This document discusses knowledge and truth. It presents different theories of truth, including correspondence theory, coherence theory, and pragmatic theory. It also distinguishes between knowledge and truth, asking if something can be known that is not true or true but not known. The document then discusses different ways of knowing, including reason, sense perception, intuition/imagination, language, emotion, testimony/authority, and imagination. It presents examples of applying different "tests of truthiness" like correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic to evaluate statements. Finally, it discusses using concepts from ways of knowing and tests of truth to apply to an issue like gun control in a blog response.

1. Blog 1: Violence, Culture, Identity
• Read through the list word
associations developed
from Wednesday
• Based on the associations,
construct a “problem of
knowledge question”
• Post your problem of
knowledge tonight.
Complete one response
to another by Monday.

2. Title Questions (PoK)
• Can we have beliefs or knowledge which are independent of our culture?
• “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist
• facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts” (Arthur Conan Doyle). Consider
• the extent to which this statement may be true in two or more areas of knowledge.
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we
• now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there
• ever will be to know and understand.” (Albert Einstein) Do you agree?
• What counts as knowledge in the arts? Discuss by comparing to one other area of
• knowledge.
• “Habit is stronger than reason.” To what extent is this true in two areas of knowledge?
• “The ultimate protection against research error and bias is supposed to come from
• the way scientists constantly re-test each other’s results.” To what extent would you
• agree with this claim in the natural sciences and the human sciences?

3. TOK Ch. 1-3 p. 1-41
Team 1: 1-7
Team 2: 8-15
Team 3: 16-23
Team 4: 24-29
Team 5: 30-36
Team 6: 37-41
Truth and Knowledge
Ways of Knowing
Memory Reconstruction
Rationalism v. Empiricism
Description v. Acquaintance

4. Where are we going?
1. Blog 1 discussion:
Forming knowledge
issues
2. Finish Knowledge and
Knower (wed.)
3. Discuss the divergent
questions associated
with Truth and
Knowledge
4. Activity 2: Loftus and
Palmer Experiment
5. Ways of Knowing

5. Discussion Blog 1: Violence
• Let's look at a few title
questions together and
begin practicing the
"socratic method" (Day 1)
• Start in teams of four,
complete an exchange
(5 min.)
• Whole class exchange
(10 Min. )
• Practice Concensus

6. What is Truth?
• Truth is a parameter of
accuracy applied to a
proposition concerning
the nature of reality.
• “Truth” has three main
theories corresponding to
Rationalism and
Empiricism:
– Correspondance
– Coherance
– Pragmatic
• Question: Does “absolute
truth” exist? What are
they and how do they
function?

8. Different than Knowledge?
• List 10 propositions that you
know.
– Are they true?
– How do you know they
are true?
– What evidence could
prove them false?
• Can I “know” something
that is not true?
• Can something be true
that I don’t know?
• If there were no knowers,
would there be truth?

9. Activity 2:
Loftus and
Palmer

10. Collecting Data: Poll Everywhere
• Go to
pollev.com/morris
• Complete the
question concerning
the video you just
witnessed.

11. Loftus and Palmer (1974)
• Elizabeth Loftus investigated the
interaction between language,
memory and eyewitness
testimony.
• Conclusions:
– The way a question is
worded often leads to a
new reconstruction of a
memory
– Eyewitness testimony and
estimations are often a
dependent variable.
– What other factors
contribute to memory
dependancy?

12. Memory
• Memory and testimony are the
cognitive foundation of the
"knower"
– Neurologically, memories are chemical
reactions resulting from synapse
activation within the brain.
– Rationally, memories are the calculator
and "rulebook" that allows for proper
and logical thinking.
– Emprically, memories are the record of
our senses reconstructed through will or
by outside stimulai
– Pragmatically, memories are the
priorities of the world in which p;ersonal
meaning is constructed.
• Do we have memories of the way
things are, or is there always
personal bias? Do our senses
create accurate pictures of
reality?

13. The Ways of Knowing
• Reason
– Analytic and synthetic
– a priori or a posteriori
– constructs of logic that define a thing or
to define basic laws using symbolacrae
• Sense Perception
– Correspondance testing between
memory and seeing, etc.
– Basis for scientific philosophy.
– Often subjective and vulnerable to bias.
see aesthetic philosophy.
• Intuition/imagination (?)
– Memories reconstructed often with
disregard for the backward looking sense
perception and/or rationality to project
to future events, develop innovative
hypothesis, or to be a great artist.

14. The Ways of Knowing
• Language
– The symbols that connect our
thoughts to others
– Intrinsically indirect and
requires assumptions about the
world (such as the existence of
other minds).
– Often can present challenges
to synergy of information
• Emotion
– The personal reaction and
cultural parameters of
expression connecting to
others by thou

15. Tests of “Truthiness”
• Correspondence
– Statements are true so much as the
relate to actual, observable data from
the world.
• “The snow is white”
• Coherence
– Statements are true so much as they
are logically consistent with previous
beliefs about the world.
• “there are no pink elephants in Lake Elsinore
because I know elephants are gray, live in
africa…etc.”
• Pragmatic
– A statement is true if +it allows you to
interact effectively and efficeintly with
the cosmos.
• “My belief that inanimate objects do not
spontaneously get up and move about is true
because it makes my world more predictable
and thus easier to live in. It “works”

16. Testimony or Knowledge by
Authority
• Information about the
world often comes
through degrees of
testimony
– Data is received, passed,
written, consolidated,
taught, and recited.
• How might the “authority
fallacy” be different than
“knowledge by
authority?”
• List 10 things you know by
authority
• List 10 things you know by
personal testimony.

17. Imagination
• “I am enough of an artist to draw freely
upon my imagination. Imagination is
more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination
encircles the world.”
• “Everything you can imagine is real”
• “We are what we pretend to be, so we
must be careful about what we pretend
to be.”
• Can Imagination be a source of
knowledge? What would its limits be?
Can you know something that is only
feasible in your mind?

18. Blog 2: Gun Control
• Take your original KI
question and choose one
of the concepts from the
tests and areas of
“knowing”
– apply it to an area of
evidence as a start to an
“Argue Out” on the topic of
“Gun Control”
• You may consider the
response from your peers
in your second blog.

19. Thinker Portrait: Rene Descartes