ToK Essay Guide May 2018 Q4

2018
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TOK ESSAY GUIDE MAY 2018

QUESTION 4 First published September 2017 IBToKTutor.com © 2010-17
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ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4
NOTE: If you would like to find examples that support the points we make in
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Clarifying the terms of the Q:
When you ‘disbelieve’ something, it’s usually because you think that whatever you’re being
asked to believe is so farfetched, incredible or even impossible that you’re ready to dismiss
it swiftly. Examples of such situations are alien abductions, haunted houses or the theory
that a secret organisation is the puppet master of national governments around the world.
When confronted by such extraordinary claims, we require, according to Carl Sagan,
extraordinary evidence to support them: a real alien doctor who performed human
experiments would help us believe in alien abductions. In this sense, to ‘suspend’ our
disbelief would make us more open to open to the ideas of aliens, ghosts and conspiracy
theories. ‘Suspending disbelief’ appears to be a request to place aside our critical or
reasoning capacity which leaves you open to the possibility of strange and weird
knowledge. However, suspending disbelief is NOT a request to place aside your reasoning
faculties to the point of mental numbness and indulgence in emotion; it means emotion
works sided by side with reason; there is no emotion without reason. For example,
consider how the poet S.T. Coleridge famously introduced us to the idea of ‘poetic faith’
which invited readers willingly to suspend disbelief as a way of accessing the more
supernatural elements of the new Romantic poetry. These poems might describe, Coleridge
suggested, things that reason cannot explain, that defy our usual perceptions of the world
and that may be unimaginable in the context of our day to day work. If we are not to be
totally overawed and overwhelmed by such descriptions, then we must put aside our
tendency to doubt and question things that appear to be extraordinary so as to access a
more emotional perspective about human nature. In short, suspending disbelief means ‘be
open to the extraordinary’; it means ‘empathise with people and situations you don’t
immediately understand’. His poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ describes, for
example, how a group of sailors rise, zombie-like, after having died during a journey into
strange seas. Coleridge might have added: do not ask for rational explanations; do not
deny the emotional power of what you see and do not ask for ‘evidence’ to justify the
events. Just enter emotionally into the perspective of the Mariner to know how this is one
step in the narrator’s journey; it is a journey to realise the moral consequences of doing
harm to his natural environment. Theatre works in a similar way: an Expressionist
playwright, like Tennessee Williams in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, constructs on stage a
world which seems to mimic our everyday reality. He uses symbolism and metaphor – a
mixture of language, props, lighting and sound effects – to make the emotional states of a
character physical and projects these states as if they were a ‘real’ presence on stage
alongside the other characters. The Arts have a special ability to engage us with creative
illusions; they draw in an audience so that we willingly leave our real world behind and
enter into made up worlds in which all sorts of weird or wonderful things happen. So how
does this relate to knowledge? Firstly, we can draw a distinction between fiction and
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reality. When we enter a fictional world, if we suspend our disbelief, we can open ourselves
to experience that world with a fuller imaginative and emotive experience. If the fictional
world has been created with enough skill, when we return to our day to day reality, our way
of seeing and experiencing may be transformed and, perhaps, more refreshed. Fiction has
the power to change and play with our perspectives. Just think of the best novels you’ve
ever read or a song that has completely taken over your mind. Fiction helps acquire
knowledge if we return to the reality we left behind with a refreshed perspective. Fiction
hinders the pursuit of knowledge either if we don’t come back to the reality we left behind,
or if the experience fails to refresh our minds and hearts. Secondly, explore how an
aesthetic ‘suspension of disbelief’ compares with a religious one. Is Coleridge’s ‘poetic
faith’ like religious faith? Religious knowers too claim to know about things that cannot be
explained by reason, defy our perception and are seemingly unimaginable: God’s miracles.
See for example, the biblical passage which describes how Lazarus rose from the dead.
Religious and indigenous knowers too would presumably explain how communing with the
divine world through prayer and meditation or ritual reinforces and refreshes how they live
in the everyday human world. Neither artists nor religious knowers seek rational
explanations or physical evidence for what they claim to know. Finally, consider how these
more subjective approaches to the pursuit of knowledge contrast with the more objective
approaches of the Sciences, History and Maths. In what sense is it ‘essential’ for a scientist
to put aside all disbelief, doubt and questioning searching knowledge? Surely, it’s more
essential that the scientist begins with disbelief and the end point is to give rational
explanations for natural events. Consider how over the years scientists have explained our
more superstitious beliefs in terms of physical, observable evidence. And yet clearly there
is a place for more subjectively determined imaginative and creative thinking in the
sciences…
Developing the Q:
Suspending disbelief, metaphor and perspective taking
In literature, writers can make us willingly suspend disbelief through the creative use of
metaphor. A metaphor is technically a form of comparison whereby one person, object or
place is described in terms of another. Look at the following two statements in the context
of Shakespeare’s story of Macbeth, in which the protagonist of the same name has just
killed the King of Scotland:
1. I am guilty of murdering King Duncan.

