Philosophy Rocks · Professor Alejandra M.
Philosophy and Theory of Knowledge, for IB students who want to think.
This is a home for IB Philosophy and TOK — Theory of Knowledge, Teoría del Conocimiento. Big questions, taught with rigour and taught well, in English and in Spanish.
Why this site exists
Philosophy is not a subject you memorise. It is a way of asking questions clearly, defending answers honestly, and knowing when you were wrong. Theory of Knowledge asks the question behind every subject you study: how do we know what we claim to know?
Everything here is written for IB students aged sixteen to eighteen — clear enough to follow the night before a deadline, rigorous enough to hold up in an examiner’s hands. Read it in English or in Spanish. The ideas are the same in both.
What we study
The course is structured around one core theme and three optional themes.
Being Human
What is consciousness, and where does it come from? Are you the same person you were at ten? Is your will really free, or does it only feel that way? Here we work through consciousness, identity, free will, happiness, and self-knowledge — the questions you can’t outrun, because they are questions about you.
Politics
What makes a society just? Where does the law get its authority, and when is it right to break it? We examine justice, law, democracy, moral duty, and free speech — not as slogans, but as arguments you can build, test, and take apart. You will learn to disagree well, which is harder and more useful than it sounds.
Ethics
What makes an action right or wrong? How should you live, and what do you owe to others? Ethics examines justice, virtue, moral duty, and the frameworks we use to decide how to act. We explore consequentialist thinking (does the outcome matter most?), deontological reasoning (are some acts inherently wrong?), and virtue ethics (what does it mean to be a good person?). These are not abstract puzzles—they are questions you face when making real decisions about honesty, fairness, loyalty, and harm.
Modern Societies
Philosophy did not stop at the ancient Greeks. This strand turns to the world you actually live in: capitalism, technology and identity, climate ethics, social media, and decolonialism. What does an algorithm owe you? Who pays for a warming planet? These are old questions wearing new clothes, and they reward careful thinking.
The one underneath all the others
TOK — A Compulsory IB Subject
Theory of Knowledge (TOK / Teoría del Conocimiento) is not a philosophy topic—it is its own compulsory subject in the IB Diploma Programme. Every IB student must take it, taught in English and Spanish by Alejandra. TOK asks the question beneath all of your other studies: how do we know what we know?
A historian justifies knowledge claims by weighing primary sources and testimony. A scientist builds knowledge through observation and experiment. A mathematician discovers truth through logical proof. An artist communicates what matters without claiming empirical fact. TOK examines how each discipline produces knowledge—what counts as evidence, what kinds of claims each can make, and what the limits are. You study the same subjects across the IB; TOK teaches you to think about how you know what those subjects tell you.
The TOK curriculum covers core questions—What is knowledge? How do we build reliable arguments? What roles do language, emotion, and intuition play in knowledge?—and explores them across different “areas of knowledge” (natural sciences, human sciences, history, mathematics, the arts) and “ways of knowing” (reason, sense perception, testimony, emotion, and imagination). Most students learn these ideas well enough to follow the course. But when it comes to the TOK essay—the heart of the assessment—most students lose marks in the same few places. Here you will find practical, examiner-informed guidance: how to read a prescribed title closely, how to build a real-world example that earns its place, and how to structure an argument that survives scrutiny. Structure first, cleverness second.
Learn with Professor Alejandra M. (or just Ale)
Professor Alejandra M. teaches Philosophy and Theory of Knowledge for IB students in English and Spanish.
Philosophy Rocks 