Tok Essay: Ways Of Knowing

Tok Essay Ways Of Knowing

Using one way of knowing is not enough if you want to determine if something is true or if something is believed to be true. The different ways of knowing are sense perception, reasoning, emotion and memory.
Plato once stated that knowledge is “Justified true belief” which just goes to show that in order to obtain knowledge, we need to know certain thing as a fact, not belief.   When we believe something is true, we do not know it for certain. We just have faith in the fact that it is true. To test if our beliefs are real and true, we can use the different ways of knowing to confirm or abolish our beliefs. However these ways of knowing each have their own advantages and disadvantages.  
Sense perception is usually the most accurate way of getting behind the truth because you have five senses that each tell you part of the truth. For instance if you see something, you feel something and the two senses confirm each other than that gives you an accurate confirmation of what you believe to be true. Also we can use our sense of smell, hearing and taste to confirm our beliefs. This has got to be the most accurate way to determine if something is real or not for we use this every single day of our lives. We get very skilled at using our senses and so we can determine truth from belief with great ease. However, some people that are blind or deaf or have their senses crippled in some other way, have a disadvantage due to the fact that this is the most common routine of establishing a truth.  
Another way of distinguishing between belief and truth is reasoning. We use reasoning by observing what we already know and other facts at our disposal to confirm this truth. A situation where this method could be applied is if you want to know who ate the last piece of pie. You might use reasoning to conclude that one of your guests commented that he was starving and that he remarked the pie looked delicious. This is reasoning and it is also a very...