ABSTRACT
Judgments are verbally embodied in statements, sentences that assert that something is or is not the case and can therefore be true or false. Statements1 are to be distinguished from other kinds of sentences, such as questions (‘How are you today?’), commands and requests (‘No smoking’ and ‘Please shut the door’), exclamations (‘O for the wings of a dove!’) and subjunctives (‘She might arrive today’). All these sentences make sense and are useful, but they do not make assertions and so they are not judgments. As we shall see there are different kinds of judgments; moral (and aesthetic) judgments are commonly called value judgments. There are diverse opinions as to the nature of value judgments and many philosophers would deny that value judgments are genuine judgments, in that they would deny that judgments of moral (and aesthetic) content are assertions. These opinions will be discussed but, to start with, we shall take sentences concerned with moral behaviour as judgments and distinguish four types of judgment:2 logical/mathematical, empirical, metaphysical and value judgments.
