"...we will always learn more learn more about human life and human personality from novels than scientific psychology." (Noam Chomsky). To what extent do you agree?

This essay used a wide range of examples throughout, however the examples in this essay seemed less relatable than the examples in the previous essay. I found it difficult to understand the main points of each of the paragraph as the author managed to synthesise both ideas of scientific psychology and literature throughout the essay. Following the content of the essay was somewhat difficult as the main arguments of the each paragraph were not clear to me. 

Comments on, "'Context is all' (Margaret Atwood). Does this mean that there is no such thing as truth?"

In the essay, the student starts off very well with a very strong personal example that clearly states the POV of the student. In this case, the student is arguing for, "it is very difficult to know the truth if the context is not known, especially since different contexts sometimes call for different kinds of truth". The entire essay revolves around the student evaluating the differences that exist in “truth” in all the different Areas of Knowledge (AOK).

The student looks at 4 AOK’s. They are, natural sciences, mathematics, ethics and perception. In the first, AOK, the student talks about the scientific theory. I believe that the students explanation in this paragraph was weak as it seems like the student has completely misinterpreted the scientific method. In the natural sciences it is not possible to ever call something true unless. The only thing that is true is that it is only possible for something to be not false. To prove something is one has to constantly experiment with the aim to falsify. The student’s conclusion to the paragraph is somewhat contradictory hence the true view of the student is somewhat confusing. 

The student then moves on to talk about mathematics. The student clearly points out that in maths, truth can only be determine with in the context of its axioms and backs his arguments with concrete examples hence leaving no room for confusion on his view point to the readers. 

The student does a good job of explaining the changing nature of truth in the world of ethics. By stating, that ethically the truth depends on very heavily on cultural paradigms,” the student makes his argument much stronger.

Finally, the student makes a strong argument in the case of perception. Satating very clearly that truths varies in different contexts, something isn't necessarily "untrue" is any one context. 

The essay on the whole had a very strong framework but I believe needs some work on the choice of examples and perhaps a little work on the presentation to bring a little bit of clarity in the author’s viewpoint. There are clear topic sentences however I believe that there is some room for the student to build on the point. I think that the author does not build on the point that he/she is trying to make very effectively. The student explored more than the necessary number of AOK’s which prevents him/her from fully developing his/her analysis for one particular AOK.

To what extent does the film "12 Angry Men" illustrate the central knowledge questions and ideas taught in the TOK course so far?

To what extent does the film "12 Angry Men" illustrate the central knowledge questions and ideas taught in the TOK course so far?

To me, if a person reach to conclusions without having a valid reason/proof is a halfwitted person. It is like the famous quote, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” However everyone including myself has fallen prey to such a thing and we all at one point or another have passed it on by saying it was our sixth sense. 

Whether it is a small problem or a big one, one should never defend themselves for taking a certain action on the grounds of “sixth sense.” We should always think thoroughly and apply rational thought. Once we do that, we would disrupt our subconscious thoughts which are responsible for the institution that we use to justify our sixth sense. 

In “12 Angry Men”, even before the jury members retired to the private room for discussions, many members had gone in with a “closed mind”, that the boy  was unquestionably guilty. When the men were asked to state as to why they think that boy was guilty, some of them had the nerves to say that “because they knew.” 

Some of the jurors might have pieced together important facts in their minds subconsciously such as, the boy growing in a slum and then thought about how slum life is. Soon, they might have prejudged him and kept those opinions in their brain during the whole trial which could have blocked their true judgement. Such a conclusion would relies on inductive and deductive inferences drawn from conscious thought processes, instead of making connections subconsciously. Even though the juror maybe factually accurate, but pre judging the boy based on his background without thinking about it is absolutely ridiculous especially when determining whether he should be hanged or not.  Unlike the juror's original thinking, the boy was was not guilty of murder. This shows that pre judging should not be something which should be done at all especially on something that is as big as someone's life. 

Sometimes even experiences are inadequate in helping us generate reliable intuitions, perhaps because our minds have drawn incorrect conclusions about the experience they have taken in and processed.

This is why intuition as an area of knowledge is limited. However, incase of juror #5’s his intuition played a huge role in saving of the defendant. Due to the fact that he had Having grown up in a slum, juror #5 had seen knife fights all the time before,  thus he could intuitively tell that the boy, who also  lived in a slum all his life, would have stabbed upwards with his switchblade instead of what was earlier described in the court as downwards. Our intuitions develop due to our experiences in certain contexts, without which intuition can’t be a reliable way of knowing in these contexts.

This film demonstrated why emotions can sometimes prevent us from reaching the truth. From the discussions in the room one can know for sure that juror #3 had a really bad relationship with his own boy , which resulted in a general hatred towards children. This makes us think whether his guilty accusations were based on his experiences with his own child or whether it was actually because he thought the boy was guilty. Therefore emotions, while enabling us to see things that we would otherwise overlook using reason or perception.

