Tok Key Terms

Front 1

What is "open-mindedness?

Back 1

Open-mindedness is the practice of avoiding claims to absolute certainty and thus remaining open to revisions of one's beliefs, while still avoiding the evils of relativism by favoring those beliefs which, to the best of one's knowledge, appear more likely to be true.

Front 2

Indoctrination

Back 2

Indoctrination is a method of teaching which instills the ideas of the teacher in the students, as opposed to education which encourages the protégés to consider the information and form their own conclusions.

Front 3

Judgment

Back 3

Judgment is the thought process behind selecting from multiple choices. Good judgment (according to the TOK text) is characterized by the balance of Skepticism and open-mindedness.

Front 4

Epistemological relativism argues that...

Back 4

nothing can really be known. No knowledge is solid, truth and falsity are relative, science is a matter of opinion.

Would perhaps advocate that knowledge does not have to be universally "true" or perhaps not justified. But you must believe it.

Front 5

Why do we rely on expert opinion and what problems may arise from our dependency on it?

Back 5

We rely on expert opinion to justify our knowledge with a plethora of evidence in support. The problems that arise as a result, however, are that experts may be incorrect and/or limited in their knowledge, and as such should not be completely trusted. As an example, inaccuracy in counting led scientists to believe for years that the human body had 24 pairs of chromosomes. Also, a worker skilled in engineering should not be consulted on matters pertaining to biology.

Front 6

Explain gullibility and how it can be prevented.

Back 6

Gullibility is the ability to be easily deceived. It can be easily prevented by developing a "healthy skepticism" that allows us to use our judgement to refute some claims as absurd. For example, some people with a healthy skepticism may dismiss outrageous claims in tabloid magazines as untrue, but other gullible people may end up believing such stories.

Front 7

What is certainty?

Back 7

Certainty is often thought to be what distinguishes knowledge from belief. Knowing requires complet certainty. There is no certainty associated with believing something is true. Examining the four ways of knowing – language, perception, reason and emotion – are ways for us to attain certainty about a particular statement. Although language allows us to gain knowledge from others, accepting the authority of others leaves the possibility that they are mistaken. Perception makes up much of our knowledge, for it is associated with our experiences and observations of the empirical world. However, our senses can often be deceiving. Reason is claimed by some philosophers to offer greater certainty than perception, but abstract reasoning can often be unclear. Emotions offer intuitive feelings that we then use to claim to know something. However, emotions are subjective and do not offer absolute certainty.

Front 8

What is second-hand knowledge?

Back 8

Second-hand knowledge is knowledge we have that came from a source other than directly from our own perception, reason and intuition. Such sources include but are not limited to: cultural tradition, school, the internet, expert opinion, and the news media.

Front 9

What is Authority Worship?

Back 9

Authority worship is the process of blindly accepting ‘facts’ from those in authority as truth without thinking about it. An example would be the theory that the world is flat.

Front 10

What is Confirmation Bias?

Back 10

Confirmation bias is a disturbing tendency to notice only the evidence that supports our belief.

Front 11

What is an urban legend?

Back 11

An urban legend is a story or statement of unknown origin which has no basis in fact and is circulated through various media. Examples of well-known urban legends: gum takes seven years to pass through the digestive system, Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966, swimming within an hour after eating causes you to cramp up and die, and Jake the Alligator-Man.

Front 12

What is evidence?

Back 12

Philosophically, evidence is that which justifies our beliefs in an empirical manner (a requirement for knowledge).

Front 13

what is common sense?

Back 13

Common Sense is a starting point or mental map used by humans to better understand the world. Many people view knowledge as organized common sense, but common sense itself is composed of information that is based on beliefs. Often, this information has not been verified, but is assumed to be true. It can be influenced by culture, prejudices, customs, experiences, research, and spoken information. Upon examination, most common sense is not as obvious and reliable as most people believe.

Front 14

Objective Theories of Knowledge

Back 14

Objective Theories explain justification in a way that depends on facts about the world outside the mind of the knower. Such accounts of jjustification are also sometimes called "externalist" because on these accounts what a person is justified in believing may depend on the states external to the believer's mind.

Front 15

What is coherance?!!

Back 15

Making sense by supposing any statements entailed alongside it true. If a statement is to be coherant, then it must contain meaningful words.

Front 16

What is Knowledge by Authority/Testimony?

Back 16

Also known as second hand knowledge, this term concerns the idea that it is possible to know something that another individual has experienced by using language to communicate ideas. A precaution however is that authority worship, or the blind acceptance of other peoples' (possibly inaccurate) ideas. Copernicus, for example, dedicated his life to try to prevent the people during his time from worshiping the previous authority that earth was the center of the universe.

Front 17

What is the Mental Map?

Back 17

The concept of a mental map is that humans require a picture of what the world is like in order to cope with it. This picture includes divisions of truth, reason, correctness, and the mental ordering of ideas within ones brain. Mental maps are particularly vulnerable to inaccuracies, arbitrary conventions and cultural bias. An example is the projection of a map from the eurocentric mercantor projection to the inverted hobo-dyer projection.

Front 18

What is "logical consistency"?

Back 18

Consistency is the property whereby coexistence among multiple statements is plausible without contradiction. In other words, two statements are consistent with each-other if it is possible for both to be true simultaneously.

