2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

24 Usefulness: Highly useful, as it provides a detailed insight into the Chinese Social Credit system.

6 Appendix Appendix 1:

Plato was a Grecian philosopher in the 5 th century BCE, and is widely regarded as one of the most profound philosophers of the human race (Meinwald, 2019). Plato held three distinct beliefs regarding the concept of knowledge, being that: true belief is knowledge, knowledge and perception are the same, and that true belief accompanied by a logical account is knowledge, but true belief without a logical account is not knowledge. Truth, by Plato’s standard is what knowledge leads to, and is achieved in discussion through reason and logic. Plato referred to this theory of rationality as dialectic. He believed that it was imperative not to allow emotional appeal to interfere with one’s true belief, and therefore stated that one must have their true belief accompanied by a logical account, in order for it to be considered knowledge. Plato’s doctrine of recollection highlights that when most people ‘learn’ something, they are simply recalling related facts that they already knew. This was referred to by Plato as the ‘learner’s paradox’, and highlights the fact that all ‘knowledge’ is simply just other knowledge compiled. The learner’s paradox focuses on how one can learn something if they don’t know what it is (Ichikawa and Steup, 2018). This raises the question: is there such thing as new knowledge? This question plays a crucial part in answering the studied question for this essay: ‘Is there such thing as an evolved, supreme knowledge today?’ and will be elaborated on within the rest of the essay. Aristotle was another ancient Grecian philosopher, and was taught by Plato. He is often considered, in conjunction with Plato, one of the fathers of Western philosophy (Amadio and Kenny, 2019). He shared Plato’s belief that knowledge is a form of recollection, and that