Making Judgments
We make judgments all the time about things we experience. We make judgments to understand what we like and don’t like, and to know what we want and don’t want. Sometimes a judgment can be as simple as deciding what to drink (juice is too sweet — I’ll just have some water) or a judgment can be more serious such as judging the merits of another person, or even yourself.
Judgments can be misleading
Judgments are often made without qualifying who is making the judgment and on what grounds.
Recognizing a judgment
Judgments are similar to comparisons thought they don’t always involve a comparison. Judgments are often found with adverbs ending in —ly. Consider the statement “clearly this meeting is going to be boring”. The word “clearly” hides the person who is making the judgment. Perhaps you are making the judgment, or maybe you are just repeating a judgment that someone made.
Clarifying a judgment
In the above example, you can clarify who is making the judgment by replacing the word “clearly” with the phrase “it is clear”. Now it is more obvious that information has been deleted — it is clear to who? And on what grounds? In general, judgments are clarified by asking: “who is making this judgment, and on what grounds are they making it?”
Judgment Summary
Judgments often involve comparisons but not always.
Judgments are often made without qualifying who is making the judgment and on what grounds.
Judgments are usually found near adverbs ending in —ly.
Judgments are clarified by asking: “who is making this judgment, and on what grounds are they making it?”
Related Pages
Unspecified NounsUnspecified Verbs
Comparisons
Judgments
Nominalizations
Modal Operators of Possibility
Modal Operators of Necessity
Universal Quantifiers
Complex Equivalence
Presuppositions
Cause and Effect
Mind Reading