1.

1 Introduction to TOK

The big picture

Figure 1. How can we distinguish between myth and reality, fact and
fiction, data and facts, and so on?
Credit: Dilok Klaisatapor GettyImages

Why you need TOK

In order to appreciate the value of TOK, you must first learn the story of Henny Penny the
chicken. Henny’s story begins when an unknown object falls on her head and she is thus
convinced that the ‘sky is falling’. Although holding such a belief isn’t really that terrible,
Henny Penny runs around the farm making her sky-falling claim to all the other animals,
who all believe it and take it as truth that the sky is indeed falling. The animals decide to
notify the King that the sky is falling so that he may take precautions to save the kingdom,
and while en route they come across Foxy Loxy. Being kind animals, they inform Foxy Loxy
of the impending danger.

The problem is, Foxy Loxy has studied TOK.

Being a good TOK student, instead of simply taking Henny Penny’s claim as truth, Foxy
Loxy asks Henny Penny why she thinks the sky is falling? As Henny Penny finishes her
explanation that a piece of the sky hit her on the head, Foxy Loxy notices a large oak tree in
the distance. Foxy Loxy offers all the animals a short cut to the King through his den; and
the animals are never seen again.

Figure 2. Taking on knowledge and beliefs without question won’t get

you eaten by a fox, but it can definitely lead to trouble.
Source: "Henny penny.JPG" by Mabel Hill is in the Public domain, wikimediaCommons

You will not have a chicken come knocking at your door, but you do have social media
feeds, parents, friends, teachers, politicians and religious leaders, all of whom make claims
that affect the way you live your life every day. And it is not melodramatic to state that just
as Henny Penny’s erroneous claims cost her friends their lives, so too can the assent to
certain beliefs and knowledge cause irreparable harm to others.

In recent times, the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked many debates – and there have been
a variety of controversial claims and stories. For example, the
‘documentary’ Plandemic made a series of claims about the recent COVID-19 epidemic,
linking the crisis to the ‘plans’ of the global and scientific elite (to foist mandatory
vaccinations and to retract individual rights and freedoms), and making potentially
dangerous scientific assertions (for instance, about wearing masks). You can read more
about this here.

As a knower in the world, how are you to distinguish fact from fiction with regard to such
claims and assertions?

Deciding what to believe, and, more to the point, who to believe, is particularly difficult
when there are experts making competing claims.

Thus another aim of TOK is to provide you with the skills and dispositions to analyse
competing or new claims about knowledge and the world around you. In areas of life where
knowledge is based more on argument and reason than on evidence, or where conflicting
evidence exists, how can we be sure that one argument is more valid than another?

In TOK, we are not necessarily interested in the content of knowledge claims; instead, the
main focus is on asking the question: How do you know? In the current political and social
discourse and on social media people often obsess about what others think rather than
spending time to examine the hows and whys behind their beliefs and claims to know.

Analysing the process of knowledge

acquisition
Throughout the course, the focus will be on how individuals and institutions come to hold
the beliefs and knowledge that they do. You will also be encouraged to analyse your own
beliefs. The simple step of asking ‘how’ will start you on an intellectual journey with more
layers than you might expect. To illustrate this point, check out the video below by Vsauce.
It addresses some of the concepts that you will explore in TOK. However, the speaker also
makes some knowledge claims of his own. As always, you should ensure that you take the
time to think for yourself!

The video touches on some key elements of the course such as:

• The limits of our sense perception to create valid knowledge.

• Conceptions of truth.
• The validity of knowledge claims.
 • Methods of gathering evidence.

What is also implicitly contained in the video above, and is a key understanding in TOK, is
that the acquisition of knowledge is a process. Like all processes, it tends to improve over
time and can be affected by external influences. As a student of TOK, you will be required to
analyse and reflect on all the different variables and causal elements that contribute to
your own individual process of acquiring knowledge, beliefs and information.

