Responsible Suspension: Toward a Universal Theory of Judgment Under Conditions of Cognitive Limitation and Structural Complexity

Abstract This article develops a universal philosophical framework termed Responsible Suspension as a response to the epistemic, ethical, and ontological challenges of contemporary conditions. Against both dogmatic certainty and radical relativism, the theory argues that responsible judgment emerges through the recognition of cognitive limits, the plurality of interpretive frameworks, the uncertainty of consequences, and the structural incompleteness of knowledge. Rather than understanding suspension as indecision or passivity, the article conceptualizes it as an active intellectual practice that precedes responsible action. The framework integrates insights from epistemology, decision theory, systems thinking, ethics, and social philosophy into a unified model of subjectivity. It is argued that mature judgment requires awareness of the boundaries of competence, consideration of alternative perspectives, probabilistic reasoning, critical inversion of assumptions, and attentiveness to both immediate and delayed consequences. Responsible Suspension is proposed as a universal orientation for human agency in complex environments where certainty is unattainable but action remains unavoidable. Keywords: Responsible Suspension, Judgment, Subjectivity, Epistemology, Uncertainty, Ethics, Complexity, Decision Theory