Ex. 1 - Consistency
The car is white.
The car is traveling at 60 mph.

Ex. 2 - Inconsistency
The car is completely white.
The car is black.

Front 19

What is primary knowledge?

Back 19

Primary knowledge is a type of knowledge which you have come to have a genuine understanding of by yourself. An example would be your observation of the results of an experiment (primary knowledge of the numbers) and what they imply (primary knowledge of the concepts).

Front 20

What is the paradox of cartography?

Back 20

In relation to mental maps, the paradox of cartography states that if a map is to be useful to us, then it must be imperfect out of necessity. The reason for why it cannot be perfect is that a perfect map would have to be changed every second and would always be out of date. Therefore, there will always be a difference between a map and the territory it describes.

Front 21

What is a tautology?

Back 21

A tautology is a proposition that is already true by definition, and not because of any logical deduction.

For instance, a statement which asserts that, "Jacki Hess is the hottest Senior IB TOK student" is a tautology, because it doesn't tell us anything new. No I'm kidding.

The statement "All triangles have three sides" is a tautology, because IT doesn't tell us anything new.

Front 22

What is denotation?

Back 22

Denotation of a word is what it refers to by public definition, its primary meaning. For example, “Love”, according to Webster’s New American Dictionary is 1: Strong affection, 2: Warm attachment.

Front 23

What is meant by the term "body language"?

Back 23

Body language is described as nonverbal communication via gestures and facial expressions. For example, a person rolling his or her eyes while having a hand on a hip is likely bored or disinterested and is expressing it through their body language.

Front 24

What is an idiom?

Back 24

An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.

Front 25

What are Weasel Words?

Back 25

Weasel words are words that people put into statements to create a way out, often used in advertisements. They can include: usually, most, often, almost… Example: With proper use, our mouthwash will help cure gingivitis. If the product does not help a customer, the company can say that the mouthwash only helps and that other factors must be influencing the gingivitis. They can also argue that the customer did not use the mouthwash properly.

Front 26

What is the correspondence theory of truth?

Back 26

The correspondence theory states that a proposition is true if it corresponds to a fact. An example is “popcorn is made from popped corn” this is true if and only if popcorn can be made from popped corn. Some problems with the correspondence theory are problems knowing whether the fact exists, problems concerning the gap between language and the world cause correspondence to be imperfect and problems because truth can not be determined in isolation (possibility of perception flaws).

Front 27

What is the burden of proof?
(Problems in Pseudoscientific Thinking)

Back 27

The burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the outsider trying to convince others that his/her claim has more validity than the one most people accept. For example, the burden of proof is on the creationists to show why the theory of evolution is wrong, not on the evolutionists to defend themselves. The burden of proof is on the Holocaust revisionists to prove that the Holocaust never happened, not on the Holocaust historians to prove that it did.

Front 28

What is binary thinking?

Back 28

Binary thinking is having a black and white outlook on the world. Something is either this or that, one way or the other, with no middle ground. A statement that exemplifies binary thinking would be Colin Powell's assertion, on Sept. 16, 2001, that "the response required of other governments is yes or no."

Front 29

Anecdotes do not make science

Back 29

Anecdotes are stories; even if the stories recur the recurrence is not the same as a scientific series of trials. Series of controlled tests must be run in order to determine if anecdotes are valid. The credibility of the person presenting the anecdote does not affect its validity. For example, if a Nobel Prize winning scientist said that he had been out walking and was suddenly turned into a Cheerio © and then back into a person, that does not make the story scientific fact. The story may be the basis for testing into the realm of human transformation, but it does not establish scientific fact.

Front 30

Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty, Control, and Simplicity

Back 30

Humans have an urge to be absolutely certain. We must control our urge to be absolutely certain and seek out simple solutions to problems. Even if we seek simple solutions it is quite probable that the process for arriving at the simplest conclusions is still complex. For example, I may say that I am not absolutely certain that gravity exists, because I do not know if every time I drop an object it will fall. It is simpler to accept the solution that gravity exists and that every time I drop an object it will fall.

Front 31

What is a quantifier?

Back 31

A quantifier is a language element that specifies the extent of validity of something. Examples include the words for all, for some, many, few, and a lot.

Front 32

What is intuition?

Back 32

Intuition is a mysterious source of knowledge in which one directly perceives a truth, fact, or insight without first going through a conscious process of reasoning. There are three different types of intuitions: core intuitions, which are our fundamental intuitions about life; subject-specific intuitions, which we have in various areas of knowledge such as science or ethics; and social intuitions, which are our intuitions about other people.

Ex: You might pass a raggedy-looking bum on the street, but detect kindness in their eyes and have the social intuition that they are really a nice and moral person. On the other hand, you might meet an individual in a respected position, but get a “bad vibe” from them and have the social intuition that they are an immoral person.

Front 33

Define soundness. What constitutes a sound logical argument?

Back 33

A logical argument is sound if all of its premises are true and if it is valid. A sample sound argument would be:

All humans will eventually die.
IB students are humans.
Therefore, IB students will eventually die.

This argument is sound because its premises are true and it is valid. Note that an argument can be valid without being sound. For example:

All IB students hate the weekend.
Allen Roberts is an IB student.
Therefore Allen Roberts hates the weekend.

This argument is valid, but its first premise is false, so it is not sound.