When people form systems that provide an internal way of understanding the world and people through a use of labels that appears in their perspective to map to reality, that is fine, but it doesn't have meaning beyond their own self.
True, but by talking to each other we can agree to choose similar labeling systems so that we're speaking the same language.
There is not reason to expect anyone else to consider their mapping valid in any way. You mentioned the use of consensus, but that serves primarily to reinforce whatever personal prejudices are shared by the group and at that point has no meaning outside the group. The problem is that MBTI is a way of constantly projecting onto the world outside the person. If it can't demonstrate reliability without the filter of personal bias, then it seems like a means to reinforce personal prejudices rather than create a more balanced understanding of the world. In application it appears to do exactly that.
Sure, if you totally miss the point and would rather use it to pump up your own ego than to truly understand where people are coming from. You're correct that it has no meaning outside the group, but who cares? I don't really see that as a reason to stop using it. The bigger the group who chooses this form of arbitrary labeling gets, the more people we can discuss it meaningfully with.
I'll agree that it doesn't show the conceptual framework is flawed. Let me ask, what shows that the conceptual framework is not flawed? How do you measure if it is mapping to reality? Is it just a personal sense of it seeming right?
I'd say it's self-evident that you can divide behaviors based on arbitrary categories. Some people do this more often than they do that; watch and you'll see. The letters don't correspond with any externally verifiable standards; they're just an arbitrary method of data organization.
I know this whole "WTF HOW COME IT DOESN'T APPLY TO MEASURABLE GOALS???" thing is a little harder for Js to come to terms with, but it definitely has value for many people to organize their behavioral observations in a particular way.
The only way the conceptual framework for this could be flawed is if it turns out that human behavior is entirely random and shows no patterns at all which could be used to predict it inductively. If it's your intention to show that this is the case, I'd be very interested in hearing it.
I'm not in any way arguing that it is an objective standard. My questioning is whether or not it holds up as an approximate/subjective standard. There are different vantage points from which to view subjective systems. The personal bias viewpoint is one that has a degree of use, but my point is that it is not the only position from which to view such a system. Just like taste in music has meaning based only on personal bias, but there are other vantage points from which to evaluate quality and meaning on a larger scale.
How could something NOT hold up as a subjective standard? It's subjective, so it can't be evaluated concretely.
The music thing is very similar. Once again I invite you to respond to my music criticism analogy: Does the fact that we have no objective definitions of rock, hip hop, jazz, etc. imply that the entire conceptual framework of categorizing music by the differences we observe in it is totally invalid?
No, it doesn't. And yet there is still a general consensus of what jazz is. The term "jazz" is totally meaningless outside the group of people who subscribe to its popular interpretation--shall we stop using music genre labels as well?
Again, how can you even evaluate a purely subjective system concretely? There is no way to see if it "holds up" as a subjective system except by trying it out for yourself and seeing if it works for you. If it doesn't, forget it and move on. There's no sense in trying to convince others that this method of data organization doesn't work for them, just because it doesn't work for you.
I am debating that since MBTI is a system that overlays and makes sense of the larger scale, it needs to demonstrate some kind of approximate mapping to relating on the same scale it is attempting to address as a system. If people take away from it only their own type description and internalize it, that is one thing, but when they project its meaning onto to others as having any validity, it needs to demonstrate validity outside the context of self. When people project types onto people who when tested do not consistently report a type, their premise is flawed. The poles created by the system are not demonstrated to be mutually exclusive in a way that people in general can identify with a category.
Well, the entire thing consists of relative relationships, not concrete data.
If I were the only person on the planet, type relationships would have no meaning whatsoever because there's no opposition to compare it to.
What are you arguing against? Do you actually have a problem with my position, or are you just straw-manning by shooting down people who obviously apply it poorly? I don't throw out the entire field of religious studies just because some uninformed zealots try to treat it objectively when it's obviously a totally subjective field. A bunch of idiots looking at it without the proper perspective doesn't mean it can't provide any utility to ANYONE.
