Knowledge Issue:
How do we know what is ethically right and wrong?
Their
group did a presentation on several different areas of knowledge, including
ethics, religion and history. The questions they explored, based on the AOKs
and real life situations, were: How
does exposure to certain ideas affect our ethical decisions? Are the ethical
judgments inborn or learnt? Are moral standards universal?
The ways of
knowing explored in the presentation were faith, reason, memory and intuition.
In addition,
contrary to other presentations, they incorporated many real life situations
such as the Thailand riots, chemical weapons in Syria and
mosquitoes. The looked at the differences in belief about Thaksin Shinawatra as
a leader in Thailand and asked: “What knowledge confirms what we believe to
be the truth?" They
provided answers to the questions by defining Theory of Knowledge terms and
relating them to the real life situations.
The
group believed it is because of people’s
intuitive understanding of the situation, faith and reason that is reinforcing
them that their stance is the truth. When a person comes to the conclusion
“Thaksin is a good leader” or “Thaksin is a bad leader”, he or she is not
providing propositional knowledge. It is a highly personal knowledge that has
been molded by one's’ moral standards and prior experience. In conclusion, perspectives
have no singular truth, no singular validity but only subjectivity that skew
perception and stance. There is no objective truth when it comes to the
political polarization of ideas.
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