30th March 2009

The topic of discussion is REASON which is one of the 4 ways of knowing. We learn bout and understand the meaning of the different types of Reasoning i.e. Inductive and Deductive Reasoning.

I learn how Deductive Reasoning is from something general to something specific and particular whereas Inductive Reasoning is the other way round from something particular to something general. The question here is:

Q. What do I understand by the word 'General' or rather 'Generalizing'?

Ans. It is a common opinion to which many people agree upon.

An example brought about the same:

• People who do PCM are nerds. - Deductive Reasoning
• ‘X’ person who is doing PCM is a nerd. – Inductive Reasoning

-Deductive is more certain and less informative.

-Inductive is more informative and less certain.

But the important fact explained to us is that:

In reality both will neither be certain nor informative in practice.

E.g. All Pakistanis are Muslims.

Here if experimented, we may see that if 500 Pakistanis are selected at random then there are possibilities that all turn out to be Muslims, however we can not overlook the fact that the remaining population of Pakistanis may also consist of other religions; there may be Sikhs, Hindus, etc.

Here upon our topic is connected to Logic and Truth where we comprehend that Logic may be divided into VALID and INVALID.

This means that things can be proven and justified/validated but it is not possible to find the Whole Truth.

Here on our discussions move onto Beliefs and Knowledge. We revisit these two topics studied earlier in class where we had learnt that Belief is Probable and Knowledge is certain.

I feel satisfied on revisiting these two topics as I clear my doubts regarding the same of knowing whether ‘Common Beliefs’ are Generalizations and the answer I get is yes.

The discussions finally end on the definition of Knowledge:

‘Knowledge is justified true beliefs.’

With the ending of this class I am content on knowing more about Reason, Belief, Knowledge, Logic and Truth as we did go into some depth in these respective topics and I am looking forward to my future classes in TOK that seem to be getting more interesting as I am curious to unfold the mysteries of the boundless Knowledge.