Sorry for neglecting this blog for a while, but my desire to write anything comes and goes. Sometimes I feel like writing in short spurts followed by a long period where I'd like to focus on other things in life. Today I would like to write an article focusing my thoughts on a concept I have argued for years, and if I am correct about this, the implications of this concept could change the way you think about certain things.
On Using Your Own Judgment
This can seem a tricky topic because humans are 1) social creatures interacting with each other and 2) individuals.
So is there such a thing as individuality, and how do we differentiate individuals from a group of people (in philosophical/psychological terms)? There’s a variety of things I could choose to answer this question, but I think I am going to go with using your own judgment.
I hold that we humans who are adults and mentally capable of doing so have no choice but to use our own judgment. First we can begin with a definition of judgment, and then flesh out my arguments for this.
Judgment: an opinion formed by the cognitive process of reaching a decision or drawing conclusions. Psychologically, judgment is the capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions. Note: we’re not really concerned here with whether the judgment is always correct or not compared to facts/reality, just that people use their own judgment. If that definition is good enough we shall continue.
Before we get to judgment, I think it is important to understand axioms in which judgment rests on. If any of these are false then I have made a misstep somewhere.
Firstly, we should accept that axiom of existence. Existence exists. There is something there as opposed to nothing. You are conscious of the fact that you exist and wouldn’t it be a contradiction to have consciousness and not exist to have a conscious? This is axiomatic because it is necessary for all knowledge and it cannot be denied without conceding its truth. To deny existence is to say that something doesn’t exist. A denial of something is only possible if existence exists.
To claim to me that you or I do not exist would be absurd because you have to exist first in order to do that! To even talk to me and tell me this would also indicate that recognize my existence. Things can’t exist without existing as something with identity. Further, somebody cannot exist and yet not exist at the same time. This makes no sense.
In the same way trying to convince me that I do not use my judgment is relying on the fact that I will eventually have to use my judgment to evaluate that argument of yours. If I accept your argument all I have done is used my judgment to judge that I cannot make judgments... which puts in contradiction. Just as if I accepted the radical skeptics arguments that I cannot trust my own senses, even though I had to use my senses in order to hear his arguments!
Because we humans exist we can think while also reflecting that thinking in speech, writing and other communication. Part of that process of thinking is making judgments about the world.
How are we doing so far?
Now the concept of self-ownership. What I mean by self-ownership is the fact that you control your own body and your thoughts. Yes, somebody can grab your arm and smack you on the head with it, but they have self-ownership of their arm that forcefully grabbed your arm to hit you with. So this does not invalidate the self-ownership. It also does not invalidate self-ownership if somebody tricks me or influences me in any way. Unless they are using force, somebody could influence my actions, but *I* am still the actor. When I willfully act I am exercising self-ownership.
You might have guessed by now that the building blocks I have here also depend on free will. You determinists in the audience (you know who you are) will disagree with me of course. But I will argue that to accept the above is to accept free will, at least as it concerns self-ownership. To accept self-ownership that is meaningful requires free will.
Concerning judgment, all individuals are equal in ability to judge and act on that judgment. That is not to say each has equal capacity to act with identical force of will or physical strength. It is only to say that each has a conscious subjectivity that is distinct and not dependent on the will of another conscious entity. If it were otherwise, anyone whose will were dependent on that of another would instantly stop functioning the moment that other person died.
Also note that when beings have the capacity for free will what they are doing, among other things, is having the ability to contemplate a list of options and use their judgment to pick one. The determinist who is still clenching with a death grip onto his determinism will of course argue that such choices are ultimately an illusion. Further, that I am just determined to take the actions I take and think the conclusions I make; so that judgments ought to be a moot point for the determinist. But notice that the moment the determinist starts to argue with me (in order to get me to change my mind) that he is contradicting himself. When he reads the passages above assaulting determinism he has to use his own judgment to decide whether he agrees with them and how he wants to respond to them. That is also an act of free will.
One of the biggest counter-arguments for using your own judgment is that of authority. By authority I do not mean somebody who is an expert at something in which you respect that opinion as valid (using your judgment to even do that). I mean authority as in the power to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. Also the right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another.
Here are my responses to such an authority:
1) No one believes in “authority,” even in his own mind. The belief cannot exist.