Relating to the “map glued to our faces” analogy that Mr. Alchin presented in his lecture, our senses provide us with knowledge of the world, instead, it is just like a small model of the world, which we then use to understand the world. Just like we do not have any direct access to the world apart from our senses, the sensory information presented by the witnesses in their testimonies would inevitably have had inherent issues. In case of the the old man in the apartment above said that he heard someone threateningly scream “I’m going to kill ya”, and then heard a loud “thud”. Although this evidence in itself may not be false, the certainty in the conclusions.

Likewise, the testimony presented by the lady across the street who saw the act of stabbing may have been a truthful account of what happened. She lacked precision in terms of important details that were beyond the scope of the lady’s visual capacity. However she claimed she for sure could see everything. For example, she may have been uncertain of who the murderer was, but may have assumed it to be the boy because it was contextually feasible. After re creating the scene and it was that is was physically impossible for the old lady.

To conclude, the film “12 Angry Men”  brings out several interesting  points of discussion on the lines of using intuition, emotion, and perception as ways of knowing. 

Religion's Day Blog

What have you learnt about religious belief today, and the reasons people have for their beliefs?  Please refer to both specific points from the day, but also to your own beliefs, and your overall TOK experience, reading and understanding.

On Wednesday the 12^th of February, all the grades 11’s of the 2015 batch were put of timetabled schedule for something called TOK Religion Day. This is the second of the four that are going to happen. TOK Religion day was an entire school day dedicated to the exploration of the origin and the nature of the various different religions around the world.

The day started off with the students going to three separate presentations from followers of different religions. I went to a presentation from a Christian man, an Atheist man and a Jewish lady. They all had various standpoints on the issue of religion. Although all of them believed in religion, they all had a different approach on “God”.

The latter part of the day was spent listening to a performance of a tradition Zimbabwean song used to gather a community in a spiritual manner. Prior to the commencement of the performance, we were all asked to lie down and enjoy the performance is all comfort. Personally, I was quite suspicious as to whether the music would really touch my inner spiritual side or not. Once immersed in the music, I was still under doubts till somewhere towards the middle of the performance. However somewhere after the middle of the performance (more towards the end), I could not help but clear everything from my mind and get into a zone where I reflected on a lot of things in my life such as my behaviors, my school work, the activities I take part in. I began to think about the discussions that happened earlier on in the day and my personal standpoint on religion and the concept of “God”. I am not a big fan of listening to music and generally I only listen to music when I need to go to sleep. I was taken in for a surprise when the music took me into a state of reflection. As I am not a sort of person who likes to actively reflect, this was a good thing. It just happened and I could not think of anything else but my personal development for the future.

The third and final activity of the day was a student debate on the motion of whether “God” exists or not. In my opinion, the debate was a very interesting idea but at the same time I also think the students responsible for the debate did not do a very good job at the debate. In my view, the overall debate quality was less than satisfactory. Even though both sides had valid points, almost all examples given were very much questionable. An interesting argument was brought up stating that for something to exist, it has to be tangible. There are plenty of things in our everyday lives that we acknowledge such as trust, loyalty and love. We have trust on pretty much everyone in our day-to-day lives such as our parents, teachers, friends and even shopkeepers. We trust our parents with our lives, we trust our teachers to educate us well and show us different perspectives. We trust our friends with a lot of different things. We even trust shopkeepers with the fact they are going to give us the product they say they are going to. Trust is something which takes a long time to build but can easily be destroyed. We are loyal to people around us and also expect them to be loyal back to us. Just like trust once loyalty is lost, it is hard to gain it back.

The day was an interesting day and it led me to a conclusion that every individual has their own beliefs and a set of principles to help shape them as a person. There are no two individuals who have the same. I believe that because of religion a lot of people are separated. A prominent example, which comes to my mind about this, is the India and Pakistan separation. One of the main reasons of the separation was religion. It was because certain people wanted others to join Islam and the others to join Hinduism. This led to a conflict and hence the separation. It is still going on with Kashmir. However at the same time I also think that religion unifies everyone. People go to the place of worship together, spend some of their time together and make new bonds.

Ethical Belifs

1) Where do you think our ethical beliefs come from? (Culture, religion, parents etc)

2) Where do you think ethical beliefs should come from?

I believe that our ethical beliefs come from the environment that we grow up in. It depends from person to person, but I would say that the beliefs generally come in at the place where one lives when they are at their critical learning age. (Essentially when they are young). Thus people have firm ethical beliefs which generally correspond with the beliefs of the location that they live in. However for people who move around a lot would have very diverse beliefs and some beliefs which might contradict other beliefs that they might have. Parents are a big part of the environment we grow up in so naturally most of the beliefs would be mutual to theirs. I believe that beliefs should not come from somewhere but just integrate into our lives like they are right now.