What's Judgement Anyway?

Folks throw the words “judgement” and “judging” around a lot, most typically in the context of “judging people”. In American culture this is largely due to the Christian requirement to abstain from judging others. Indeed, within the Christian religion escape from the judgement of God is contingent on one personally abstaining from judging others (parallel to the idea that God will only forgive the sins of those who forgive the wrongs committed against them, whatever forgiveness is).

But I’m frequently uncertain as to exactly how the word is used.

I might know how someone is using the term. In a legal sense I get it: to declare someone guilty or innocent (taken care of by juries in many systems), or else to pass down a sentence.

I would know what you meant if you used it in the sense of “assess, rate, compare”, as in judging a sports competition or comparing restaurants.

I would know what you mean if you used it in the sense of “to assess what something is, or what category it belongs to”, in the sense of saying “I judge that to be an elm tree” or, perhaps “In my judgement you have a cold”, or, perhaps, “Against my better judgement I’ll allow it [meaning, ‘in my judgement this is a bad idea but I’ll allow it anyway’]”. This is perhaps conceptually related to the idea of judging in a legal sense: “To assess whether or not a crime was committed”, “To determine what an appropriate sentence would be”.

I would know what you mean if you used it in the sense of referring to a kind of reasoning faculty, or perhaps if you used it to refer to something like “insight”, in the sense of “she has good judgement” or “use your best judgement”. This is related to the idea discussed in the previous paragraph.

So far I’ve only mentioned the easier to describe usages for “judgement”. There are other ways the word is used, typically referring to certain emotional phenomena, perhaps by analogy we might speak of a spectrum of human emotion and part of that spectrum might be what is often referred to as “judging someone”, or else if we think of human emotional experiences as cross-connected nodes, where we can group certain connected nodes into sets (these will overlap), perhaps one of those sets we might describe as “judging others” (is this a good analogy? I’m not convinced). I’ll describe what I experience that I tend to describe as “judgement”, but of course my internal experience may vary considerably from yours.

Perhaps: a kind of disposition towards someone, a dislike of them based on their behavior, an aversion to them, anger towards them.

Perhaps: a kind of disposition towards someone, thinking myself superior or better than them, perhaps as a person or with respect to some particular attribute. But what’s “superior as a person” mean in this context? It’s strange, I’m tempted to say it doesn’t mean anything, that “superior” has to refer to to some measurable quality (between two runners, the superior runner is the one who more reliably wins races), but there is something else there, something difficult to pin down. Runners have a goal, and hammers a purpose (we might speak of one hammer being a better hammer, a superior hammer), and so I know what “superior” means there, but humans have only the goals given by themselves or by others, and humans have only the purposes they give themselves or are given to them by others. And so I know what it means to be a “superior employee” - a purpose given to someone by someone else - but I don’t know what it means to be a superior person. And yet, I have some idea of what I mean when I say “I feel superior to someone, I feel like I am better than someone”, and it feels like it goes beyond a simple belief of “I am better at running than someone” or even, although it is sometimes a related belief, “My behavior/character is , on average, less harmful than someone else’s behavior/character”. But what is this feeling? Is it related to the idea of being superior in a measurable way? I wonder if it’s something like the notion of a social hierarchy? Perhaps the feeling of “being better than someone as a person” is some emotional/psychological sense of our position in a, perhaps unspoken, social hierarchy. Perhaps the feeling of “being better than someone” in a moral sense is some emotional/psychological sense of our position in the moral/spiritual/divine hierarchy? Within cultures a variety of things can affect social status: etiquette, speech, dress, wealth, fame, family, nobility, titles, caste systems, adhering to social norms, etc. Of course, in contexts where superiority is closely tied to some measurable quality there will be overlap between the idea of, for example, “being the superior writer” and “being superior with respect to social hierarchy”. I wonder how closely related contemporary human notions/realities of social hierarchy are to non-human animal social hierarchies? At any rate, I have some idea of what some are getting at when they use the word “judging” in the context of “feeling superior to someone”.

It might have hints of “I would have done otherwise had it been me”, when we speak of judging someone for their actions.

That’s all the ways of using “judgement” or “judging” I can think of.

What are the effects of each of these? Do I want these effects?

In a legal sense, to declare someone innocent or guilty, or else to pass down a sentence: I mean, I want a legal system, and this feels like a pretty integral part of that. So yeah, this is fine in and of itself. Obviously there are more or less harmful kinds of legal systems.

In the sense of “assess, rate, compare”: again, by itself, not a harmful thing. There are potentially harmful iterations I suppose. Also pretty inevitable human activity.

