Writing a TOK Essay (Part II): The Pattern

This post is a follow-up to the previous (and rather long-ago) one on this subject.

There are many people, I've noticed from site traffic analysis, looking through this blog for help in meeting unreasonable deadlines and other such animals. A lot of them seem to be using search engines to find help with specific questions (normally typed in verbatim from the list. But using search engines on the questions themselves tends to turn up a rather mixed bag of stuff, from the useful to the not-so useful.

My own responses to the questions on that list can be found here and in the links appended at the end of that post. However, they are responses and not answers. (And oh yes, by the way, do read the copyright notice in the sidebar — the rules are here; essentially, you can copy anything on this blog as long as you cite it properly in this format: [URL] on the blog 'Findings' by AMC (last accessed on [date]) .)

The intention of this post, therefore, is to shed some light on how I arrived at those responses and how I would have proceeded if I had the job of answering the questions instead.

Essentially, if you've read through my responses, you'll realise that quite apart from the personal level at which those responses are written (and the odd and sometimes personal examples provided), there is a certain general sequence or pattern:

1. Define the terms and attempt to identify the obvious meaning, any implicit meanings, and any linguistic/logical potential traps in the question.
2. Write a paragraph in which you expose the intention of the question as far as you are concerned.
3. The key intention is normally a relation of questions like 'How do you know something?' — this is a knowledge issue. The issue might be something else, but it is always epistemological; it is something to do with the reasons for thinking that something is 'knowledge'.
4. The answer to such a question would then be of the form 'I know something because...' — this is a knowledge claim. The claim might be something else, but it is always a working theory or argument that resolves the issue earlier identified as the key intention of the question.
5. If the question has identified a specific area of knowledge (or more than one) and/or a specific way of knowing (or more than one), then determine how these are related to the issue and the proof of the claim that resolves the issue.
6. If the question seems somewhat unbounded by such considerations, choose your own areas of knowledge and ways of knowing, taking care to ensure that you can define them exactly. Bear in mind that some disciplines (e.g. history, language, philosophy, mathematics) are master disciplines from which others are derived — science, for example, used to be a combination of natural history and natural philosophy, expressed in language and explicated in mathematical terms.
7. Now show how your thinking about these areas and ways of knowing proves the claim.
8. Since this is quite tough to do rigorously, you might also want to show how you may be able to disprove the claim or show that you can't really prove it no matter how you try (for some logical reason). These things are counterclaims, and they show that you have thought through at least two sides of the issue.
9. Look at what you've written, and summarise the argument as tightly as possible, showing how you've attempted to answer the question. Then state your conclusion, which logically follows from all you've written and is the direct answer to the question, and you're done.

All schools which teach this kind of stuff give you a general template or some ideas like these about how to answer such questions. What you have to do is work hard on the material that you're using to answer the question. Filling in a template haphazardly will probably get you a C; showing careful thought in fluent and coherent manner will help you do much better.

Well, that's the pattern. I remember that I drew this in great and colourful detail in class once; someone actually took a photograph of it, and I wonder if that person still has it. Haha...