A moment ago you said that you don't look at it objectively at all, and yet now here you are in your next paragraph asking for it to "demonstrate validity" again as if it even HAD any context outside the self. Again, wrong question.
E/I does have a basis in the "self vs. other" poles which are a fundamental part of human psychological development. The T/F and P/J (and possibly the N/S) poles lack an inverse relationship. They are not mutually exclusive, so even looking at the system in a reasoned manner reveals flaws. The absence of one trait does not by its nature produce the presence of the other trait. Contrasting categories do not serve the same function as mutually exclusive categories. They don't form a continuum on which a person can fall. People can possess neither or both. This seems constantly glossed over and it is an integral problem in the system.
Well, no. Everyone processes both; the question is just which you tend to work with more naturally. There is no such as total absence of any MBTI traits; only relative strength of preferences in terms of frequency of usage.
They *do* form a continuum because I've arbitrarily categorized every possible behavior according to the preferences it seems mostly closely related to. Someone who exhibits behaviors that I've designated "S" more often than behaviors I've designated as "N" gets labeled an S. Some people around the forum and in other places use a system similar to mine; others don't. When I argue for my particular idea of what an S is, I'm trying to explain why it offers the most organizational utility from my perspective. If someone else finds that a different definition of S works better for them, great--more power to them.
I don't mean to imply from the fact that I use these categories that everyone can or should organize his own data according to them. My definitions of S/N/P/J/T/F are probably meaningless to a lot of people, and I don't intend to show any objective reason that they should take my choice of terminology seriously.
The E/I pole is the only one that possesses this relationship of mutual exclusivity. Quite frankly, I'm not a bit surprised it is the one to pass the validity test, that it is the only one people can make clear sense of on a larger scale before they have integrated the personal bias of the system as part of their identity.
Your argument here is contingent upon the erroneous assumption that N/S/T/F/P/J actually have objectively definitions which can be tested for validity. Who cares what a "validity test" says about a set of ideas that doesn't purport to be objectively valid? I certainly don't.
Subjective systems have relative accuracy. The way to approach these is to extract the underlying principle which can be measured and observed. It is the elaborations on the principle within a specific context that are subjective.
Um, no, they don't. "Accuracy" is a meaningless term in the context of subjective systems. It's not accurate/inaccurate, it's just useful or not useful, depending on your perspective and way you observe and organize data. If it isn't useful to you, then don't use it...but you can't understand my subjective experience enough to establish that it doesn't provide any utility to me.
Edit: This is because the influences are too numerous to account for in a practical manner, or are by nature difficult to observe or measure, and therefore create an approximate or subjective system. /edit. To use a metaphor: the principle behind how a crystal forms would produce a perfect geometrical shape. In reality the crystal forms from a combination of this underlying principle and the effects of gravity, erosion, etc. to form an object that is somewhere between perfectly structured and influenced by layered forces.
I don't find this a useful analogy in this case. You actually can map out and calculate all the forces that led to a particular crystal's formation and shape--all of the variables actually can be mapped out and tested for accuracy. A theory that says a crystal will always form in a perfect shape isn't subjective; it's just incomplete because it's failed to consider all the variables involved in its formation. There's no subjective consciousness that goes into crystal formation.
But even without complete understanding of every variable involved in crystal formation, we can still look at the crystals and use induction to make a guess at which "ideal" shape they seem to have formed most similarly too. We're not saying there are only 16 types of crystals, just that we find it most conceptually useful to look at crystals in terms of 16 idealized archetypes which do not exist in real life, but are only there as frames of reference by which to qualitatively arrange our personal data set regarding crystals.
The principle of human beauty is subjective. Some people approach it as strictly based on personal bias. The underlying principle is that evidence of genetic and physical health are preferred. This is the core, it has some capacity to be observed and measured. In its specific application the layers of individual psychology and cultural ideals overlays specific ways the principle is elaborated upon to form distinct and often contrasting ideals of beauty.