In the sense of “to assess what something is, or what category it belongs to”, same answer as above. Also pretty inevitable human activity.

In the sense of “insight” or “use good judgement”: This is a thing which exists, so my opinion on it is pretty irrelevant. Developing insight and refining one’s judgement is a helpful thing, more of that please.

In the sense of “a kind of disposition towards someone, a dislike of them based on their behavior, an aversion to them, anger towards them”: humans seem to naturally do this, and it’s not an easy thing to rid oneself of, nor is it even necessarily possible for everyone in all cases. Probably less of this kind of judgement is helpful, both individually and socially. Generally, I am against humans disliking one another. However, demanding that people who have been wronged by someone not dislike the harm-doer is unreasonable: it may not even be possible for that person to do as you demand. Also, I wonder if in certain cases this kind of judgement might be socially helpful? I’m not super sure about the net effects of social ostracization of people, depending on circumstances. Like, I get it if people don’t want to be around people who do particularly heinous things, and maybe that can be a deterrent for others who might also do heinous things? But, on the other hand, if this ostracization ends up being permanent, does that take away a potential incentive for reformation? If someone has the sense that they will never, as it where, be reaccepted by the community, might they give up seeking character reformation? Maybe it’s sometimes sensible for serious harm-doers to be permanently ostracized from the community wherein they performed their heinous act while also allowing for them to, eventually at least, join and be accepted by a different community? And is maybe a broad social agreement that a Stalin or a Hitler are Bad Guys helpful to prevent other people from going down that path? Also, if someone is being mistreated by someone and their attempt at enlightened dispassion towards them is making them more vulnerable to being mistreated then I’m going to be in favor of them just disliking the person who is mistreating them. I’ll support the idea of having a positive disposition towards someone who has wronged you, but only if this doesn’t come at the expense of other, more immediately necessary, goals. There are those rare few who are able to truly embrace a kind of patient universal love for all humans, and I’m always going to be glad for that and think it’s good that there be more of that, but I also understand that this isn’t a reasonable ask in most situations.

Maybe there are sensible differences to discuss with respect to how we treat those who mistreat us vs those who mistreat others?

In general, I expect that the more developed one’s insight is, the broader one’s perspective, and the more they understand the causes of human behavior, the more this kind of judgement will diminish in that person. To some degree this kind of judgement may be fueled by irrationality, as in when it is connected to the idea of “I would have done otherwise had it been me”. This is irrational if only because there is no way to know that, and it might even be irrational in a more fundamental sense. We can imagine the idea of “if I had been in your place, but with all the factors that make me me, I would not have behaved as you behaved”, but this is only possible to imagine in the context of some major time/space rule breaking. If you where them, you would be all of them: their genetics rather than yours, their upbringing rather than yours, their experiences rather than yours, their brain rather than yours. And in that context, does it even make sense to ask if you would do otherwise? Why would you? Would you even be you? In this last example we are imagining that “you” could be taken out of your body and put into someone else’s, but this is to suppose some kind of “soul”. But maybe what I am is the mind of this body. Perhaps “I” am generated by this body? Perhaps the idea of me being you makes as much sense as the sound of flute being the sound of another flute. Maybe “I” an an event, something this body is experiencing/doing?

Or maybe not, who knows? I haven’t a clue how consciousness works, and so far as I can tell neither does anyone else.

In the sense of “feeling superior with respect to some measurable quality”: it’s fine to have a clearheaded perception of yourself and your traits. But bear in mind how hard it is to be clearheaded about such things. And don’t be an asshole. And keep in mind all the background stuff that lets people be good at stuff: opportunities and genetics and environment and randomness. And remember other people are better at other stuff.

In the sense of “feeling that one’s behavior/character is less harmful than someone else’s”: basically the same answer as the previous paragraph, minus the bit about remembering how other people are better at other stuff, since I don’t think one can defend their bad behavior by pointing out that they’re a good cook. Although maybe there’s something to be said about…. having more or less beneficial/harmful behavior in different ways? Think of someone who’s very apt to give their money to those in need, but also gossips a lot.

In the sense of “feeling superior in a social sense, having a sense of being higher on the social ladder”: fuck this nonsense. It’s pretty ingrained in us, so it’ll take some doing to disentangle ourselves from this awful phenomenon, but the more we let go of social hierarchy the better off we’ll all be.

In the sense of “feeling superior in a moral sense, having a sense of being higher on the moral/divine ladder”: again, fuck this nonsense. This is even worse in my opinion. Get over yourself, read up on the concept of moral luck, read up on the underlying causes of human behavior, google the lead-crime hypothesis, etc.