On judgement

Crosshatching

It is appalling how people can be so sure about their beliefs, holding on to them with the zeal of a fanatic. In most cases, these people based their decisions purely on emotion as when their self-interest is being threatened. They refuse to investigate or listen to dissenting opinion and tend to take things personally.

Sometimes they are so blinded by their fanaticism that they fail to realize that they are not being fair. “There is no such thing as neutrality,” is the usual convenient excuse. Judgement, they think, is relative.

But how do we really arrive at a good judgement? My philosophy teacher once said that to be able to judge, we need first to be fully informed of the contending arguments. We then try to evaluate and criticize these arguments and make decisions purely based on merit.

Knowledge thus precedes judgment. We cannot make fair decisions when we lack knowledge of the opposing side. We should try to see things from their perspective. We need to question every assumptions, even our own.

For Plato, knowledge is achieved through a long series of questioning in the form of a dialogue or “dialectic”. In the exchange of question and answer, a proposition or assumption undergoes the test of logic until a conclusion is reached where no question could further be asked.

A truth has become self-evident, a proof beyond reasonable doubt is achieved. Indeed the classical dialectic, modelled after the method of dialogue between Socrates and his students, has found its way to the modern courtroom cross-examination.

And yet, there is still the question of subjectivity. How can we assure ourselves that the way our intellect selects the facts is not actually influenced by emotion or factors that are irrational or may have nothing to do with the case at hand?

The Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant calls these irrelevant factors that may have value to us as “interests” and proposes that we detach or remove them from the process of judgment. Obviously, the most powerful interest is our own interest or subjectivity.

But Kant challenges us to go beyond such self-interest if it goes against a universally mandated duty. Judgement for Kant is thus an act of “disinterestedness”. We should be able to acknowledge and act according to a universal truth even if it goes against our own interest. That is the ultimate test of judgement.

It looks like a good formula of judgement, something that nations, regardless of culture, can adhere to. Indeed, the Kantian model became the basis for the rule of law, without which modern democracy would simply deteriorate into anarchy.

Still, one cannot simply dismiss subjectivity. After all, we have all been raised under different circumstances and these peculiarities shape our values in ways that we may not even be fully aware of. We now know, for instance, that the unconscious is actually responsible for most of our personality than what the intellect could only achieve in our waking state.

Then there is the power of culture as a product of a collective unconscious. Indeed, assumptions of a common nature, upon which universal moral principles are derived, is challenged by culture, which is diverse and relative.

All these factors figure in the way we judge. The phenomenologist thinkers believe that we cannot discount them if we want to fully understand not only the thing being judged but the very way that we judge. We thus need to subject to criticism the very act of judgement itself both the objective and subjective part.

We need to retrieve those “interests” which we discarded as we tried to be disinterested and take a second look at them to understand our own attachments to them.

We thus need to step back from that first act and see ourselves undergoing that internal debate between subjectivity and objectivity, interest and disinterest.

We then acquire that third perspective, that of ourselves being caught in that dilemma. And with that self-awareness we arrive at an even better judgment.