Ways+of+Knowing

=Ways of Knowing = Within this section of the site you will find the ways of knowing discussed. The ways of knowing are how we interact with both the physical world and the world of ideas.

Of course, there are many ways in which we do this, which is why it is an almost impossible task to come up with distinct categories for how it’s done. And, of course, the four ways of knowing that TOK finally decided on are not separate from each other.

A good TOK student should be able to discuss in a great deal of depth how they interact and depend on each other. == [|Sense Perception] == We will start with the way of knowing that is probably the most ‘immediate’: our senses. We are talking here about our sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. There are arguably more than these 5 senses, and certainly the human range of sense perception is one that is extremely limited when one compares our species to others in the animal kingdom. The key question to contend with is how reliable our senses are, and to what extent we can rely on them. == [|Emotion] == Our second way of knowing is [|emotion]. This is less measurable and tangible than our senses – it’s hard to count how many emotions there are, for example, and each of us is affected in a different way by our emotion. One of the key questions to do with emotion is to what extent it helps, and to what extent hinder, us in building up an objective picture of the world. == [|Reason] == If emotions are sometimes regarded as the unreliable weather vane of knowledge, [|reason], at least in theory, is meant to be the reliable version. A lot of our reasoning is done unconsciously, but a lot of it is something we are aware of, and can actively shape. A key question in terms of reason is thinking about the different ways we use logic to arrive at our conclusions. == [|Language] ==  [|Language] is a little different, because not only is it a way we understand the world, it is also the way we express ourselves, and allow others to understand us. One of the key questions in language is to what extent is our vision of the world limited by the language that we speak, and the vocabulary we command.

Other possible ways of knowing.
It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list. There are other possibilities, although some are debatable at best. How about faith? Imagination? Instinct? Memory? Hunches? Are these credible ways of knowing? What sets them apart, if anything, from the ways of knowing decided upon by the IBO?