Ways of Knowing in TOK

How might you know that it is raining?

Consider the possible ways in which you might know that it is raining.

• Which of the ways of knowing will be the most important or reliable in the example below?
• How might the most important or reliable ways of knowing be different in different circumstances or with different knowledge?
• What would be the most important ways of knowing that you love cheese or that World War 2 finished in 1945 or that the earth's core is a solid?

The TOK Subject Guide and WOKs

While there are arguably many ways of knowing, the TOK course identifies eight specific ways of knowing (WOKs). They are language, sense perception, emotion, reason, imagination, faith, intuition, and memory.

The WOKs have two roles in TOK:

• they underlie the methodology of the areas of knowledge
• they provide a basis for personal knowledge.

Discussion of WOKs will naturally occur in a TOK course when exploring how areas of knowledge operate. Since they rarely function in isolation, you should explore how WOKs work, and how they work together, both in the context of different areas of knowledge and in relation to the individual knower.

There are two central purposes to the WOKs in TOK. On the one hand they are the tools that answer the question “how do we know?” and on the other hand they help us answer the question “how do I know?” For example, we can analyse the role of imagination in the construction of shared knowledge in terms of scientific discovery, but we can also discuss imagination in the context of personal knowledge and understanding.

Ways of knowing should not be viewed in isolation. They interact in various ways in the construction of knowledge and the formation of knowledge claims. For example, even a simple claim such as “this table is blue” involves a number of ways of knowing coming together. I need language to be able to understand the terms “table” and “blue”. I need a conceptual system based on reason to realize that a table is something that has the possibility of being blue. I need sense perception to recognize that what I see is a table and that the colour of the table is blue. In this way, the individual ways of knowing are woven together into more elaborate structures in order to generate knowledge in the areas of knowledge.