well you can’t prove there aren’t’

There has been no positive evidence in support of their claim

The fact that you can’t prove that something isn’t true does nothing to show that it is true

This is known as the argument ad ignorantiam

Coherence

A belief is reasonable if it coheres or fits in with our current understanding of things

Coherence demands the harmonious fitting together of all the knowledge claims without contradictions. You test the truth of the new claim on the basis of other claims that you believe already

In short – although we should be open to new ideas, the more unlikely something is relative to the current state of knowledge, the stronger the evidence in its favour should be before we take it seriously

Consider the claims of David Blaine in the following clip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDjwdl3GReA

Questions

1.Explain with reasons, which of the following statements you think is less likely to be true

a) The Loch Ness Monster exists b) Some mystics are able to levitate

2. In a book entitled The Appalling Fraud, it was claimed that a passenger jet did not hit the Pentagon on Sept 11th 2001 – Instead it was caused by a truck load of explosives – Using the criteria of coherence how likely is this?

Three truths and lie activity p104 TOK

Changing your mind: reflections on your own beliefs p107 TOK

Who cares?

Does it matter what we believe? People can believe whatever they like?

One reason why your beliefs and opinions matter is that they are important part of who you are as a person

You should try to subject your beliefs and opinions to critical scrutiny in order to avoid becoming a ‘second-hand self

Also Beliefs directly affect our actions and this can sometimes be a

matter of life and death For example 15th – 17th Century 500,000 people burnt to death

as witches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJFA6uEfUlM More than 900 people commit mass suicide after cult leader

Jim Jones tells his followers to die for him http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3cx3U0gYE&feature=relat

ed

Heavens gate cult

In 1997 the leader of an American religious cult called ‘Heavens gate’ persuaded his followers that if they ‘shed’ their bodies they would be beamed on board a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet and taken to a new world.

39 people committed suicide as a result Apply the role of judegement based on correspondence of

evidence and coherence when watching the Heavens Gate Cult leader talking to people about what he believes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3zU-h7rr3g&feature=related

Should we respect the beliefs of a racist or sexist person? Give reasons

The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) stated ‘people who believe absurdities will commit atrocities’ – what did he mean? Give reasons and examples

Read the extract from a novel called ‘White Noise’

It is a dialogue between a 14 year old son Heinrich being driven to school by his father.

Heinrich begins the conversation…..