# Judgement

Judgement (or judgment) is the evaluation of given circumstances to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions.
In an informal context, a judgement is opinion expressed as fact. In the context of a legal trial, a judgement is a final finding, statement or ruling, based on evidence, rules and precedents, called adjudication (see Judgment (law)).In the context of psychology, judgment informally references the quality of a person's cognitive faculties and adjudicational capabilities, typically called wisdom. In formal psychology, judgement and decision making (JDM) is a cognitive process by which individuals reason, make decisions, and form opinions and beliefs.

## Psychology

[edit] In cognitive psychology (and related fields like experimental philosophy, social psychology, behavioral economics, or experimental economics), judgement is part of a set of cognitive processes by which individuals reason, make decisions, and form beliefs and opinions (collectively, judgement and decision making, abbreviated JDM). This involves evaluating information, weighing evidence, making choices, and coming to conclusions. Judgements are often influenced by cognitive biases, heuristics, prior experience, social context, abilities (e.g., numeracy, probabilistic thinking), and psychological traits (e.g., tendency toward analytical reasoning). In research, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making is an international academic society dedicated to the topic; they publish the peer-reviewed journal Judgment and Decision Making.

## Aristotle's study of judgement

[edit] The power or faculty of judgement may be used to render judgements, in seeking to understand ideas and the things they represent, by means of ratiocination, using good or poor discernment or judgement. Each use of the word judgement has a different sense, corresponding to the triad of mental power, act, and habit.
Whether habits can be classified or studied scientifically, and whether there is such a thing as human nature, are ongoing controversies.

### Judging power or faculty

[edit] Aristotle observed that the ability to judge takes two forms: making assertions and thinking about definitions. He defined these powers in distinctive terms. Making an assertion as a result of judging can affirm or deny something; it must be either true or false. In a judgement, one affirms a given relationship between two things, or one denies a relationship between two things exists. The kinds of definitions that are judgements are those that are the intersection of two or more ideas rather than those indicated only by usual examples — that is, constitutive definitions.
Later Aristotelians, like Mortimer Adler, questioned whether "definitions of abstraction" that come from merging examples in one's mind are really analytically distinct from judgements. The mind may automatically tend to form a judgement upon having been given such examples.

### Distinction of parts

[edit] In informal use, words like "judgement" are often used imprecisely, even when keeping them separated by the triad of power, act, and habit.
Aristotle observed that while propositions can be drawn from judgements and called "true" and "false", the objects that the terms try to represent are only "true" or "false"—with respect to the judging act or communicating that judgement—in the sense of "well-chosen" or "ill-chosen".

## Judgement in religion

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### Abrahamic Religions

The Last Judgement is a significant concept in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and also found in the Frashokereti of Zoroastrianism.

### Christianity

Jesus warned about judging others in the Sermon on the Mount: "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." (Matthew 7:1–5).