Vegetative State Situation & January Presentation Topic

1.) A real life situation related to vegetative state patients is one where a family must be faced with the decision to keep a loved one alive if they are in such a state and completely dependent on machines for survival. We discussed situations like this in French class one day and debated whether or not it was right to decide for the person in the vegetative state whether or not they should live. It was a really interesting debate, everyone had varying views, since it is about a life. 

2.) TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Can someone's life be put in the hands of another?
• Is technology getting too advanced?
• Is it wrong to depend on machines despite the convenience?
• Can we ever really know how someone is feeling?

3.) Our topic for the January presentation is: "What's more important to growth in knowledge in the sciences: facts or ignorance?" A real life situation involving this topic could be a group of scientists working in a cancer research facility: is it the previous facts about the human body and disease that will aid them in their research or will it be delving into the unknown that leads them to the answer?

TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Are "facts" ever really set in stone?
• Are discoveries made because of prior knowledge or because of curiosity due to ignorance?
• Is our ignorance more valuable than our knowledge?
• Is it better to know of something before hand, or to know nothing of it and not be limited by prior "facts"?