2. My guilt will the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.
You will see that statement 1 is more factual than statement 2, which is more poetic and, in
fact, engages us imaginatively…if we let it!
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Macbeth feels the guilt so strongly that he metaphorically associates this abstract object
(‘guilt’) in terms of another more specific object (the colour ‘red’) which in turn symbolises
the blood of the murdered King. Indeed, Macbeth’s bloody hands aren’t literally going to,
nor could they ever, turn the oceans of the world red with blood. The metaphor helps to
exaggerate the knowledge of his guilt and potential moral consequences of the murder. It is
part of the process to help us take Macbeth’s perspective as part of his tragic journey.
One insight this yields into the title is that the Arts may not always lead to the production
of new knowledge, but they do help to transform how we see and understand the world. In
other words, one’s ability to use language creatively must be based on prior knowledge.
That is, Macbeth has to know in the first place what it means to be guilty and what it
means for something to be red, in order to associate the two things in a non-literal or non-
factual way. And what about the listener? What prevents someone from misunderstanding
Macbeth’s creatively metaphorical use of language? After all, even the most literal
expressions can be misinterpreted. This implies that I too must not only know the
meanings of ‘guilt’ and ‘red’, but I must also understand the context in which they are
associated. Consider also what happens when a metaphor is taken for the literal truth;
when it becomes unhinged from the realm of the imaginary and enters the real. Interactive
digital games like ‘Call of Duty’ aim to exploit this feature of metaphor by immersing you in
a world which blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Advances in virtual reality
software have taken this experience to unimaginable levels of creative engagement with
virtual worlds. This leads us to a final point. The Macbeth example above implies that the
creative use of metaphor often appeals to us because it helps to make something strange
more familiar and, presumably, to make something familiar more strange. Think about
science fiction stories. Having said all this, please remember although one use of metaphor
is for the imaginative construction of beauty and poetry, this is NOT a title that requires
you to engage in a literary exposition of your favourite books or games!
Suspension of disbelief, poetic and religious faith
We’ve seen how Coleridge described ‘poetic faith’ as a form of empathetic projection and
perspective taking. Soren Kierkegaard introduced us to the idea of an existential ‘leap to
faith’ which one takes in grasping meaning in a world with no rational grounds for
believing in God. Michael Maloney, in his ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’, draws our attention
to a central idea of 21st century economics: the ‘economic faith’ (or ‘voodoo’ as Maloney
calls it in Episode 1) with which we bridge the growing separation between currency and
money: the belief that the currency we use to purchase day to day goods and services is a
store of wealth, when the reality is that it's mere pieces of paper created from thin air and
backed by nothing physical.
What do these ideas of faith have in common? They’re all based on an invitation for us to
suspend our disbelief and acknowledge our trust in the agency of a higher power to look
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after our best interests: the poet’s imagination; the deity’s mercy; the government’s
monetary policy.
In the Christian Bible, faith is defined like this: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) In view of this assertion, what does it
mean to say that Faith is a knowledge building tool? At first glance, Faith relates to
Emotion as a ‘non-evidential’ approach to pursuing knowledge and as such it is very
personal and subjective. So how can it possibly be ‘evidence’ that can be used as a
justification for anything? Religious faith seems to be ‘evidence’ but not in the same sense
of the empirical evidence which science uses to confirm or refute theories, because the
latter is objective ‘evidence of things seen’ in nature. The ‘evidence’ of Faith can thus only
be some sort of powerful conviction that some unseen supernatural force has a causal
influence in nature.
Kierkegaard explored this idea in detail in formulating his Fear and Trembling, analyzing
the example of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on the say so of God. The idea is
that Faith is an ultimate trust in the power of the unseen deity; a trust (higher than
reason), which is implicit in any justification for any moral or righteous act. Abraham
didn’t KNOW that sacrificing his son was the morally righteous thing to do but by showing
absolute Faith in God’s Will, (a thing ‘not seen’), he displayed a willingness to give up
everything in the hope for moral righteousness. Abraham’s willingness to suspend
disbelief and sacrifice everything to a higher power is ‘evidence’ of righteousness (another
thing ‘not seen’); a justification that makes any action morally right. Faith comes first and
knowledge comes later being deeply rooted in our subjective, personal sense of who we are.
Evolutionary theory explains this differently in terms of the emergence of our moral
emotions. According to this view, Faith taps into our primitive intuitions based on survival
needs. Religious faith, for instance, evolved out of our nature as social beings who need to
