The Judging Mind?

An author states...
"it goes beyond the science of economics to come up with quantitative forecasts"
One of our mentors responds...  
"The mind has an enormous capacity for error, self-deception, illogic, sloppiness, silliness and confusion, all of which is diminished by training, and that of course is the function of education."  
John W. Gardner (October 8, 1912 – February 16, 2002) Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under President Lyndon Johnson. Founder of Common Cause

and our mentor finishes with... 
"Some people matriculated at the wrong Universities".
The Nattering One muses...  Apropos and with tongue in cheek, now that is a real judgmental gem.  More wisdom from Gardner...
"Moral neutralism is an interesting conversational gambit, but no one really lives by it... every judgment is no more than an approximation of the truth, subject to revision... if we recognize our judgments as subject to revision, we shall be less inclined to force them down other people's throats, or to back them with bullets... we cannot evade the necessity and the responsibility for using the mind to make judgments... The other major principle in averting the dangers of human judgment lies in the training of the mind."
John W. Gardner was also the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He was also a forner psychology teacher, an ex-Marine Corps OSS officer, a consultant to the U. S. delegation to the United Nations, and chairman of the U. S. Advisory Commission on International and Cultural Affairs. 

The quotes above come from an article, adapted from his address at the dedication (May 2, 1963) of Washington University's John M. Olin Library, in which Dr. Gardner decries what he terms the "Kinsey approach to moral judgments," and reminds us that the mind's most important function is making judgments.

Again, thanking my mentor S. Trutta, who much like his moniker is a constant stream of knowledge.

Recommended reading:

The Judging Mind - Washington University Magazine, Summer 1963 - Pg 53 - 55: Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives. Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri

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