蜜桃app

Here, we provide TOK teachers with a classroom exercise based around critiquing an imaginary student鈥檚 approach to preparing for his Exhibition. Classes could discuss whether this student (let鈥檚 call him Roberto) is doing a poor, fair or good job of choosing his Objects and linking them with his chosen Prompt.

Roberto鈥檚 thoughts are more a stream of consciousness than what will appear in his final commentary.

Work through Roberto鈥檚 thoughts and the questions provided to assess the quality of his Exhibition.

Roberto's approach

The Prompt I have selected from The Exhibition Game is:

8. To what extent is certainty attainable?

I like this Prompt about certainty since I鈥檝e been thinking about things like that for years even before taking TOK.

One Object that appeals to me is the Bible, which gives a lot of history, talks about miracles and how to behave etc.

Maybe what the Bible says is true, but I don鈥檛 know how people can be certain. That鈥檚 what is so interesting, and important, as a problem of knowledge. How does anyone know? This is one of the key questions in TOK - how do I know? How certain can I be?

I need to be specific, so I鈥檒l select my Grandmother鈥檚 Bible that sits on a table in her living room in a place of sacred honor because she believes that everything written in it is the truth. I love my Grandmother, and I don鈥檛 want to be disrespectful, so I have to be careful about how I write about this.

I have kind of sketched out my thoughts about certainty connected to my Grandmother鈥檚 Bible, but I still need two more Objects (real things). So, for my second Object, I鈥檓 choosing the GPS app on my iPhone, which is probably pretty common, and my third Object will be the palm of my hand, which is super unique. My palm may seem far-fetched, and the GPS app may be what other students also pick, but I am going to give them a try and see how they work out. All three of my Objects are personal to me.

Question for the class

Do Roberto鈥檚 objects need to be personal to him?

Some of my classmates are trying to match each of their Objects with a TOK Theme as well as the Prompt, but that鈥檚 too complicated for me even though I have a Technology Object and a Religion one. I guess my palm also has something to do with Knowledge and the Knower.

Question for the class

Should Roberto proceed to incorporate the Themes he mentioned into his responses?

I鈥檓 just about ready to put my Exhibition together, but first, I need to think about what the Prompt means so I can tie it up with my three Objects. My teacher says that all the Prompts are Knowledge Questions, and that Knowledge Questions are about Knowledge - how you get it and use it etc - but also that Knowledge Questions are 鈥渃ontestable鈥�, so I have some freedom in my interpretation without worrying too much about being right or wrong, although this doesn鈥檛 mean that anything goes. I really must not change the wording of the Prompt; I can only analyse its meaning.

What the Prompt - 鈥楾o what extent is certainty attainable?鈥� - means to me is that certainty can mean either certainty from a proof (as in 2 + 2 is 4) 鈥� or certainty from a feeling of confidence in the thing I am talking about. For example, that I am 17 years old. I鈥檓 going to emphasize the second one about feeling certain even though being certain and feeling certain overlap.

Now I think I鈥檓 ready to get going on a draft of how TOK is 鈥榚mbedded in objects鈥� as my teacher says, or how TOK manifests in the world as the assessment criteria says.

Thoughts for my draft:

Object 1 - My Grandmother鈥檚 Bible: I spent summers with my Grandmother who told me lots of stories about Jesus that seemed like magic such as walking on water and the resurrection. But then one day, when I was older, I thought 鈥� 鈥楬ow could those things happen?鈥�. My Grandmother believed everything in the Bible with all her heart, and she was smart and knew a lot of other things that were true, so how could she be so certain so easily? Then I thought that since millions of people believed those same miracles, they must be true. When I tried to talk to my Grandmother about this, she just smiled and said, 鈥楾his is the word of the Lord鈥�.

It seemed like she had a faith in the Bible that brought her certainty and trust that I couldn鈥檛 borrow or bring to myself. I didn鈥檛 think that anything was wrong or incorrect in the Bible, it鈥檚 just that there was something in my way of looking at things that kept me short of the certainty she had, and I didn鈥檛 even know where to start figuring that out.

Oddly, the only thing I knew for certain was that I couldn鈥檛 be certain without some proof, so I made an experiment for myself and asked God to show me a burning bush in a field like in the Bible. That way I would have something to erase my doubt. Of course, nothing like that happened, but as my sister said, 鈥楳aybe the evidence was all around you, but you just couldn鈥檛 see it.鈥�

The same is kind of true today with AI. People, including me, sometimes, think that the answer to whatever you ask is the true and certain answer.

Conclusion: I am uncertain about how much certainty is attainable.

Question for the class

Has Roberto missed anything in his consideration of how his Grandmother experiences certainty?

Object 2 - GPS app on my iPhone: When I was younger, we used to go on family vacations to places within a radius of 300 miles from our home. Before each trip my father would unfold a huge paper map on the dining room table and talk about which highway or country road to take. Pretty soon, my friends鈥� parents had phones with GPS apps that gave the driver directions from their location to where they wanted to go, but my Dad preferred to rely on his paper maps. He had dozens of them. Then I got my driving license and last summer I had a job driving to different places delivering packages, so I learned how to use the GPS app on my phone. I remember so well, how once I got used to it, I completely stopped worrying about its accuracy. That鈥檚 what certainty meant. Full confidence and no worries even though I didn鈥檛 have a clue how it worked. Once in a while, I heard scare stories about how somebody got caught by mistake going down the railroad tracks, but it never happened to me. I believed the GPS app would get me anywhere, even over a mountain pass in a stormy night.

Luckily, I鈥檝e never had to put my GPS app to that test, but the full confidence and trust I have from one experience after the next is what I am calling certainty; in short, the strong belief that I can act on time after time. Essentially, experience is the foundation for certainty.

I also believe that millions of people would agree with me. Still, I can鈥檛 make the claim that this kind of certainty is equal to the sun rising tomorrow or 2 + 2 = 4.

Conclusion: A belief that matches my experience = certainty.

Object 3 - The palm of my hand: I chose the palm of my hand for two reasons, the first reason is because I have an Uncle who read palms at family parties which amazed me, and the second reason is that, to meet the demands of a camp last summer where potential pre-med high schoolers had to discuss a topic of interest that either was or was not a science, I chose palm-reading.

When my Uncle ran his fingers over the lines and mounts of my hands - the life, heart, head, sun and fate -I stopped giggling and began to wonder if he was right about my character and life path. OK鈥撯�搃f he was right about future events, then I would have to accept a kind of determination in the world that we talk about in TOK. And that was not for me. But still鈥�..!

Then, at the summer camp for pre-med college applicants, we had to compare a settled scientific position with one where the claims for certainty were dubious. I chose palm-reading because of the earlier experience with my Uncle, and my confusion about what and how everything he said seemed to ring true. Or at least I wanted it to be true. So, I doubled down on TOK again where we had discussed confirmation bias and decided, at least for right now, that I had to turn my back on wanting something to be true makes it so.

Conclusion: Wanting something to be true 鈮� certainty.

Questions for the class

Does Roberto need to state a conclusion for each of his commentaries?

Has Roberto paid sufficient attention to the stem of 鈥榯o what extent鈥� in his selected Prompt?

How does Roberto show us that he is basing his thinking on the specific nature of each individual object?

Has Roberto avoided the pitfall of treating any of his objects generically?

Further reading

The Exhibition Game: TOK in the World, developed by TOK experts, Sue Bastian and Robin Press, in cooperation with the IB, is designed to help your students prepare for their Internal Assessment (IA) task.

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