Day 55 (2/2): Groundhog Day and TOK

 

The TOK Guide specifies 3 points of contact between you and me as a part of the TOK Essay process.  After each of these points of contact, you should spend some time reflecting (in writing) about the direction that your TOK Essay is taking

1. The discussion about "Unpacking the Title" that we began last class, and will complete today, counts as your first point of contact. 
2. Next week, I will schedule some time for us to have 1-on-1 conferences about your evolving ideas.  The written form of the work that you bring to this conference is up to you, but I will ask that you have at least considered responses to the following reflective questions
1. What are the most important TOK ideas, issues, and/or concepts that are implicit in your chosen title? How have you chosen to define or clarify these ideas?
2. What initial claims or tentative positions have you developed with regards to the title? (Write at least 3 concise claims that seem to answer the title at least in part).
3. What 2 TOK Areas of Knowledge do you think are most promising for developing your response? Why are they the best? What specific tensions within the title do these two AOKs help to illuminate?
4. What kinds of real-world examples will help you develop your thinking?  How does the title "speak to" these examples, and what sorts of responses do these examples offer?
3. After this meeting, our next "official" touch point will take the form of my written commentary on a completed draft.

At each of these moments, you will complete a brief reflection in the TK/PPF.  Your reflections must be fewer than 500 words total.  This document will be submitted along with your final TOK Essay.

In order to complete this process and still leave you time to polish and revise your draft, I have added the following deadlines to our calendar:

• 2/8: Preliminary writing, brainstorming, mapping complete. (1-on-1 conferences on 2/8 & 2/10)
• 2/21: Commentary Draft Submission Deadline (to be returned to you by 2/25)
• 3/7: Final Draft Submission (along with completed TK/PPF

After our discussion about the TOK Essay prompts, I'd like to give you some time to begin generating ideas in response to your chosen prompt.  

we will watch the 1993 film, Groundhog Day.  The movie is about a weatherman, Phil, who gets stuck in a sort of time loop, having to relive the same day over and over again.

After viewing the film, we will read a number of texts that offer us a lens through which to view the film.  Then, we will discuss the questions below.  After the discussion, please write a well-organized reflective GClassroom post in which you consider the ways that the film relates to TOK.

Mind-Body (Cartesian) Dualism

After the film Watch this short video about Rene Descartes:

Then, we will read this somewhat more challenging article by Michael Faust, wherein he reads the film as a treatment of Nietzsche's concept of the eternal recurrence.

Now Consider: Phil seems to be repeating the same day over and over again, but while his mind and memory remain intact from day-to-same-day, everything else in the universe (including his body and presumably his brain cells) seems to reset.

1. How does this film relate to the dualism posited by Descartes? 
2. To what extent do you go through your life understanding "yourself" (or your "self") to be somehow separate from your physical form? 
• How is it that I can so easily say that I "will always be myself" when I know that every second I am actually physically changing? 
• How can I reconcile this "unified" view of "myself" with my memory of myself as a small child?
• Give examples of moments/situations where you act in a dualistic mode and/or a non-dualistic mode.
3. How does this philosophical position highlight a tension surrounding knowledge-creation in the areas of knowledge? (I'm thinking specifically of Natural Sciences and Religious Knowledge Systems, though you may think of others.)