Tok Ways Of Knowing

The main reason why I positioned perception above the other four WOKs is because perception, among others, is the one tool that is absolutely necessary to gain knowledge. Regardless of how much knowledge of reasoning, emotion, or language you possess, it all revolves around the idea of perception. Perception, in my view, is the ability to understand various matters at ease, a skill which represents basis of the course. I believe it is perception that ultimately gives shape to ambiguous thoughts and develop them further as it allows you to more fully apprehend ideas.

What is made out of perception, however, is strictly due to people’s pasts. People see things differently based on what they’ve been through- how people perceive the same matter can range all the way from the extreme positive to the extreme negative depending on personal experience. Real- Life Example- The concept of “the half filled/ emptied bottle” is completely to do with perception. If a person has experienced hardship and struggled through it, that person will most likely say that it is half filled because he is gracious for everything he/she can get.

In contrast, if a person who has enjoyed wealth throughout his/her life, he/she will more likely say that the bottle is half emptied because he/she can get whatever he/she wants without going through hardships. 2. Reason – Reasoning, the ability to use logic to differentiate right or wrong, is another essential element of TOK. One of the main reasons for positioning the WOK of reasoning as the second most important is that reasoning allows people to piece together scattered ideas into one.

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Way Of Knowing Tok

Reasoning uses past experiences to decipher bits of thoughts and ideas into various ideas depending on personal experiences and what people are taught. In other words, different people come up with different results through the process of reasoning. Yet, the gap in the variation in the results is not as large as perception’s. Unlike perception, the results obtained through reasoning do not extend as far as that of perception as reasoning is more rational, which is one of the main reasons perception is ranked higher than reason. Real-Life Example-.

When presented numerous clues that lead to one another, you need reason to piece them together. For example, if given a math problem like x + 3 = 5, you can automatically know that x = 2 if you think logically as the answer is always rational regardless of your past experiences. 3. Emotion – Emotion is a tool used for sharing thoughts. It tends to personalize transmitted information into the way people want it to be shared. This altered information then gets shared among people which influences the way the people perceive the ideas.

While emotion helps people perceive matters personally, the extent to which emotion influence people has a limit that only reasoning and perception can exceed. Real- Life Example- When talking to others, you may want to share an idea that possesses a positive connotation. However, due to emotion, you may alter the tone of the way you speak and therefore, slightly changing the implication of what you say, and possibly making it negative. 4. Language – Putting language as the least important quality among the four WOKs is not to show that language is unimportant or unnecessary, in fact, quite the opposite.

Language is another vital part of human understanding as well as the others. Without language, communication would be nowhere near as explicit and the exchange of thoughts would be hindered. Even if there are other ways of communication, such as gesturing, no other methods are more efficient than simply communicating through the use of language. However, compared to the other WOKs, the use of language is just a tool to exchange ideas derived from perception, reason, and emotion.

Without the other WOKs, no thoughts can be shaped and subsequently shared through language. Yet, without language, thoughts can still be exchanged, just in a more restrained and less lucid matter, although, still doable. The more accessible substitutes for language are the main reasons why I positioned language as the least important WOK among reason, perception, and emotion. Expressions, movements, body language, and several more, for example, can all be reduced substitutes for language. Real- Life Example-

When talking to others, there are several ways of expression yourself, the most effective being the use of languages. For example, when you order for something in McDonalds, rather than pointing at the picture vaguely and unclearly, you can simply say the name of the food making it easier for the idea to be transferred. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge section. Download this essay Print Save Not the one? Search for