One differentiates between different types of knowledge, such as ability, propositional, personal, and shared knowledge.

Ability knowledge focuses on the question “knowing how to”, since its less reliant on language and often connected to muscle memory it can sometimes be hard to communicate. The branch surrounding propositional knowledge, concerns itself with the statement “knowing that” and is often transmitted through language and culture. There are technologies that can transport this knowledge, research papers and graphs being two examples. When it comes to personal knowledge, its goal is knowing how one personally feels, hence a direct experience by an individual through methods like sense perception or emotions. Shared knowledge on the other hand is possessed by a group and is shared through language, culture, and other external sources like websites. Even faith is part of it, when it comes to trusting an expert, such as a doctor.

Similar to a map, knowledge can be seen as organised and purposefully reduced information. This information is either personal or shared. In ToK we ask ourselves three fundamental questions. 1. „How do we acquire this information? “ 2. „How do we organise ways of knowing? “ 3. „For which purpose? “.

Ways of knowing include trust, memory, intuition, reliable sources, language, sense perception, reason, imagination, emotion, and faith. While of course differentiating between deductive and inductive reasoning and keeping in mind that knowledge is influenced by our experiences, culture, and other people.

We have a unique experience in relation to the world and how we have gained our knowledge. Sometimes we are even unaware that we have taken on certain beliefs in a non-conscious or non-reflective way. In some cases, ideas need to be challenged or replaced with better ones.

The 12 concepts in ToK, namely evidence, certainty, truth, interpretation, power, justification, explanation, objectivity, perspective, culture, values, and responsibility, and furthermore their importance, for example that good justifications provide rational and compelling explanations, were introduced to us as well.

We aspire to know the truth about the different elements of human life, experience, and reality. To do so, people working in each of the areas of knowledge will study different materials and will follow different procedures. Since much of our knowledge functions to explain something, we try to preserve it as unbiased and accurate as possible, for all the future generations to come.

Dean and Mia, 5i