I think I see where you're going with this--maybe some day we will fully understand all the biological factors involved in cognition and human behavior, at which point we will no longer require subjective interpretations of it. I agree that an objective interpretation of behavioral attitudes would be ideal, but it doesn't exist yet, and moreover we don't know if it will ever be reached.
Until psychology becomes a purely objective field (like, say, mathematics)--there will still be a place for subjective interpretations of behavioral attitudes because the objective picture isn't complete yet, and may never be.
Human psychology has core elements that can be measured. Human brains are structured similarly. There are underlying principles upon which contextualized elaboration occurs. The core principles can be measured. If they cannot be observed and demonstrated in some manner, then perhaps it has not been properly identified.
If a subjective system in going to having meaning outside the context of the individual, or a group of individuals, then yes, it does have to demonstrate a core principle that can be identified, observed,and measured.
That's true--typology, like music genre labels, has no meaning outside an individual or group of individuals. You're absolutely correct about this.
The quality of the testing mechanism is definitely an issue. I would need to have more details about the testing mechanism used by the National Academy of Sciences, before I could just throw it out with the bath water. They will tend to be a more reliable source for filtering out nonsense than people who embrace and compare notes on personal bias.
Personally, I find the MBTI "testing mechanism" about as useful as a test to tell you what kind of music you probably like. Absolutely no scientific applicability.
It always surprises me how people assume that subjectivity is equivalent to free reign of personal bias. The assumption appears to be that because something is subjective it can in no way be measured or placed against an external standard. I am trying to keep the thread on topic, but have to wonder if the lack of arts education is resulting in this complete lack of being able to relate to approximate information in any way other than individual perspective. This post is probably too long for anyone to bother reading, but i hope some of the principles are laid out clearly enough. Understanding that way of disregarding everything except self when dealing with something subjective explains most of the misapplications of MBTI and even the way people readily adopt systems that might have problems in their design. Rejecting any external reference does pretty much leave someone to their prejudices and little else.
Haha yes, you're right, I've noticed this too. I read the entire post and you've offered a lot of good insights. The problem is, the ONLY way to make any truly objective evaluation of anything is to predefine some conditions.
You MUST use an if/then kind of statement. If all dogs are blue and Bob is a dog, it is 100% verifiable that Bob is blue. But that's not the kind of information we're working with in terms of trying to understand the basic values systems upon which people base their lives.
So in typology, we predefine the conditions ahead of time, and if you don't accept these predefinitions then the entire system is totally meaningless.
Personally, I observe all the behavior around me, form a mental database and then categorize it according to similarities and differences in type and frequency of behavior. Everybody does this already!
As I said earlier, typology labels are just more sophisticated name-calling. Try to consider it as a frame of reference instead of a testable proposition. When used intelligently, it's NOT a testable proposition, just an arbitrary labeling method.
Ever called somebody a know-it-all, or a prick, or a flake, or a space cadet, or any number of other terms that aren't objectively measurable, yet still have a general consensus as to their connotations? These terms are only useful because a group of people interprets them in the same way, and in the case of popular terminology like "know-it-all", the term is only meaningful within the group--it's just useful
because the group has gotten so large.
I can't really prove that a guy hitting his wife in public is being an asshole, and yet most people would agree with this statement. We've simply arbitrarily designated certain behaviors under certain conditions as "being an asshole", and asking to prove that "asshole" is the right word for it is hilariously out of touch with what's really going on here. ENFJ doesn't mean anything more than the word "asshole" does; if you're from a culture where people aren't commonly called assholes, you might take that word literally, as it has no contextual connotation to you.
That doesn't make the concept of placing people into such general groups totally useless--you're just an idiot if you try to design a scientifically verifiable test to tell if anyone is an asshole.
