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Suspended judgment is a cognitive process and a rational state of mind in which one withholds judgments, particularly on the drawing of moral or ethical conclusions. The opposite of suspension of judgment is ''premature judgement'', usually shortened to ''prejudice''. While prejudgment involves drawing a conclusion or making a judgment before having the information relevant to such a judgment, suspension of judgment involves waiting for all the facts before making a decision.


Law

Suspension of judgment is used in civil law to indicate a court's decision to nullify a civil judgment. Motions to set aside judgments entered in civil cases in the United States district courts are governed by Rule 60 of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (officially abbreviated Fed. R. Civ. P.; colloquially FRCP) govern civil procedure in United States district courts. They are the companion to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rules promulgated by the ...
which opens with the statement, "On motion and just terms, the court may relieve a party or its legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding...". The rule is quite straightforward and court room application is mostly as stated. In the New York Law Journal David Bliven argues that suspended judgement ought to be an alternative disposition in family offenses (a type of civil case), particularly in cases where a family judgement is being used as behavior modification rather than a reason to arrest. More generally in
jurisprudence Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...
, the ideal
juror A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence, make Question of fact, findings of fact, and render an impartiality, impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a sentence (law), penalty or Judgmen ...
is expected to presume innocence of the person tried in court. And in the case of
conviction In law, a conviction is the determination by a court of law that a defendant is Guilty (law), guilty of a crime. A conviction may follow a guilty plea that is accepted by the court, a jury trial in which a verdict of guilty is delivered, or a ...
, a
suspended sentence A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that ...
is one of the possible sentences available to the court.


Science

Suspension of judgment is a cornerstone of standard research methodology. Much of the
scientific method The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and ...
is designed to encourage the suspension of judgments until observations can be made, tested, and verified through
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (:wiktionary:peer#Etymology 2, peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the ...
. In 1877,.
Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...
(1839–1914) characterized inquiry in general not as the pursuit of truth ''per se'' but as the struggle to move from irritating, inhibitory doubts born of surprises, disagreements, and the like, and to reach a secure belief, belief being that on which one is prepared to act. He framed scientific inquiry as part of a broader spectrum and as spurred, like inquiry generally, by actual doubt, not mere verbal or hyperbolic doubt, which he held to be fruitless."What one does not in the least doubt one should not pretend to doubt; but a man should train himself to doubt," said Peirce in a brief intellectual autobiography; see Ketner, Kenneth Laine (2009) "Charles Sanders Peirce: Interdisciplinary Scientist" in ''The Logic of Interdisciplinarity''). Peirce held that actual, genuine doubt originates externally, usually in surprise, but also that it is to be sought and cultivated, "provided only that it be the weighty and noble metal itself, and no counterfeit nor paper substitute"; in "Issues of Pragmaticism", ''The Monist'', v. XV, n. 4, pp. 481–99, se
p. 484
an
p. 491
(Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 438–63, see 443 and 451).
He believed that the scientific method excels the other methods of reasoning by being designed to eventually arrive at the most secure beliefs. Starting from the idea that people seek not truth ''per se'' but instead to subdue irritating, inhibitory doubt, Peirce showed how, through the struggle, some can come to submit to truth for the sake of belief's integrity, seek as truth the guidance of potential practice correctly to its given goal, and wed themselves to the scientific method.Peirce, C.S., ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, in paragraph 582, from 1898: The advance of
social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...
often depends on excluding
cognitive bias A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm (philosophy), norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the ...
, of which many forms are known.


Philosophy

Within
philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
, suspension of judgment is typically associated with
positivism Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...
and skepticism, most especially Pyrrhonism where it is referred to as epoché, but it is not limited to these areas. The 17th century rationalist
René Descartes René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramou ...
, for example, used it as the cornerstone of his
epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
. In a process that he called methodological skepticism (now also known as
Cartesian doubt Cartesian doubt is a form of methodological skepticism associated with the writings and methodology of René Descartes (March 31, 1596February 11, 1650). Cartesian doubt is also known as Cartesian skepticism, methodic doubt, methodological skeptic ...
), he asserted that in order to gain a solid foundation when building one's system of knowledge and belief, one must first doubt everything. Only by eliminating preconceptions and prejudgments can one come to know what is true.A Philosophical Glossary
edited by Justin Leiber, Philosophy Department, University of Houston, USA.
Descartes' methodology is called hyperbolic doubt called so because it's an extreme form of doubt, casting even slightly suspect into the light of further scrutiny. Hyperbolic doubt is posited in four general points: #Only information that you know to be true should be accepted. #Take known truths and break them down into their basic components. #Solve the simplest problems first. #Take the remaining problems and make complete lists of them. Descartes goal in the 1641 '' Meditations on First Philosophy'' was to systematically doubt all beliefs and do a ground-up rebuild of only definitely true things as an undoubted basis for the sciences. As an example take a look at the opening line of the volume: Through this work Descartes showed that unless one is very careful there are grounds to doubt the reasoning behind any knowledge. He states that this is mostly due to the unreliable nature of sensory knowledge and makes that case with the examples of the dream and the demon.


The dream argument

Descartes hypothesized that due to the possibility of very realistic dreams humans can only believe that we're awake. Through the systematic procedure of 'phenomenological reduction', one is thought to be able to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world, and thus examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness. However, by the end of ''The Meditations'', he concludes that in retrospect we can certainly distinguish dreaming and reality:
"But when I distinctly see where things come from and where and when they come to me, and when I can connect my perceptions of them with my whole life without a break then I can be certain that when I encounter these things I am not asleep but awake." — Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings
Dreaming is also a starting position for the speculation that we may be living in a
simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...
. Proponents of this viewpoint will sometimes argue that a particular type of simulated reality occurs nightly. The basic claim is that opponents of the
simulation hypothesis The simulation hypothesis proposes that what one experiences as the real world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which humans are constructs. There has been much debate over this topic in the Philosophy, philosophi ...
that a sleeping mind is an unreliable mechanism for differentiated reality from illusion.


The Evil Demon

The idea of the "evil demon" (also known as the "malicious demon" or "evil genius") is one of several methods of systematic doubt employed in the ''Meditations.'' Descartes reasoned that it could be possible for what he referred to as an evil demon to be controlling our experiences. There are some Cartesian scholars whom opine that the demon is omnipotent though omnipotence of the evil demon would be contrary to Descartes' hypothesis, as he rebuked accusations of the demon having omnipotence.


See also

*
Agnosticism Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. (page 56 in 1967 edition) It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer t ...
* Bracketing *
Suspension of disbelief Suspension of disbelief is the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe i ...


References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Suspension Of Judgment Scientific method Concepts in epistemology Civil law (common law) Philosophical skepticism