Context

Context has a great influence on how we perceive our world. We judge the value or importance of a thing based on what is around it. For example, when a famous violinist played in a subway station, no one recognized him or gave him any attention. Because the musician was playing in a subway and not a theatre, the pedestrians did not give him a second glance. When I visited the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), I had a similar thought to this. I have seen several pieces of modern paintings that I believe the average person, or even a child, could create. When I had gone to a friend's house I had seen a framed drawing that my friend or one of their siblings had done when they were a child. At first glance, I thought it was a small piece of modern art. As I got closer I saw that it was just a child's drawing on a sheet of paper.
Because the context of the drawing was it hanging on a wall, the same as I had seen many of works of modern art, my brain quickly assumed that the piece was modern art as opposed to a child's drawing.

Sense Perception and Knowledge of the External World

To see 'what is the case' context, inference, concepts, experience and interpretation are required. Context is the events around you experience that cause you to come to the conclusion. Inference is assumed knowledge used to come to the conclusion while experience is knowledge that has been confirmed through past experiences. Concepts are mental representations that help you come to your conclusion. Interpretation is how you use all of these resources and your senses to come to your own personal conclusion.

By 'the fallacy of immaculate perception' Nietzsche means that there is no "innocent eye" or that no one's ind is a complete clean slate when coming to a conclusion therefor multiple different conclusions can all be correct. Joseph Jastrow proves this by using the well-known optical illusion of a duck and rabbit--the person viewing the drawing can only see one animal at a time. In class we have done this when we took the test on the power point and looked at optical illusions; there are multiple answers but they can never all be seen at the same time.

When Abel says "to perceive is to solve a problem" he is talking about how we look for constant patterns so that we can see slight differences, which has survival value. In determining how things 'naturally look' social conditioning is very important. Social conditioning is how the world around you trains you to naturally perceive things. Your first impression of something may very depending on were you live and your culture.

Durer's rhinoceros story is significant for this point because he gave his own perception of a rhinoceros. Because he was not influenced by culture, since he had never seen the animal before, his perception was extremely different from someone who had been exposed to the idea of this animal for their whole life.  

When Abel writes "believing is seeing" he means that believing in something strongly can influence what you think you see. It has been proven that results in social experiments may be influenced by the unconscious bias of the scientists performing them.  

What Every Baby Knows

Babies use inferential learning mechanisms to come to conclusions about the world around them. It's how they test theories and decide what is true. Over the first three years of life, there are dramatic changes in what I child knows. We are born with the ability to distinguish faces and human voices from other sounds and sights, but we are not able to understand actions and emotions until 12 months. Children who are 3 and under tend to not remember where they acquired their knowledge. 
It is true that babies are like small scientists; "Babies are like little scientists continually overthrowing theories that no longer fit the evidence." Babies make and test hypotheses and experiment to find out what is considered true in this world, and what is not. All of their conclusions come from observing and testing. 

Intuition and Knowledge

A lot of times, people rely on their intuition and are overconfident when it comes to their "gut feeling". Many people come to these conclusions by reading "thin slices". Reading "thin slices" is when a person makes an automatic judgement after observing something rather small. Intuitive expertise is how our automatic processing is able to quickly assess situations, objects and people. Although intuition can be extremely helpful, it also has it's perils. Because our intuition doesn't use reason it can cause us to misjudge situations. For example, many people avoid traveling by plane because they fear terrorism, even though more people die by traveling by car rather than by plane.
Intuition can sometimes be a fair justification for mistakes, but it can only be justified if the person who made the mistake had little or no time to make their decision. For example, if a a group of police officers were surrounding a man and the man reached into his pocket quickly the cops might automatically shoot. Because the police officers might suspect that the man would be reaching for a gun, their intuition would tell them to shoot. Although this does not make it okay that they could injure or even kill an innocent person, it could help them save their lives and protect the other people involved.
Another example is one I have been trained to face in my life. I am a lifeguard and I have been taught that if a person has the possibility of a spinal injury there is a special procedure to get them out of the water and prevent further spinal damage. However, if that person is not breathing we must use the regular and faster method for getting them out of the water, even if it may risk further damage to the spine. The reason behind this is that it is more important for a person to be alive than be paralyzed. If I were to rescue a person who was a possible victim of a spinal injury I only have a few seconds to determine whether they are breathing or not. There is a possibility that I could make a mistake and decide that they are not breathing and do a rescue method that requires the victim to be paralyzed for life. Although it was still a huge mistake, my decision was understandable.

AIT Skin-Tone and Weight Tests

For the skin-tone test, a result was not able to be calculated. For the weight test, it calculated that I have a slight preference to thin people over fat people. I do not agree with these results. I do believe that it is important not to be overweight and that I would rather be thin than fat, but I also know it is important not to be underweight either. I don't think this test accurately portrays my feelings towards fat and thin people. I know that I would rather be thin than overweight, but I would never judge a person for their weight.
Our society as a whole definitely favors thin people to overweight people. This is because thin people are seen as "healthier" and often, more attractive. Some stereotypes associated with heavier people are that they are lazy and unhealthy. Although this generalization is true in some cases, it is not always the case. Some people are overweight because of medical conditions and because of genetics. The difference between a generalization and a stereotype is that a generalization is much more vague than a stereotype and only has to do with one element of a person, a stereotype generalizes their whole personality. The only thing be can do to help our self from jumping to false conclusions is to train our brain overtime not do so.

What is TOK? Why TOK?

What is TOK?
TOK is a Theory of Knowledge course in which we ask how we know what we know. We learn about the different areas of knowledge and ways of knowledge and challenge what we think we know.

Why TOK?
TOK allows us to understand knowledge as a whole and look at the world in a different way. It allows us to grow as learners as we explore the different ways and areas of knowledge.

Self as a Knower

Language is an important way of knowing; it allows us to express our opinions and feelings in different ways.  There are many different forms of language, even beyond spoken language. In the IB, we are required to take a foreign language, but we learn other languages as well. Mathematics can also be thought of as a language of numbers.  The arts, especially, can be considered a language. Visual art is a language of images; there is also a certain vocabulary of art that is needed, terms such as hue, value, intensity and contrast are commonly used. Performing arts also have a vocabulary; some examples are terms such as "cheating out" and "the forth wall". Stage directions are also a part of this language; each area of the stage has a name so that the actors can understand their blocking, where they are supposed to move on stage. When I first became emerged in theatre I was not aware of many of these terms, but I soon picked them up. Just as someone would pick up a language when they are put in a foreign country.