One of my most favorite responses to questions from students is: “It depends on how you see it.” To many of my students this response can be quite frustrating at times. “Why can he not give us a clear, clean, yes/no answer to a simple question? Why does he always want to explore the ‘grey zone’? I want to have some certainty!”, they say.
Well, today I’d like to do exactly that. I’d like to give you a few examples of statements that are absolutely, 100% true. These statements do not require a complicated debate on whether they are true or not. The examples that I’m going to give you are going to be absolutely true with 100% certainty. This may come as a surprise to some of you, who were taught that you are supposed to critically examine and question nearly everything.
There are indeed categories of statements that are true by definition. Philosophers like to call them analytic statements. We know that they are true and they do not require empirical verification (verification by sense perception). Well, here we go:
- “TOK is Theory of Knowledge”: This is a statement of identity. They are true by definition. Can you give me a counter example? Some of you may now say that “TOK” could also stand for something else. True, but this still does not make the sentence “TOK is Theory of Knowledge” wrong! Another example could be “Mike is Michael.”
- “All white swans are swans”, “A mouse is an animal”, “All TOK students are students.” These statements assert that one class (eg. mouse) is included in a larger class (eg. animal). Statements of inclusion are also always true. Now, again someone may object here. What about a computer mouse? A computer mouse is not an animal, so the statement “A mouse is an animal” must be wrong! No. In this case we have simply given two objects (the little animal and the computer hardware) the same name, but they are still different objects and therefore belong to different categories or classes. We still mean different things, even though we call them the same way.
- “One meter has 100cm”, “A bachelor is an unmarried man”, “A square has four sides”: These are definitions and they are true by definition. The point is, that certain things are true because we defined them to be true. If some international commission were to decide that there are only 99 cm in one meter, then this would be the new truth and the new basis for future measurements.
- “If you are alive, then your heart beats”: Statements that make an implicit meaning explicit are also 100% true. Here are two more examples: “Every husband is married” and “If Armstrong was on the moon, then his little finger was also on the moon.”
Tags: All Articles, analytic, certainty, General TOK, Truth, TruthDogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. – Bertrand Russell
June 15th, 2011 at 4:40 am
i think what you are saying here is that “we can be absolutely certain that something is true when the subject goes accord with certain condition”.
TOK is theory of knowledge – human convention defined it so, so under the condition of following the definition it is true. I don’t argue whether this is false in anyway but this truthfulness depends on the condition of convention.
all the other examples are also human convention.
although I would like to focus on 2 interesting examples you give.
if you are alive, your heart beats – those opposing stem cell research label an embryo alive, even though there’s no heart to beat.
if amstrong was on the moon, then his finger was certainly on the moon – this is true under the condition that his finger did not get chopped off prior to departure.
so certainly true is not that different to certainly false or simply true or simply false since they are all in such a way due to “conditions”.
March 1st, 2011 at 8:19 am
I really appreciate the effort you make in putting entire conversations between you and your students. This leads to clear revelation of the context as well as the concept and therefore clearer understanding. Your dedication shows.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Thank you very much (a bit late, I know) for the compliments. Yes, making this site was a bit of a challenge, and it’s always nice to hear that the contents of the site meet the interests of the readers. I have to admit that I’m not an expert on postmodernism, one of the things that I do know, is that followers have a rather relativistic view of the world. I think I’ll write a post about relativism.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 am
Mr Kim-
i just wanted to thank you for putting together such a thoughtful and thought-provoking website! I read almost all of your articles and thoroughly enjoyed them. I am not a TOK student, I actually attended a high school with the IB programme and tried to get in, but didn’t get accepted. (My scores were 95 on the english section, and somewhere dismally low, like in the 40′s, on the math) I can’t believe there wasn’t a TOK class for the general students, and i feel totally cheated since i didn’t even know about it! but anyway, i am now a sophomore in college, and i’m writing a final 15 page paper for honors anthropology. The subject is postmodernism, as it relates mostly to anthropology but also to art, architecture, literature, etc. One of the main premises of postmodern thought, as you may be aware, is that there is no such thing as objective information, and that facts aren’t really facts at all. This was a difficult concept to wrap my head around before i could begin writing, and i found the study of knowledge theory extremely relative and helpful. I can tell you put a lot of effort into this site, and that you are a passionate and insightful teacher. So thank you, and props on the great work!
Also, if you have any ideas about postmodernism in anthropology or as it relates to TOK, i would love to hear from you!
Claire