Philosophical Phun - Judgement :o)

What happens in our minds when we make a judgement? [Brentano defined judgement as attaining knowledge and drawing inferences] Introspectively it is an act quite similar to making a decision, although its behavioral effects are different. Suppose you are uncertain what to think about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Some data suggest that life exists only on earth, others suggest that there may be intelligent beings somewhere else in the universe. Eventually you may become convinced one way or the other, and you either accept or reject the existence of extraterrestrial life. That is when you judge.

This example illustrates two judgement considerations:

1. Judgements require that something (some object) is given in presentation, but not that something is predicated of it.
2. Judgements are either positive or negative, depending on whether the presented object is accepted as existing, or rejected as fictitious or non-existing.

According to this principle, to make a judgement means to judge about an object that is given in presentation. But if something is given in presentation, this already implies that the presented object exists at least as an immanent object in our minds. So how can one legitimately deny its existence?

Source

Philosophical Phun - Moral Deliberation :o)

'Which action, of those available to me, would be best?' -- or, in other words, what ought I to do? -- may be considered the basic question of practical moral deliberation. There are of course other questions we may ask -- e.g. 'what sequence of actions, across my remaining lifetime, would be best?' -- but it's important to note that these are different questions.

To begin, note that the standard question 'What ought I to do?' is a question about an individual act. For example, "Should I accept the divine deal or not?" is an important moral question that someone might deliberate over. If they reason correctly, they will reach the conclusion "no, reject it". Morality is action-guiding, and this is the guidance it offers in this case.



Practical reasoning concludes in action (or, to put it more neutrally, let's say implementation) . We can reason about how to act, and then do so. But while we can think about what the best sequence of acts would be, we can't implement this as the conclusion of our reasoning -- at most, we can implement but a part of it. The reasoning instead concludes in mere belief, and so is really theoretical reasoning, albeit about a topic of moral interest.



Morality is supposed to be action-guiding, not action-sequence-guiding. There's a reason for this: we can only implement actions, not whole sequences thereof. 

An individual action is a true, but trivial answer. The fact that it's true explains why 'what should I do?' is the basic question of practical moral deliberation, and why the best-sequence question isn't really 'practical' at all. On the other hand, the fact that it's trivial suggests that, philosophically, we would do better to refocus on the question, 'what can I do?'

For the source of this entry, go to Philosophy, et cetera.

What we commonly do is make moral judgments about individual acts, in the context of a sequence, or against the background of having performed other acts (and omissions).  I think that this is where much of our society breaks down today, there are many that compartmentalize their morality from their actions, not recognizing that their morality should be guiding their actions.