Good Morning

Please sit at your assigned table, get a drink and write your definition of knowledge in your journal.

How can we categorize knowledge?

• ‘justified true belief’ –Plato• The information and

understanding that you have gained through learning or experience – Longman Advanced American Dictionary

• How does that compare with your definition?

Bertrand Russell’s way of dividing up knowledge

• Two categories • Knowledge by

acquaintance is knowledge based on personal experience.

• Knowledge by description is knowledge that we have not acquired by direct experience.

Knowledge by acquaintance

• places we have visited• books we have read• people we have met

and spoken to

Ranger Chancy he’s rad!

Knowledge by description

• Places that we have only seen photos of

• books we have just read reviews of

• people we only know through other people.

I <3 Holcomb

• You can think of knowledge by acquisition as ‘knowing how’ knowledge, and knowledge by description as ‘knowing that’ knowledge.

• Pause and reflect on your knowledge by acquisition and your knowledge by description. Write down an example of each and share with your tablemates.

Traditional epistemological way of dividing up knowledge

• Knowing that is anything based on facts or opinions – anything that can be said to be either true or not true.

• This is also known as propositional knowledge, and is the type of knowledge that we are concerned with in TOK.

• Knowing how is skill-based knowledge, or things we know how to do, like play a sport, program a computer, paint a picture, and so on.

The Empirical/Rational way of dividing up knowledge

Rationalism

• Rationalism is a belief that all knowledge comes to us through our intellect and our powers of reason. • We cannot trust knowledge that

comes to us through our senses, because our senses are unreliable.

Ancient Rationalism

• Originated with the Ancient Greeks.• Socrates and Plato believed that our senses

only allow us to view the physical world, which to them was far less important than the internal world of thoughts, feeling, and emotions – in other words, our souls.

• It is only by knowing your soul that you can know yourself, but to this you have to go beyond conscious knowledge.

Modern Rationalism

• French philosopher Rene Descartes.

• ‘I think, therefore I am.’• ‘What can I be sure of?’• He realized that he could

doubt pretty much everything that he had ever been told, seen, heard, learnt.

• The only thing we can reliably trust is our powers of logic and reason, not our senses. • Anything based

on his ideas is termed ‘Cartesian’. I think,

therefore iB.

Empiricism• Also has its roots with

the Greeks. • Tabula Rasa- Blank Slate• Experience is written,

to create a picture of the world and how it works.• Aristotle

Modern Empiricism • John Locke• The Blank Sheet • it was formed by

the result of all our experience, which itself can be divided into two: sensations and reflection.

The key differences

Rationalism• based much more on

reason• assumes that we are

born with innate ideas that are beyond our consciousness

• we need to gain access to those ideas in order to know ourselves properly.

Empiricism• relies much more on the

senses (though it still recognized that reason is important)

• how those senses help us to construct a view of the world on our empty minds that we begin with when we are born.

• Would you consider yourself a rationalist or empiricist?

• Search for “are you a true rationalist quiz” • Take quiz and write the results in your journal

• Both these ways of looking at the world help us to make knowledge claims. • ‘Knowledge claims’ are statements or

propositions that we believe to be true, and it is a phrase used a lot in Theory of Knowledge. • But before we go any further, we need

to think about that little word that is such an important part of our world.

TRUTH

The blurred reality of humanity

• Number the paragraphs (you should have 16)• Read the article highlighting the authors central claims

and respond to these two questions in your journal: • What are the arguments that are offered by Baggini to

refute Descartes’ famous maxim that ‘I think, therefore I am’? (¶3-13)

• Do you agree with the statement that the self is ‘simply no more than the ordered collection of all our experiences’? (¶14) Why or why not