1). Is it possible to perceive others without in some way judging or categorizing them? If so, how? If not, how can we make the judgments we do make more fair?
I believe it is not possible to perceive others without judging them in some way. The brain naturally categrorizes people just the same as any other object present in our world. This is an energy preservation adaptation, which allows us to go about our lives without a sensory overload. However, this narrowing of attention to only experiences and objects that our unclassified from previous experience can someimes be a shortcomming. The brain will categorize objects, persons, etc., as the same, however, they may only appear to be the same. What we must do in our judgements, is to take the sum of the past experiences, some positive and some negative, to have an overall impression, which hopefully should be neutral. The more experiences that a person would have, should lead to a better approximation of judgements.
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I don't think it is possible to perceive others without categorizing them. However, I do think it is possible to perceive others without judging them.
Categorization is hard wired into our brains. Studies have shown that infants, as young as three-months-old, have the ability to categorize.
Our society gets into trouble when we start to judge others. Judging others is a gateway to stereotyping. Stereotyping causes the individual to lose their individualtiy. They have now become apart of a group, although they may be standing by themselves.
In order to avoid the dangers of judgment, we must learn to "treat others the way we want to be treated!"
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