trust others as a way of coping with the harshness of our early environment and our
vulnerability within it. To those who believe that evolutionary theory is all about ‘self
interest’ or ‘survival of the fittest’, this argument may seem counter intuitive or just wrong.
But from trusting our instincts against predators to trusting others and building small
tribes, it took a fairly short time, in evolutionary terms, to evolve systems of faith to
reinforce social order and law through common values and rituals.
On one level then, there needn’t be a conflict between these two Religion and Science. If
scientific knowledge is built on explaining the relationship between causes and effects in
terms of the laws of nature and empirical evidence, then religious knowledge is built on the
foundation of a faith which essentially reinforces relationships of trust through kinship and
group cohesion.
Religious believers may well argue that a higher power created the laws of nature in the
first place, but may not be able to explain, with the same cogency and power of evidential
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thinking, exactly how and why this is the case. In short, when it comes to knowledge, Faith
has less an explanatory role as to how we gain knowledge and more a functional role as to
how we use knowledge to build social and moral relationships. Faith is a tool to help build
moral knowledge; to sharpen emotional attachments and to foster common values like
liberty. Faith often hinders knowledge building, when it appeals to absolute certainties
and truths as a way of explaining and justifying human beliefs and actions.
Suspension of disbelief, facts and fictions
Fiction and fact seem to be incompatible when thinking about pursuing knowledge. Except
when you consider that even facts can be made up and creatively manipulated! Can we,
however, see a way in which knowledge could be a combination of both of story and fact?
Remember: a suspension of disbelief is a request to put aside facts in favour of fictions but
how can you justify knowledge claims with stories or fictions? However, when you consider
the history of science, for example, you begin to realise that we have simply moved from
mythical creation stories about how the universe began to highly complex mathematical
stories about the origins of the cosmos. One main difference between these stories is that
the more modern scientific stories are more highly probable in being true descriptions of
the facts than the ancient creation myths. Now consider the history of art. Writers can tell
both fictional stories, such as in novels, and factual ones, such as in autobiographies. But
things get even more complicated when someone decides to write a fictional
autobiography, like Jane Eyre, which gives the illusion of being based on real lives and real
events. Literary stories are, of course, often an imaginative transformation of a writer’s
disparate experiences and thereby grounded in ‘real facts’ about human nature. What is
the moral of this introduction? Humans are natural storytellers who use this facility to
make sense of a chaotic world of facts. Nevertheless, you cannot imagine something out of
nothing. Suspending disbelief or engaging empathy on its own is not enough in pursuing
knowledge. It needs to be rooted in real human experiences and ideas, even if it projects
worlds which we could never have experienced. And it needs to be anchored in reason and
methodology, even though sometimes both of these are deliberately ignored in favour of
spontaneous expression. There is no empathy without reasoning.
Focus on the distinctions mentioned earlier: ‘figurative’ and ‘literal’; ‘story’ and ‘fact’ and
connect them to the relevant WOKs. Explore some of the common assumptions. For
example, dealing with facts implies a form of thinking that is more disciplined. Storytelling
implies a creative and abstract form of thinking and is more ‘free’. Thinking engaged with
facts is harder than the creative thinking involved in storytelling. Factual thinking is more
conducive to analysis and dismantling ideas, whereas storytelling helps to synthesize and
connect ideas. And finally, dealing with facts is mechanical, whereas making up fictions is
more natural. Avoid simply going to dictionaries and defining the terms formally. Think
instead of finding useful examples that illustrate your understanding of the similarities and
differences between ‘stories’ and ‘facts’ and how stories can go beyond simply helping us to
understand something and be part of the knowledge making process. Concentrate on how
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the working together of stories and facts helps or hinders the pursuit of knowledge. Each
approach has its benefits and its flaws. Do they come together in mutually enhancing or
mutually destructive ways? The easiest choice of AOKs, and probably the one most
students will make, is between N Sciences and the Arts. Try to be a little more discerning.
Ensure you don’t simply go for the obvious choice. Perhaps choose AOKs that allow you to
explore where those very combinations between the storytelling and facts take place. Can
you think of any AOK which involves factual processing at the exclusion of creative
storytelling? Or vice versa? Is there any place in Ethics, for example, for stories? In which
field of H Sciences does the need for facts and stories combine to generate a practical
knowledge to shape behaviour or the world in which we live?
Suspension of disbelief, knowledge and storytelling
Jonathan Gottschall invites us to ponder a thought experiment to understand how

