to get or lose..............

i think there are only 2 conditions to live with....before a situation and after a situation.....lets take this final exam case ....... .Thus, to what extent does our sense perception are limited in determining what is coming on exams..??????

Synesthesia?

can we hear shapes and taste sound?

£3m Henry Moore sculpture 'sold as scrap for £1,500'

'The mysterious disappearance of a £3m Henry Moore sculpture appears to have been solved, with police believing it was melted down and sold for no more than £1,500. '

What might this tell us about the value of art? Personally, I think the value of art is extrinsic, as evidenced by this story, fluctuating art prices, and the fact the creator and history of a work of art is as important as its content when it comes to determining its value.

Tate Gallery Glossary

I found this useful glossary on the Tate website (the Tate is an organisation that runs several art galleries in England). It has definitions of various art-related terms.

knowledge, fascination and empowerment

Hi Everyone,

It's been a bit quiet around here for a week or two. Maybe the internet downtime has had a role in this.

Anyway, thanks to the 33 of you who contributed to our poll on the TOK aims. I'm particularly interested in the 5/33 score for the first one (I suspect that we would have got a higher score for the last one on responsibilities if we had already spent time on ethics). Actually, what we put up there as the aims was a compressed version of what the actual aims are, so here is the first one in its full glory:

To develop a fascination with the richness of knowledge as a human endeavour, and an understanding of the empowerment that follows from reflecting upon it.

Doesn't that sound grand? I think some discussion on this aim would be great - what you think it means, whether where and when you have become fascinated or felt the force of this empowerment, why you perhaps don't always feel fascinated or empowered, whether it is worth promoting this aim and if so how...

I know - exams, extended essay, CAS evaluation - but that's the lot of the IB student, you need to be a juggler, keep all those plates spinning, don't let the TOK plate fall...

swine flu

Hi everyone,

You have no doubt been following the news about the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and beyond. Click on the title above to connect to an interesting piece written about the limits of our knowledge of what is going to happen.

Those of you who have been thinking about knowledge as justified true belief should try to make the connection here. If Simon Jenkins (see article for details) claims that nothing serious is going to happen and that the disease will die out and disappear, and then indeed nothing serious happens and it does die out and disappear, does this mean that Simon Jenkins knew this was going to happen? It would then seem, with hindsight, that he had a true belief, but can we say that he was justified in making the claim at the time that he made it? What would count as an acceptable justification for such a belief NOW (not after what happens happens!)? Would it make sense to say that he was "right"? The author of this piece is saying that, as things stand, there can be no acceptable justification for this claim, and that we cannot be "right" about it. This seems to suggest that being right about something entails having good grounds for claiming it in the first place.

This matters because we are presently bombarded with claims in the media and from other people about this issue, and we need to be able to evaluate what they are saying. What do you think about all of this?

This is a second really good current example of the problems of knowing the future - the other one that comes immediately to mind is the economic recession. These sorts of examples illustrate what we sometimes call "knowledge at work in the world", and I hope that they show how TOK is really important to real-life situations.

Can pornography be considered art?

This arose in our most recent TOK lesson. What do you think?