Humans are social and dialogic. From our earliest moments, our consciousness and development of mind come from interaction and experience with a loved one. We learn how to live and feel from our mothers’ initially, and then an expanding network of persons, who show love and care by seeing us, empathizing with us, mirroring and interacting with us.
Our Gemara on Amud Beis discusses the possibility of a person serving simultaneously as a witness and as a judge. The conclusion of our Gemara is that in most circumstances, a witness cannot switch hats and convert into a judge for the same case. This principle cuts to the philosophical essence of testimony and adjudication in Jewish law and theology. The Maharal explains this as follows (Derech Chayyim 4:22 and Netzach Yisrael 57):
Testimony represents the concretization and manifestation of potential into actual. The perception or belief about something must be made real by a declaration. The judge’s role is to react and work with the reality and narrative that is being created by the testimony. The judge cannot create the reality, he must manage it. This is why a witness cannot become a judge. (If the judges witnessed something at the moment, and they are not relying on a past memory of the event, this too counts as real and is an exception to the rule and considered as implicit de facto testimony. For example, if judges witnessed a murder in the evening, they cannot serve as judges and offer testimony in the court case tomorrow. According to halakha, Jewish courts do not hold session at night. However, if they witnessed a murder during the day, they may convene on that day and serve as judges. What they just witnessed is considered real and not a narrative that needs to be constructed by testimony to be made real - because it is in the momentary reality.)
As we saw in yesterday’s daf, so called memory is a combination of facts, but also perceptions and associations that build the narrative. In the daf from two days prior, we saw that the Torah requires action and not mere thought. This represents a deep universal and mystical archetype. After all, why did God even need to create us? Could He not have just basked in His complete and essential truth? Even if humans have some task to fulfill and elevate creation, would it not have been enough to merely run a computer simulation? The world itself was notably created with words, not thoughts nor wishes. The story in Genesis clearly refers to God speaking matter into existence.
Much of life must be lived by talking about feelings and expressing your narrative in the presence of others who care. You cannot do it alone. Even God does not do it alone - He creates us to make the narrative. We recite the blessings and by doing so sanctify, and so to speak validate God’s work. This is the metaphysical idea represented in the halakha that a witness cannot become a judge. One aspect needs to offer the narrative and testimony, while the other needs to validate.
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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