humankind evolved through language use. Imagine early human society is divided into two
tribes. They are same in all respects except in their names: the creative ‘Storytelling
People’ and the more mechanical ‘Practical People’. As with a range of evolutionary
scenarios, one group is going die out, whereas the other is going to survive.
The tribes are similar in that they both hunt, gather and procreate. Here’s how they are
different: the Storytelling folk get bored easily and when tired out by the day’s activities
often spend long evenings sharing stories about the day, or what happened some time ago,
or about their dreams and plans for the future. They even have a hoot of a time
entertaining themselves with wildly make-believe stories or fictions, while the Practical
People shun them and ignore this petty behaviour from their neighbours. Indeed, the
Practical People hone and refine their survival skills to ensure the next hunting and
gathering trip is successful and so that they can continue to mate. When they tire at the
end of the day, they drop into bed to conserve their energy in readiness for the next day’s
practical survival work.
Gottschall points to the fact that we know which tribe survived. The Storytelling People
survived; they are homo sapiens (us!) And the purely Practical People, if indeed they
existed at all, are no longer around. However, if we hadn’t known this outcome from the
beginning and had been asked to predict which of the two groups would survive, surely we
would have predicted that the Practical People would have survived, because their reliance
on practicality and efficiency and value systems appear to be more than a match for the
playful storytellers. The fact that this didn’t happen Gottschall calls ‘the evolutionary
riddle of fiction’. Indeed, all work and no play makes Jack not only a dull boy, but an
extinct boy! So what is it about our imaginative capabilities, our need for stories in which
we suspend disbelief that gives us such an evolutionary edge?
Gottschall theorises about some answers to this KQ:
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1/ The human imagination is like a virtual reality ‘holodeck’ which constantly runs internal
simulations in which we project ourselves into make believe situations as a practice for real
life situations.
2/ Telling stories is a socialising experience which sharpens our perspective taking and
empathetic skills and hones our altruistic nature which gives our species an evolutionary
advantage of cooperating when faced with life’s manifest obstacles.
3/ Engaging with these internal, imaginary fictions can be done in the safety of our head
which takes away the risks and dangers involved in the real world.
4/ Suspending disbelief and imagining the future paves the way for shaping a vision of how
things can be which in itself is the first step towards transforming the here and now.
Part of the emphasis of this question then is to explore how homo sapiens, mankind who
likes to think we are rational beings, is a lot more like homo fictus, mankind who is also
inherently creatively imaginative and who, by the very means of its storytelling capacities,
can construct imaginative and emotive knowledge about ourselves and our world.
Of course the reality is that human beings are neither purely storytellers or purely
practical. Both qualities exist in us simultaneously. The practical people do exist. They
are the military folks and uniformed officers who function on reason and represent the
backbone of security and safety of our societies. They may have little imagination but this
is because they are not meant to have any. They are meant to follow orders without
question. And yet it is not surprising that even they, like the rest of the population, become
imaginatively absorbed by entertainment TV shows, both ‘reality TV’ and ‘soap opera’,
often becoming deeply involved in the lives of the characters portrayed on screen.
Knowledge Questions:
How far does empathy help or hinder the pursuit of knowledge? To what extent does
perspective taking help or hinder the search for ethical knowledge? What is the difference
between the idea of faith in different AOKs? Does science have any need for faith and
imagination? How far is factual thinking enhanced by suspending disbelief? To what
extent does Mathematics preclude the need for storytelling? In what ways is factual
thinking more reliable than creative storytelling in the building of knowledge? In
understanding? How is factual thinking more disciplined than creative storytelling? More
constraining? To what extent is creative storytelling measurable? Testable? Is factual
thinking more desirable than imaginative storytelling? How far do thinkers who focus on
facts earn more respect than thinkers who make up fictions? How far are we biased in
favour of factual thinking? What sort of knowledge is generated by factual thinking alone?
Creative thinking alone? How far is this kind of knowledge useful? Can our
factual/fictional descriptions of the world help to transform it? What kind of common
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creative metaphors are acceptable? Do our metaphors require testing? In what ways do
metaphors enhance knowledge? How far is it true to say that the human mind creatively
shapes the world according to its knowledge needs? In what way do our cultural beliefs
limit or enhance the way we combine facts & stories to know ourselves and our world? Are
our senses, more than the other ways of knowing, flawed in creating stories about the
world? To what extent are historical descriptions of the past objective? If not, do they
enhance the emotional side of facts? In what ways are scientific descriptions more rigorous
than historical ones? How far are the descriptions of some AOKs more prone to bias than
others? How far do cultural differences play a part in the construction of our descriptions
of the world? Which WOKs are common to our creative descriptions of the world? To what
extent do some AOKs employ a ‘scientific’ approach to describing the world? How far are
the sources used by the AOKs conducive to presenting objective descriptions of the world?
In what ways can the descriptions of the AOKs be manipulated to distort a truthful
understanding of the past? How far are our descriptive narratives entirely subjective? To
what extent are scientific descriptions only ‘provisional’?
Perspectives:
Maths: This AOK seems to be the furthest away from our association of ‘suspension of
disbelief’ with empathy and perspective taking. However, some of the greatest imaginative
leaps in Maths have been in the transition from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometry.
Looking at a maths problem from a different perspective can be a key to unlocking a
solution. Think about how some of the greatest mathematical riddles have been solved,
such as Fermat’s last theorem. Was this through imagination or intuition alone or a
combination of thinking tools? What role does memory have in the solving of such
complex equations? Explore how mathematical thinking is the opposite of intuitive
thinking and shapes our perception of reality. From numbers to geometrical shapes to the
Golden Ratio and fractal art, mathematics provides a vital way of expanding our knowledge
and understanding of reality. If you believe, as Pythagoras did, that the real world is ruled
by numbers, that mathematical relationships between these numbers determine events
and our very own behaviour, then our intuitions are always dependent on logic and reason.
What we see, know and understand is limited by the world outside – the very ‘patterns’
and ‘particulars’ that we see shape our knowledge and understanding...
History: Historians need to find empathy and take the perspectives of people who lived in
the past if they are to know it. Utilizing a network of WOKs makes it easier for them to do
this. How else can you picture the past when all you have are remnants of a particular time
period? Here, logical inference and emotion appear to go hand in hand to help justify
beliefs about the past. But does imagining the past help us to make the present better?
What stops us from imagining the past through the filter of our present prejudices and
biases? This implies that what historians really must suspend is the tendency towards bias
and selectivity. Can we intuit or imagine the future by studying the past and learn from our
mistakes of the past? Consider, for example how military strategists have to imagine
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different battle situations, however improbable, to prepare for an eventual attack or