Figure 3. The acquisition of knowledge is a process that occurs over time

and is affected by a variety of factors, many of which you will be
discussing and analysing throughout your intellectual journey through
this course!
As you move through this course, it will be interesting for you to examine the components
of the process of knowing that we all have in common. You will have opportunities to
consider the beliefs and knowledge that are shared among members of a given culture or
community and to compare these with components of the knowledge acquisition process
that are unique to you as an individual knower so as to consider how these affect your own
knowledge acquisition journey.
 Figure 4. Culture is a factor that massively affects the development of
knowledge and belief.
Source: "Celebrating Chhath in Kataiya, Saptari by giving Argha to Sun God.jpg" by Subhmanish is licensed under CC BY-SA, WikimediaCommons

As a participant in modern society, you are constantly bombarded with information, beliefs
and knowledge. Your individual process of acquiring knowledge starts at the moment you
are born. Much of this early information is implicit until you develop the capacity for
language, at which point you increase your ability to comprehend explicit claims about
knowledge and the world made by those around you.

For example, even as a young kindergarten child, explicit knowledge was communicated to
you through a variety of areas of knowledge (AOK) such as ethics (it’s wrong to hit others),
the arts (colour in the lines; it’s prettier), history (Columbus discovered America), and
mathematics (geometric shapes). As a kindergarten pupil, you probably did not question
such claims. It would take an incredibly precocious six-year-old to respond to their
teacher’s claim that Columbus discovered America with the objection that, ‘actually,
historical evidence suggests that the first humans to discover North America crossed the
land bridge 20,000 years ago’.
Questioning claims made by others is not a natural or easy thing to do. In fact, social
psychology demonstrates that conforming to the dominant beliefs of an individual’s
societal in-groups is the default position. Additionally, many cultures and societies
explicitly teach that questioning the claims of others is disrespectful. Such cultural beliefs
are not necessarily nefarious, as they emerge from an appreciation of the value of experts
and a trust in members of society to have others’ best interests in mind when creating
knowledge and claims about the world.

Figure 5. Conformity is most frequently thought of with regard to

behaviour. However, intellectual conformity is also a consequence of
society.
Credit: Mike Hill Getty Images

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. A study of history demonstrates that often
individuals and institutions in places of power take steps to manipulate information,
knowledge and beliefs in order to maintain and increase their social, political or
economic power. The only defence against such malevolent manipulation of information is
a society that is skilled in, and appreciative of, unbiased critical analysis.
Additionally, false knowledge need not be put into the world maliciously with the purpose
of causing harm. As in the case of our paranoid chicken friend Henny Penny, her intentions
were good, but her knowledge was false.

You have probably heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’. In TOK, we agree with this
sentiment, but a TOK-aligned phrase would be ‘The ability to critically analyse knowledge
is power’.

The goal of TOK is not to make you a cynic who walks around questioning everything and
everyone around you. The goal of TOK is to nurture within you a fundamental appreciation
for the value in asking questions and identifying instances in which assumptions are passed
off as facts.

TOK not only encourages you to question the claims, beliefs and assumptions put forth by
others, but to question your own knowledge as well. TOK will require that you reflect on
your own experience as a learner and ask yourself some very important questions: ‘Why do
I think that?’ and ‘How do I know that?’ Through the process of examining the etiology
(origin) of your own beliefs, knowledge and assumptions, you will also uncover elements in
society that contribute to knowledge creation as a whole. This etiological self-reflection will
be a focus of the core section of the TOK course.
Figure 6. Critical self-reflection is a key TOK skill and an important part
of being a learner.
Source: Self-reflection, by thompsonwood, is licensed under (CC BY-ND 2.0) ,Flickr

Lastly, TOK will ask you to become comfortable with the statement ‘I don’t know’. For some
reason, acknowledging your own naiveté or ignorance in regard to a given topic or idea has
become a source of personal shame. This is unfortunate. Socrates, the father of Western
Philosophy, was most famous for acknowledging and embracing his ignorance when he
declared, ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing’.

Ignorance and ambiguity are a part of life and the source of inspiration. To be an explorer
you must be comfortable with uncertainty. The comfort of an explorer is created through
preparation and confidence in their skills. You will not be asked to explore the far reaches
of an unknown physical land, but TOK will require you to become an intellectual explorer;
and through your experiences in this course, you will acquire the skills necessary to
provide you with total confidence as you venture forth.
Figure 7. TOK is intellectual exploration!
Credit: Cavan Images Getty Images