|
||||||
|
||||||
Roughly speaking, 'objective' means 'independent of the individual', and 'subjective' means 'pertaining to the individual, or peculiar to a particular personal perspective on the world'.
We apply these terms in two very different ways:
Firstly, we use the terms to talk about two ways that things exist. We do this to make metaphysical claims - claims about what is real or has being, or in what sense something exists.
Secondly, we can apply these terms to talk about two different kinds of knowledge. When we do this we're making epistemological claims - claims about how we know things.
In TOK we're mainly concerned with the epistemological use of these terms, particularly the possibility that the truth of a statement might depend upon one's values, opinions, culture, or gender. One special area of debate is relativism, the idea that some statement might be 'true for me' but not 'true for you'.
Let's try a practice exercise...
Arrange the white boxes to make three lower layers for this grouping map. Your upper layer should contain the most general concepts, your middle layer will be explanations of those concepts, and your lowest layer will contain the specific examples.
Drag this image onto the workspace to proceed. You must be using the inbuilt browser in Rationale 1.3 or later.
After you've finished this exercise drag this thumbnail onto the workspace to see the model answer:
This material has been developed independently of the International Baccalaureate, which in no way endorses it.
© Austhink 2013. Rationale Exercises version 0.1, Jan-13