resistance. Does the knowledge of a past battle help or hinder the strategy? Remember
that both Bonaparte and Hitler failed to conquer Russia. The past is a fixed reality, isn’t it?
The things that have happened are a constant, so to speak. Then how is it that historians
‘see’ patterns/particulars and ‘know’/‘understand’ those events differently? Using a
combination of WOKs to build a reliable picture is a crucial part of a historian’s approach
to reconstructing the past. Everything that has happened will be filtered through the
personal, social and cultural filters of a historian’s perspective. So can historians provide
an interpretation of the past that gives us an objective interpretation of it? How does a
historian go from the observation of particular events to the understanding of them
without imposing his own biases?
Ethics: We often suspend disbelief to imagine ourselves in critical moral situations as a

way of preparing ourselves for the real thing. This is the use of moral dilemma ‘What if...?’
scenarios, which not only engage us in applying various theories to solve moral problems,
but also get us to question our sense of right and wrong. Taking on the perspective of
another person is crucial to understanding emotionally their values and can lead to greater
tolerance. The extent to which the emotion and imagination and other WOKs help us
refine our morality and become better human beings is another thing altogether. Consider
memory: how does remembering a time when we did something bad shape our future
actions and behaviour? What actually prompts us to want to become better moral
knowers? We all perceive ethical problems differently and deal with them differently, just
as we agree or disagree about what makes a work of art good. Is this because of the way we
are culturally, nationally or internationally? Think about the issue of whether torture is
ever justified: are there particular examples that come to mind? Take into consideration
Guantanamo Bay or water boarding. When we look at the ethical behaviour of humanity
over time, do any patterns of behaviour emerge? Have we become ‘better’ creatures and is
this the purpose of life? How far are our moral values emotive or a matter of rational
judgement? Or both?
N Sciences: The clichéd view of science and scientists is that emotion should be avoided
and reason favoured. The stereotype of the mad scientist is one who is obsessed with her
theory and is unable to take on another’s perspective and lacks imagination. However,
Einstein proposed that imaginative leaps, as much as rational steps, are central to the
progress of scientific knowledge. In the same way, do scientists make intuitive judgments?
Thomas Kuhn explores how such leaps in thinking are made possible through the notion of
scientific paradigms. Please avoid the clichéd examples of ‘flat earth theory’ or ‘sun is the
centre of the universe’ when discussing these. Consider instead ideas such as the thinking
tools involved in the development of nuclear power; the circulation of blood; the expansion
of the periodic table; evolutionary theory and so on. And yet, the main point of science is
NOT to suspend disbelief; it is to question things that don’t make sense to our reason and
to ask for physical evidence. In this way scientists explore particular phenomena and trace
patterns in the flow and flux of the material world. They also experiment on our
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surroundings to produce data to prove/disprove their theories about the world. Sometimes
these theories are developed through intuitive judgments about the way the world works
alongside perceived data that is used in the service of inductive and deductive reason to
confirm or refute scientific theories. When these approaches go wrong, it is usually the in-
built mechanism of collaborative peer review that provides ‘correctives’ or ‘checks and
balances’ to extraordinary knowledge claims about the natural world. In this way, a
scientist’s need to know and understand the world creates technological breakthroughs
that help to shape that world differently.
H Sciences: A suspension of disbelief, in the sense of taking on the perspective of other

