12 TOK CONCEPTS
The TOK Subject Guide specifies a dozen Concepts that “have particular prominence within, and thread throughout” the course. They are recurring themes in recent May and November prescribed essay titles and in the 35 Exhibition prompts.
1. EVIDENCE
Belief without evidence
2. CERTAINTY
Proof
This Statement is False
Platonists and formalists
3. TRUTH
Coherence, correspondence and pragmatic theories of truth
Post-truth
4. INTERPRETATION
Interpretation—what’s happening?
Who do you think you are?
Active sense perception
Imagination with constraints
Language games
Squidgy, pinkish, buttery gloop
5. POWER
Power and truth
Epistemic justice
6. JUSTIFICATION
Justified true belief
Induction and deduction
7. EXPLANATION
Good and bad explanations
8. OBJECTIVITY
Is there a scientific method?
Imagination with constraints
9. PERSPECTIVE
The map is not the territory
Allegory of the cave
What is it like to be a bat?
Parable of the blind men and the elephant
Figs viewed from multiple perspectives
10. CULTURE
Exorcising cultural relativism
Memes and selection
The Human Sciences
11. VALUES
Apprenticeship in ethics
Ethics vs. morality
The Seven Deadly Sins
Why ethics is like math and not like math?
Deontological demystified
12. RESPONSIBILITIES
Democracy and informed citizenship
Promethean dreams
Existential threat
Banner image: Student choir performing in Tiananmen Square for the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party, July 1 2020. Kevin Frayer—Getty Images.