ToK Essays Nov 2024

There's no one agreed version of history. So how can we trust any of it?

Peterson’s claim that “medicine kills more people than it helps” is the latest in a long line of demonstrably false claims – yet his fans continue to hang off his every word

Now, consider a clichéd example when we seem to have the utmost certainty and confidence in knowledge and they both seem to be moving in the same direction: 2 + 2 = 4. On the one hand, this is something you cannot doubt, isn’t it? You know this with 100% certainty.. You might actually be very confident about you

As you dig into the definitions of these two key terms in these prompts – ‘confidence’ and ‘certainty’ – you’ll start to see that they appear to overlap in meaning. At times, you might even think they’re synonymous and can be used interchangeably. But take a step back. There is a relationship between the concepts but they are not the same.

There is a branch of knowledge, akin to pseudo-scientific knowledge like ‘flat Earth theory’, in which one can seem to have absolute certainty and full confidence, because the truth of that knowledge is somehow ‘guaranteed’ or ‘underwritten’ by a higher power. Faith-based knowledge.

In science it is not only OK to be wrong, it is an unavoidable and perpetual state - depending, of course, on how you define "wrong". We lack a complete understanding of the universe, and al

So how do we untangle this potential problematic knot in our concepts?
The idea is that knowledge has both a subjective and objective element to it. That is, knowledge exists on a ‘spectrum’ – a sliding scale, if you like – of objective reason and subjective emotion; of certainty and confidence which do not always go in the same direction.