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| Looks like I get to wade into treacherous waters again, this time with an article from Psychology Today. The Demand “Don’t Judge Me” Is an Impossibility  Judgments and free will have always been an absolute, immutable necessity. Calling something an "absolute, immutable necessity" is a surefire way to wake up my inner contrarian. I can ignore him, but this time, I won't. Or, maybe, I have no real choice in the matter. Making continuous judgments is a universal human condition necessity. And right off the bat, I have Issues. For starters, why limit it to humans? Is the author under the impression that cats don't make judgments? I've seen one contemplate a jump before making it, doing physics equations in her head to calculate mass, hind leg strength, acceleration, the force of gravity (why do you think they love to knock things off tables), air resistance, and whether someone's watching or not. Or, you know: dogs, rats, corvids, whales, whatever. This necessity begins with the formation of the Homo sapien brain, which provides the universal human condition with consciousness and subconsciousness. The author is someone with a Ph.D. That's not going to stop me from questioning his assumptions or delivery. Or, you know, I could just accept everything he says, but then, I'm not making a judgment, am I? I'm just letting "argument from authority" win. I should note here that there's a difference between skepticism and outright rejection. There is also a difference between authority and expertise. In this case, I don't know what his Ph.D. is in; that degree usually represents a deep dive into a particular subject in a particular field, not general intelligence or broad knowledge. Point is, I question whether that division, between the conscious and subconscious, is limited to humans, and I also question the existence of a sharp divide between the two; and, moreover, I'm skeptical about our definitions thereof. For one thing, the "subconscious" was proposed by Freud, who, while deserving credit for founding the discipline of psychoanalysis, has had pretty much all of his hypotheses and theories overturned by later research. Additionally, even he abandoned "subconscious" for "unconscious." Which, to me, as an outsider to the subject, is confusing. Anything can be unconscious. Freud's ubiquitous cigar was unconscious. At least, I hope so, because otherwise it'd be screaming inside the whole time he was smoking it.I'll stop there before I have to rant about panpsychism again. Getting back to the article: Consciousness enables us to exercise free will and possess the capacity to think, act, speak, and make choices, all for the purpose of ensuring our continued existence. Other psychologists, as well as philosophers, and utter nincompoops like myself, doubt the existence of free will as anything but illusion. Contiguous with this is subconsciousness. As implied, the operational subconscious functions below the level of consciousness, which means we do not use our subconscious to think or make conscious decisions. One evidence-based argument against the reality of "free will" is that our subconscious (which I use to mean those mental processes that we're not always aware of) is the one making the decisions, leaving it up to the conscious mind to later rationalize said decisions. This entry, however, isn't really meant to focus on the free will argument, but the logical inconsistency and semantic gymnastics in the linked article. Subconsciousness is there to ensure our existence, and it provides the means of what can be described and/or referred to as “reactive action.” When “reactive action” is initiated, the brain and body are holistically involved in an action (without any thinking taking place), for the purpose of the action being achieved, which ensures survival takes place. You just said we had free will. And that said free will is an absolute. And then you acknowledge the existence of a part of the brain that reacts without will. Does that seem inconsistent to anyone else? It does to me. Consider the following examples. When walking down the street, one is always making judgments about people as they walk towards you, both at the known conscious level and the unknown reactive subconscious level. This is a coexisting paradox that must be in place for the universal human condition to survive and exist. Again: Not limited to humans. Ever spooked a deer? That deer has made a judgment about you. I'm not denying that this kind of judgment exists. I'm not even denying that it's an "absolute, immutable necessity." What I have the biggest problem with, though, is the article's apparent conflating of that kind of subconscious judgment, and judging someone for, say, letting their dog off the leash or kicking a kitten or failing to return their shopping cart to the store or cart corral. As such, making continuous judgments (at the subconscious and conscious levels) is a universal necessity. However, one can often hear and/or even see the words written: “Don’t judge me!” Which is an impossibility. And this is the crux of what I see as the logical paradox in this article. Premise 1: we have absolute, immutable free will (not my argument, but the article's) Premise 2: it is impossible for us to not make judgments. A moment's thought should suffice to conclude that at least one, and maybe both, of these premises has to be false. Because if we have "absolute, immutable" free will, then we could suppress our judgments. If we can't suppress our judgments, then we cannot have absolute, immutable, free will. The premise being presented here (which is open to be judged and challenged, of course) is that you, me, and all others are continuously making an infinite number of judgments. Another quibble: "infinite?" Hardly. The hypothesis that I am also presenting here, from a DNA-based genetic perspective, is that irrespective of anyone making a conscious demand, such as “don’t judge me,” this social demand (to not judge) is a genetic impossibility. Well, then, we don't have free will. QED. And, again, there's a difference between judging "that guy looks dangerous" (subconscious threat assessment) and judging "that idiot is wearing socks with sandals" (conscious decision to be the Fashion Police). It is now an accepted fact that we are aware of our own existence, as well as the existence of the external world. I will take as given the first part. The author even has the good sense to quote Descartes to back it up. The "existence of the external world" is still up for debate among philosophers. Does it actually exist, or am I a Boltzmann Brain? That is, I can be confident that I exist, but sometimes I wonder about you.Therefore, the demand “don’t judge me” is – and has always been – an absolute universal impossibility. The same is true even if the opinion “this is my personal truth” is added to the “don’t judge me statement.” False. Classical free will or not, you can, and you do, choose whether to judge someone for wearing white after Labor Day in the US. I don't. Others do. It is a learned response, almost entirely dependent on environmental factors: someone once told you that it's gauche to wear white after Labor Day, and you either accept that, or you don't. (Or you think about why that rule ever existed in the first place.) So, where to go from here? You can choose to agree or disagree with everything and anything. Not if we are genetically locked into making judgments, we can't. It does occur to me that, as the author is a pyschologist, this entire article could be a trap. One that I just fell right into. A social experiment (I hate social experiments), or a test of logical faculties. Oh, well. Apparently, according to him, I had no choice in the matter. Or I had every choice, and I chose to be skeptical. Or, it seems, both at the same time, a superposition of quantum states. |
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