Judgement as the Fundamental Act of Knowledge | Psychology

After reading this article you will learn about Judgement as the Fundamental Act of Knowledge.

Judgement is the most primordial act of knowledge. It is the activity of the mind by which it acquires knowledge of the environ­ment. It is the act of interpretation of the environment. Through-out various senses we come into direct contact with the environment.

The eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the skin are the points of contact between the mind and the environment. But the sense-organs alone cannot give us any knowledge, of the world apart from the reaction of the mind.

The sensations produced by external objects acting on the sense-organs are interpreted by the mind. It interprets the meanings of sensations. Judgement is the mind’s inter­pretation of its environment. It is the mind’s waking up to the meaning of experiences. It is a source of our knowledge of the world, whether that knowledge be common-sense knowledge, or scientific and philosophical.

The act of judging is the essence of all intellectual operations. Knowledge is an act of judgement. It is the reaction of the mind upon the environment. Judgement is the basal act in the intellectual enterprise. Ideas, objects, and knowledge are aspects of judgements. Ideas are only interpretation of objects. Judgement is a primary and irreducible act on the mind.

The mind interprets sensations by the process and acquires immediate information concerning the external environment. Per­ception gives us knowledge of the sensory qualities of external objects. Perceiving and judging are not radically distinct from each other. Perceiving is a kind of judging. We should speak of it as perceptual judgement.

By conceiving, the mind compares objects with one another, finds out their similarities and differences, and groups them into, different classes. Conceiving also is an act of interpretation. The mind cannot immediately perceive the common quality of a class of objects.

It must discover the common quality on the basis of which it classifies objects. The act of discovery is an act of interpretation. It is the result of many judgements. Conceiving is a form of judging. It is the judging of the common qualities of objects.

Reasoning also is an act of interpretation. It finds out a new relation­ship among the data or given judgements. It passes from given judgements to a new judgement. It is a complex form of judging. It is the interpretation of the hearing which some present fact of experience has on a problem in the light of our past experience.

Thus perceiving, conceiving and reasoning are merely different forms of judging. They are the ways in which the mind interprets the meaning of its environment. Judgement is the basal act of intelligence.