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Judgment in War

I was listening to NPR and heard a Marine lieutenant explain some aspects of “The Rules of Engagement” used in the Iraqi war.

He said that there are normal rules handed down from the top and then there are exceptions that allow the leader of a group to make modifications under fire.

He spoke of an instance when his group was monitoring a group of houses and an old man walked out of a house. The lieutenant decided that the man was not dangerous and thus not to be shot. However one of his group did shoot the man. The lieutenant apparently had the option of either reporting the man or of deciding that the shot was within bounds.

The interview continued for about twenty minutes and I was brought face-to-face with some of the difficult judgments soldier must make in combat. We make judgment calls constantly and some like those in war are matters of life and death.

How does one cultivate the ability to make good judgments?

I think that one can study the ways of logical thinking and thus improve their judgmental ability. One can take Logic 101 in college to learn the fundamentals of rational thought, or one can learn such things on their own if they did not go to college or did not take this course in college.

My guess is that less than 5% of college graduates took Logic 101. Logic 101 is not rocket science; it is easily within the ability of most any adult to learn these matters with a little concentration and study.

A second way to improve judgment is to learn the irrational tendencies that are part of human nature. Our genes give us a propensity for egocentric and sociocentric behavior. Egocentric and sociocentric tendencies are irrational tendencies that inhibit rational judgment.

Can knowledge of Logic 101 help a person make better judgments? Can self-consciousness of our irrational propensities help a person make better judgments? I think the answer to both questions is yes.

Diuretic wrote: By undergoing training. Very broadly and simplistically there are two approaches to this. The first is to introduce the tyro to the situation by training them in the various situations they're likely to encounter. It's necessary to break everything down into segments so that each aspect is thoroughly understood. It's also necessary to train the individual in how to react. I don't mean by rote learning, it's far more complex than that. When the individual has been trained in the various known situations then you can begin to introduce them to novel situations where their training will give the basics but higher thinking takes over to solve the novel situation. They can move from the known to the unknown only being thoroughly trained in the known.


but given that this approach is far too time consuming and expensive for the millitary they take the other approach

Diuretic wrote: By undergoing training. Very broadly and simplistically there are two approaches to this. The first is to introduce the tyro to the situation by training them in the various situations they're likely to encounter. It's necessary to break everything down into segments so that each aspect is thoroughly understood. It's also necessary to train the individual in how to react. I don't mean by rote learning, it's far more complex than that. When the individual has been trained in the various known situations then you can begin to introduce them to novel situations where their training will give the basics but higher thinking takes over to solve the novel situation. They can move from the known to the unknown only being thoroughly trained in the known.


I am confident that you are correct. However, I think that character underlies all behavior.



What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction. “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought…Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness… Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

I think that intellectual character, which is that system of habits that lead us to think in a certain manner and determine significantly what kind of person we are, is a reality in all of us that has a significant similarity with ’paradigm’.

What do I mean when I say ‘character is paradigm’? I mean that the concept ‘paradigm’ is a useful concept for comprehending ‘character’.

Intellectual character is a way of “seeing”, which transposes into a way of behaving. Without the habits of character our actions would be an untied bundle of isolated acts. ‘Character’ is a word representing the interpenetration of habits. If our habits are formed in an incoherent manner our behavior will be incoherent. Our actions, in the case of intellectual character, our thoughts would be a “juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations”.