IB Theory of Knowledge 3.8 Unpacking Any Title: the Method Notes

3.8 Unpacking any title: the method

The title is fixed text and must be used exactly as given

1. Use the chosen prescribed title exactly as issued, including its punctuation, qualifiers and instruction about areas of knowledge.
2. Altering it is rarely deliberate. It happens by retyping from memory, by tidying a phrase that reads awkwardly, by dropping a qualifier that seemed redundant, or by leaving off the second sentence because it looked like an instruction rather than part of the title.
3. A paraphrase inside your introduction is not an alteration of the title, but it is where drift starts. If the sentence you go on to answer is your paraphrase, the essay answers your version and the title sits above it unaddressed.
4. Paste the title rather than retyping it, then compare it word by word with the issued title sheet for your examination session.
5. Unpacking is not altering. You may rewrite the title into a working question, take it apart, and argue with its wording in your notes; the text at the top of the essay stays as issued.
6. The qualifier is usually where a title's difficulty lives, and it is the first thing that disappears when somebody retypes from memory. The fixed-text rule protects the part of the title you most need to argue with.

Finding the load-bearing word

1. Look for words whose replacement changes what the essay has to establish. There may be several, and the relationship between them can matter as much as any one word.
2. Try it on a constructed title in the style of a prescribed one: Is it possible to know something that cannot be shown to others? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge. Swap shown for explained and the essay changes; swap know for be sure and it changes again.
3. The load-bearing word is rarely the topic noun. It is usually the relation word: depends on, requires, guarantees, matters more than, is sufficient for. Those are the words that say what has to be established.
4. Qualifiers carry weight too. To what extent asks for a judgment of degree. Only can signal a necessary condition, depending on the sentence; always makes a claim vulnerable to a counterexample.
5. Clarify knowledge only where its meaning affects your answer. A general definition can distract from the narrower relationship the title asks you to examine.
6. Keep the title's disputed words in view as you consider each area of knowledge. That gives the sections a shared question without requiring them to reach different answers.

Turning the title into a working question

1. Prescribed titles ask questions about knowledge focused on areas of knowledge. Identify the relationship, assumption or judgment that your essay needs to examine.
2. Write a working version of the question in your notes. For the constructed title above, ask what role being able to show something to others plays in its counting as knowledge. Check that your version keeps the original question's scope.
3. The working question must not contain its own answer. If yours has a yes or a no built into its phrasing, you decided the essay before you unpacked it, and everything after that is a search for support.
4. Consider more than one plausible answer and what reasons would support each. If the working question only asks for factual description, check whether it has lost the title's concern with knowledge.
5. The working question lives in your notes. What goes at the top of the essay is the title as issued, and the two documents do different jobs from that point on.
6. Check how the working question will be examined in the areas of knowledge the title requires. Their methods and evidence should affect your answer; their names need not appear in every planning question.

Identifying what would have to be true for it to hold

1. If the title proposes a claim, list what would have to be true for it to hold. For a comparative or explanatory title, identify what you would need to establish to defend your proposed answer.
2. For the constructed question about knowing what cannot be shown, investigate whether justification must be shareable. A case of knowledge whose justification cannot be handed over would support one answer; a contrasting case can test its limits.
3. This gives you a reason for choosing examples. You can also begin with a case you know well, provided you test whether it bears on the title rather than reshape the title around it.
4. The condition that fails is where the opposing reading lives. Working out what would have to be true also tells you what someone who disagrees with you is relying on, which is cheaper than hunting for a counter-argument later.
5. Ask what evidence or reasoning could challenge your provisional answer. Some titles ask for a comparison or explanation rather than a claim that can simply be labelled true or false.
6. Try writing a proposed condition as a full sentence. If you cannot explain it, return to the idea before using it to organise a paragraph.

Choosing areas of knowledge the title can carry

1. Follow the title's exact instruction about areas of knowledge. Check both how many are required and whether any are named.
2. The five areas are history, the human sciences, the natural sciences, mathematics and the arts. You can choose only where the title leaves that choice open.
3. Choose areas whose methods and evidence let you examine the title in depth. Familiarity helps when it gives you cases you understand well enough to analyse.
4. Consider what the pairing lets you compare. Two areas may support the same conclusion for different reasons, or reveal different limits to it. Either can develop the argument.
5. Explain how each area's methods affect the answer to your knowledge question. Naming an area alone does not establish that connection.
6. A familiar case can distract from the title if you describe it without explaining its relevance. Ask which part of your argument depends on the case before committing space to it.

Where an unpacking goes wrong in the first ten minutes

1. The first risk is settling on an answer before testing it. Keep an early answer provisional and seek reasons that might complicate it.
2. The second is substituting a title you have seen before. Titles rhyme with each other, and the difference between the one you practised and the one in front of you is usually a qualifier that changes the work.
3. Another risk is committing to an area before checking the title's requirements. An existing interest or case can be a starting point, but it should not override what the title asks.
4. Test whether an abstract word changes the argument when its meaning changes. A familiar word can be just as consequential as a technical one.
5. A list of paragraph topics leaves the argument undecided. Add your provisional answer and the reasons you expect to test; allow them to change as you investigate.
6. At the end of an initial unpacking, write a provisional answer and a serious question or objection it still needs to address. These give you a starting point for further work.

Running the method on a title you have never seen

1. For practice, use unfamiliar past titles labelled by their examination session. They are archive exercises, not titles you can submit for your current session.
2. As a practice exercise, try ten minutes and one page. Record a provisional answer and an objection or limit to investigate. This timing is a way to keep the exercise manageable, not an assessment requirement.
3. When a title looks unfamiliar, start with the relation words rather than the subject matter. Unfamiliarity is usually in the topic, while the relation word is drawn from a small and repeating set.
4. Where two readings are both defensible, take one and say in the essay which reading you took. The fixed-text rule governs the words of the title, not which of its available readings you argue for.
5. Explore possible titles before discussing them with your teacher. The final choice is yours; arriving with notes on more than one can help you explain that choice.
6. Keep the page. The second required interaction is a discussion of your initial exploration, shared with your teacher in written form. Your provisional answer, reasons and unresolved questions can provide a basis for that discussion.