cultures in their own context, is known as ‘Cultural relativism’, an idea which evolved as an
anthropological method to oppose the paternalism and ethnocentric approach of observing
and judging different cultures based on the standards and values of one’s own culture. The
thinker Franz Boaz, for example, wanted to displace the approach of the rich, white and
western researcher’s central position in the study of different cultures, whose object of
inspection was usually coloured people, indigenous groups or people in poverty stricken
situations. The difference between the relativist and ethnocentrist’s approach to the value
of knowledge is one of framing. Ethnocentrism perceived different cultures as strange,
mysterious and even glamourised their savagery as a way of highlighting the superiority of
the western world and its ‘civilisation’. Think of the impact of colonialism in the early 20 th
century. Alternatively, Boas developed relativistic approach which presented the possibility
of understanding the beliefs of individuals or groups in their own cultural and social
context. Here, the anthropologist strips herself of her western preconceptions and beliefs
to immerse herself in the rituals and practices of the study group and discovers that the
knowledge and values that have evolved in the indigenous group’s shared universe vastly
differs from ours and naturally so. But she must acknowledge that neither our values nor
the different group’s values are necessarily right or wrong, good or bad. Relativism in
anthropology explains, for example, why most western cultures regulate sexual activity by
adopting rules of monogamy, while other groups around the world consider it quite normal
and ordinary to have more than one sexual partner at a time. In a culture dominated by
more religious values, rules limit sexual activity to men and women. This leads to the kind
of intolerance of homosexuality that relativists dislike. So while we practise cultural
relativism, we begin to see that our culture determines what we judge to be good, bad or
ugly and attempts to foster a more neutral and detached judgment of other cultures. But
does this openness and apparent tolerance always prevent a conflict of interest? Consider
the example of two anthropologists’ perspectives on the ‘yanomami controversy’.
The Arts: ‘Imagination’, as Einstein famously said, ‘is more important than knowledge’.
Why? Because it generates new ideas that can change the world. With growing advances in
technology, artistic imagination through ‘immersive media’ tech helps us to explore the
line between reality and fiction. Virtual reality games are an extension of novels and
graphic storybooks because within them we can leave. The more subjective WOKs arguably
play their most crucial role in this field. This is true especially in an artist’s construction of
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fictional worlds in literature or aesthetic spaces in installation art. Many of these explore
the fine line between reality and illusion, while still following clear and rational rules of
design and architecture. Think also of the overlapping of art as propaganda. It’s possible to
read literature as political statement; listen to music as psychological therapy; or see
theatre as social commentary and film as entertainment. A central question to explore is
whether engaging a combination of WOKs as thinking tools in this field of knowledge is
escapism or truly didactic. Again, whichever form of art you consider, it’s all about how a
suspension of disbelief involves a combination of WOKs to transform colours, sounds,
matter and all sorts of other ‘stuff’ into something imbued with meaning. The resulting
effect can be harmonious or chaotic. You could, for example, compare traditional
renaissance painting with 20th century Dadaist art. In literature, you have the
tremendously formulaic epistolary novels of the 18th Century, such as Pamela, as opposed
to the fantastically broken discourse of 20th Century novels like Finnegan’s Wake. In
music, trace the development from the harmonious sounds of Mozart to the discordant
notes of Stravinsky. The difficulty lies in how to explore these art works in the light of the
Q. How does an artist’s emotion alone shape the work created and thereby its meaning?
How does the viewer’s/reader’s perception alone alter this aesthetic judgment? Is it a
combination of WOKs that helps or hinders these processes?
Religious and Indigenous Knowledge: ‘God works in mysterious ways’ is an example of a

