Unit Outline

Junior Year: Semester 2 / Quarter 4

1. Defining Knowledge: Justified True Belief ("TOK Camp" or "Taste of TOK")

What does it mean “to know” something?

• How are knowledge, belief, and truth related? What influences what we believe to be true?
• How do our various “ways of knowing” – sensory perception, reason, emotion, and language – yield knowledge? What are their relative strengths and limits? How is language (definition in particular) central in the pursuit of knowledge?
• What are the key knowledge issues that TOK will explore?

Senior Year: Semester 1

2. Assessing Methods: Natural Sciences, Sensory Perception, and Reason (i)

Why is science considered by some to be "the supreme way of knowing," and is this assertion justified?

• How does science combine sensory perception with reason to gain knowledge?
• What counts as evidence and justification in science?
• How does induction work? What are its limits and strengths? What is the so-called "problem of induction"?
• What roles do capacities such as intution and wonder play in science?

3. Constructing Arguments: Logic, Math, Language, and Reason (ii)

Is it possible to construct "fool-proof" arguments that will always give us the truth?

• What constitutes “rigorous proof”?
• How does deduction work? 
• How can we use reason to construct logical syllogisms and informal arguments?
• How does mathematical language differ from verbal language?
• What are the strengths and limits of rationalism as compared to empiricism?

4. Telling Stories: History, the Arts, and Emotion (i)

What kinds of truths do our stories tell us?

• Why do human beings tell stories?
• How do reason, emotion, and language work together in History and the Arts?
• What makes for a good story, a successful work of art, and a reliable historical account?  
• Is the main difference between fiction (art) and non-fiction (history) that the first is subjective and the second is objective, or is this distinction too simplistic?  
• Can art that is abstract also convey knowledge, truth, or meaning?

5. Finding Purposes: Ethics, Human Sciences, and Emotion (ii)

Can we truly know why we act the way that we do?

• How can human behavior be studied scientifically?
• Why are the "soft sciences" sometimes harder than the "hard sciences?" 
• What is the “ultimate good” and the “ultimate purpose” of human life?
• Of what relative importance are reason, emotion, and intuition in the development of morality?

Semester 2 / Quarter 3

6. Exploring Paradigms: Personality, Culture, and Worldviews

How do our various personal-cultural-philosophical filters ands lenses affect our understanding of ourselves and the world around us?

• Mental models and personal temperament: The automatic mind: The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink," & beyond 
• Conservatism and liberalism: Tragic vs. Utopian Visions (excerpts from The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steve Pinker)
• Asians and westerners: The Tao and the Syllogism (excerpts from The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why by Richard E. Nisbett).
• Science and religion: Materialism and Spirituality (excerpts from A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber)

Quarter 3 will also include the two IB-required assessments, the Essay and the Presentation.

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