Theory of Knowledge

Evaluate the following knowledge claims.

Your observations should display -

ü       depth of understanding(drawing distinctions within WOKs & AOKs)

ü       breadth of understanding(making comparisons between WOKs & AOKs),

ü       your experience as a knower (cite examples)

ü       quality of inquiry into the KIs(claims & counterclaims) 

ü       coherent organization of ideas.

1] Einstein says, ‘The only real valuable thing is intuition.’ In the pursuit of truth, how fundamental is intuition?

2] Marcel Duchamp signed a plumbing fixture and sent it to be exhibited. Do you find the concept of post-war conceptual art in which evidence of an idea is acceptable in lieu of a product justified?

3] Jean Baudrillard in his essay Simulations attempts to explain the difference between ‘reality’ as lived by individuals in their day-to-day life, and the ‘so-called reality’ portrayed by the media. Like post-modernists, do you contend that everyday reality and media-induced reality have become blurred? Is the experience from the media real?

4] Public art is what public does; therefore the walls display maturity alongside madness, rude graffiti alongside preachy slogans. There is attention to colors and hues; there is also, alongside, a complete disregard to the colour palette. How ethical are the initiatives of the civic authorities in several cities to prevent, what they believe, the defacing and disfigurement of wall and thereby creating a new morality for the city?

5] ‘We're Warhol's ugly brood. Art has even fed the unsustainable appetites that are destroying the planet by constantly telling everyone cities are better than the countryside, culture more real than nature. It has become the enemy of truth, the murderer of decency.’ (Jonathan Jones on The Guardian)

6] ‘If you look at a flower indifferently, the flower cannot be beautiful.’ (Osho) How does this reflect on the notion of creativity?

7] Franz Kafka holds that books are to be ‘the axe that destroyed the frozen sea within us.’ What is the role of literature?

8] Aristotle defines poetry as an imitation (mimesis) of human action. Do you find his idea convincing?

9] Kurt Vonnegut’s WWII satire Slaughter House Five  and Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler were banned from a school curriculum in a Missouri school. To what extent should work of art/literature be banned?

10] Tolstoy contends that “good" art must communicate some forms of religious experience. For example, he refers to the music of Bach and Mozart, the comedies of Molière, the poetry of Goethe and Hugo, and the novels of Dickens and Dostoyevsky as examples of "good" art. However, he refers to the poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé, the plays of Ibsen, and the music of Wagner and Liszt as examples of "bad" art. How justified is he? 

NOTE: This was an assessment for TOK students. Art as an Area of Knowledge (AOK) was the focus of critical evaluation.