First TOK Class Discussion (1/18/02) First: What does "to know" mean? 1)to have some piece of information 2)to be able to recognize a person 3)be acquainted with a person well; know their behaviors etc. 4)to be familiar with a location 5)to be able to perform some physical task 6)to be able to explain how something works to someone else 7)to be able to apply a piece of information in a reasonable way and everyone's favorite: 8)to have sex This list is not exhaustive, but a sampling of what was said. We briefly discussed the difference between recognizing someone and "really knowing" them. In a couple classes we talked about the nature of online friendships. Here are a sampling of comments made: 1) Eliminates first impressions made by physical judgements 2) Difficult to express emotions 3) More easy to be honest 4) More miscommunication possible There was some discussion over #2. Some people said that it was possible to learn to read and write emotion on line. Also, writers are able to evoke emotion from their readers without the use of facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. Next question we looked at: Does belief differ from knowledge? If so, how? Defns of belief given: 1) Acceptance w/o proof 2) Based on faith 3) Synonym for opinion In one class we ended up talking about religious belief. We talked about what was necessary for one to hold a religious belief. Different people held different views over what portion of religions are most important. Do people only believe so they can go to heaven? Can we base assumptions about faith/belief on that assertion? In another class we discussed the difference between the following terms: information, data, belief, faith, opinion, knowledge and wisdom. information comes from any observation that humans process. data is raw information, unprocessed and in a particular format belief pertains to a person. It is what a person thinks to be true. faith implies belief, but no need for complete rational proof, but you could have faith in a person too...which just implies belief that they will do something, or act in a particular way. knowledge implies some sort of understanding of information wisdom implies an ability to use knowledge in a meaningful and "right" way. Essentially, knowledge alone doesn't dictate that someone acts justly. Although experience is necessary for wisdom, experience doesn't necessitate wisdom. We also talked about whether truth existed, and whether that differs from knowledge. (Absolute vs. relative knowledge) Perhaps there is no way for us ever to determine if our body of knowledge is absolute.