2) An entity that can sense, reason, and judge cannot believe in an authority (nor can any entity that can’t sense, reason, and judge). This includes a spiritual authority. This rules out an obligation to obey the commands of anything, including gods and groups of people. The reason for this is the same reason that some group of people cannot have authority over your judgment. Let’s say the god or some group of people tell you to do something. Lots of people will tell you what to do, too. How do you determine who to believe or obey? Your own judgment. It’s not avoidable. So can you have an obligation to obey them over your own judgment? Obviously not, since without using your own judgment, it is blind luck who you will obey.
Here is the glaring contradiction in any belief in “authority”: If you believe “A” is “authority” (whether “A” is a religion, state, etc.), then you used your own judgment to decide that. If, therefore, “A” says something that conflicts with your judgment, what happens? All of its supposedly legitimacy came from you judging it to be so. It cannot therefore overrule your judgment, since your judgment is the only reason you think it’s worthy to begin with! It looks something like this:
“It’s good to obey the law,”
which means …“I think I should obey the commands of politicians,”
which means…“I judge it to be good to obey politicians,”
which means …“I judge that I should follow the judgment of politicians,”
which means …“I judge that my own judgment is less important than politicians’,” which means …“I judge that my actions shouldn’t be based on my judgment,” which means …“I judge that I should not judge.”
Thus authority-overriding-judgment with judgment outside yourself is not possible.
For the religious people in the audience, let’s say the good dude in sky tells you to do something. Lots of other folks tell you what to do, too. How do you determine who to believe or obey? Your own judgment. It’s not avoidable. So can you have an obligation to obey this omnipotent power over your own judgment? Obviously not, since without using your own judgment, it is blind luck who you will obey. I can for example ask religious person X how they know the Holybook is God’s book. Even if they pretend they don’t use their own judgment to determine what is right and what is true, what else can they possible say chose it? Therefore, even if there is some omnipotent god somewhere, he would not be dumb enough to command me to do anything. He would know I act ultimately on my own judgment, which means if he wanted me to be “good,” he would want me to judge right from wrong, and to choose to act accordingly. Morality implies choice and this implies using your own judgment. Nothing else is possible.
If a powerful being could subvert my judgment with its judgment (thus being the outside authority I spoke of earlier) what would that mean? Obviously such an authority could not seriously punish you for anything you do because you are not using your own judgment; thus not responsible for the things judged that ought to be done or not done.
Self-ownership is key. There’s only one reason you would believe you are not the owner of your life, and that is because someone else told you there’s a “higher” authority than you. And you believed him every time he or she said it, unquestioningly. This could be gods or perhaps groups of people like a government or some other kind of authority. So to do this you would have to believe in an entity/group you allowed to override your better judgment (or, judge their judgment to be superior to your own) and meanwhile pretend you let someone else decide what makes sense to you.
I get knee-jerk reactions to this. Another argument brought against individual judgment is that of classical behaviorism, which is just crude psychology that presumes determinism and while not having the benefits of recent findings in psychology and understanding in human behavior AND especially human judgment.
So what if a behaviorist could change your behaviors, as if you were just a non-human animal inside a Skinner box? I won’t argue that behaviorism is powerful psychology, but classical behaviorism was very effective against animals which do not have unique judgment/free will compared to humans. Some of the techniques do work on changing somebody’s behaviors without accounting for their mental states. In other words, behaviorism cannot change mental states (the behaviorist himself, I mean) but can influence the change in behavior. This is not, mind you, the same as overriding somebody’s judgment. In fact, judgment is not even used here.
You can for example condition a child to fear rabbits by associating rabbits with a loud bang, and this child may grow up to fear rabbits. But this is NOT the same thing as substituting his own judgment with a judgment that rabbits are bad. This is simply training the brain to associate one thing with another thing that would not normally go together. Upon growing up and realizing what jerks these people were who conditioned him this way, the now adult can judge that this was wrong and that he wants to like rabbits, and so goes to a therapist to figure out how to undo the conditioning.
If I made a good case here for using your own judgment, I think this demolishes any argument for authority as described earlier, and this gives some way to pick out the individuality of people despite the fact that some people wish to become part of some collective.
People who do not wish for you to realize that you use your own judgment are placing themselves as authority figures and would like you to think they can override your own judgment, but are simply wanting you to use your own judgment that they are authority figures to obey. I hope this helps you to use your own judgment carefully next time.
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