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IB TOK Internal Assessment Essay
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This is an IB TOK Internal Assessment Essay
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Question: Shared knowledge often changes over time. Does this fact undermine ourconfidence in current shared knowledge?
As a society, we tend to discover or create new knowledge every day. This
question itself is affirming that shared knowledge does change over time and when
asking if our confidence on current shared knowledge could be challenged, it is
therefore claiming that there are some truths that in the future will be proven wrong.
The main point is that we might believe that something we consider as truth isn’t
truthful at all, but you don’t know when it will be proven wrong, therefore, our
confidence on the claim is at risk. The question also involves personal knowledge as
confidence is particular to every individual, and if shared knowledge changes and
undermines our confidence, then personal knowledge also changes. In the areas of
knowledge of ethics and mathematics, knowledge is a mixture of both shared and
personal knowledge. However, the acquisition of knowledge is different for each area
of knowledge, therefore, the cycle of shared knowledge is also different, as well as
our confidence on it.
Shared knowledge in ethics changes over time but in a cycle where truths in
the past that have been left, are again believed to be truthful. By this I mean that the
cycle in ethics has no progressive sequence, hence why, people’s confidence will be
undermined as it would be uncertain to know what to believe in various situations. A
current example is Brunei changing their 10-year imprisonment law against
homosexuals with the Islamic Sharia law which states that people who commit
homosexual sex or adultery will be stoned to death. This supports my argument as
homosexuals are getting acceptance by different religions and societies, and has
, been morally accepted by people themselves. For instance, Mozambique, a very
Muslim and Christian country that condemned homosexuals, made homosexuality
legal since 2015 and even has a law that bans anti-gay discrimination. Nevertheless,
the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, and leftist groups in Brunei are going back to
the time where homosexuality was a sin and believed to be completely unnatural.
This argument is also complemented by the fact that the punishment is stone to
death, which is an archaic execution method in the medieval period and has been
gradually claimed to be immoral. By this method being used again, shows that
knowledge in ethics changes over time, as something considered wrong throughout
many years can be considered truthful again in the future and it doesn’t follow
current morality. Hence why, our confidence will always be undermined but as
confidence is personal to each individual, it depends on each person on changing
their beliefs. In this AOK we could even argue that there is no moral truth at all, or
there are multiple. Descriptive relativism states that there can be moral
disagreements between cultures and individuals but this doesn’t mean that either
argument is right or wrong.
In response, knowledge in ethics does follows current views and beliefs, and
morality highly depends on context and place. A personal example is that my parents
and grandparents are Indians. My parents believe that I should do a love marriage,
whilst by grandparents believe that I should do an arrange marriage because of
moral relativism, which states that “our values are determined by the society we
grow up in, and there are no universal values” (Lagemaat, 2015, pg.477). They say
that in most love marriages, the love between the couple decays, while in an arrange
marriage it grows. My parents themselves had an arranged marriage, they didn’t
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