traditional belief people express to explain wondrous events like patient remissions from
cancer. In the context of shared religious knowledge, such ideas are supported sometimes
by faith alone, or by a combination of faith and emotion, to reinforce a belief in the greater
divine force and named as ‘miracles’ or as just meaningless ‘hope’. Similarly, there are
examples of indigenous people whose everyday survival depends on an ability to use their
intuitions alone, or intuitions and memory, about how to navigate their natural
environment. Let’s consider the relationship between faith and intuition more closely.
What does it mean to say that faith is a tool to help test our beliefs as a way of building
knowledge? Does it mean that we believe something is true until it’s proven (reason)
untrue? Or does it mean that we feel (emotion) this truth more strongly than any other
truth? Or even that there is a certainty and reassurance in faith and intuitive judgment that
supersedes reason and logic and ‘concrete’ empirical evidence? But couldn’t we say the
same things for the Sciences and Maths? The assumption seems to be that religious and
indigenous knowledge claims DO NOT rely on the empirical (scientific/physical/forensic)
evidence of our senses (perception). Of course, many will ask, ‘How could religious claims
rely on our senses, since they are often about matters that are beyond the senses? They are
claims about immaterial, supernatural, spiritual affairs? And, unless we have a
superhuman sensory device built into us (soul?), how could we know about these things?’
It appears that wherever we take the argument, it always comes back to one thing: religious
faith is all about intuition and emotion; a deep feeling about the immaterial world; a
special sense of something divine to which we gain access only through a suspension of
disbelief.
P a g e | 12
NOTE: We didn’t always do it, in order to stimulate your curiosity, BUT you
must ALWAYS cite your sources in your TOK work!
P a g e | 13
Tips for writing your essay

Dear TOK Student,
Think about these criteria when you plan your TOK Essay:
Start with a general example relevant to the Q.

State which AOKs you’re exploring.
Aim to have a clear structure.
Use clear examples from each AOK to support arguments and
counter arguments.
Use personal examples.
Have you agreed or disagreed with the title prompt & explained why?
Make sure you cite your sources.
Remain focused on the question.
After you’ve planned and drafted your TOK Essay, you can come back to this
checklist and tick off the items you feel you’ve covered really well.
Lots of courage!
IBTOKTUTOR

ToK Essay Guide May 2018 Q4

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ToK Essay Guide May 2018 Q4

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2018

TOK ESSAY GUIDE MAY 2018

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Clarifying the terms of the Q:

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Suspending disbelief, metaphor and perspective taking

1. I am guilty of murdering King Duncan.

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Suspension of disbelief, poetic and religious faith

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Suspension of disbelief, facts and fictions

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Suspension of disbelief, knowledge and storytelling

Jonathan Gottschall invites us to ponder a thought experiment to understand how

Gottschall theorises about some answers to this KQ:

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

different battle situations, however improbable, to prepare for an eventual attack or

Ethics: We often suspend disbelief to imagine ourselves in critical moral situations as a

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

H Sciences: A suspension of disbelief, in the sense of taking on the perspective of other

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Religious and Indigenous Knowledge: ‘God works in mysterious ways’ is an example of a

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

ToK Prescribed Titles (May 2018): Question 4

Tips for writing your essay

Start with a general example relevant to the Q.

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