Folk Typology

[dimane]

http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1800075

 

[Oaky]

http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1800075

Why are you resurrecting an old thread with a link quite irrelevant?

 

[highlander]

Why are you resurrecting an old thread with a link quite irrelevant?

Who cares? It was an awesome thread.

 

[Oaky]

Who cares? It was an awesome thread.

Indeed. The thread is quite fantastic and I'm quite glad it was resurrected though unfortunately without the presence of solitarywalker and ericb to further their thoughts about it. I was simply curious about dimane's actions of posting in it.

 

[highlander]

Indeed. The thread is quite fantastic and I'm quite glad it was resurrected though unfortunately without the presence of solitarywalker and ericb to further their thoughts about it. I was simply curious about dimane's actions of posting in it.

I miss [MENTION=4516]edcoaching[/MENTION]. EricB is around. SW - no idea there.

 

[Oaky]

I miss [MENTION=4516]edcoaching[/MENTION]. EricB is around. SW - no idea there.

Ah I see. Well it would most certainly be interesting to witness how others may reply to the thread at current moment in difference to the time of the thread itself. Hmmm... food for thought.
Perhaps EricB will post extra thoughts about the topic now.

 

[Little_Sticks]

Who cares? It was an awesome thread.

So what did you learn about typology from this thread?

 

[Little_Sticks]

For example, instead of asserting that Fe makes one display emotion, we should maintain that Fe is merely a tendency to activate one's emotive faculties in response to external stimulation rather than internal. As a result, in the context of the Western culture, people of this type are often inclined to develop personality features associated with being highly emotionally expressive. I am not suggesting that the entire enterprise of drawing connections between Jungian type and personality theory should be abandoned, but rather that typological entities should be interpreted as cognitive tendencies rather than ineradicable behavioral habits.

Ugh, Fe is more than 'activating emotive faculties' though. There are intelligent ways of using emotions and then there are just displays of emotion; the former is a process and the latter is basic to being human. Your reasoning doesn't describe the difference at all.

I wrote this on another forum and although I don't like the idea of anyone knowing my identity elsewhere, this should help be a basis for being constructive for once:

Fe

Sharing intimacy, mostly; Fe seems to represent the act of sharing intimacy. The values of a person are exerted on others and shared, creating new boundaries on how individual people treat each other inside a group; but these boundaries would be implicit (unconscious Ti probably).

Important thing to note is that Fe users adapt and use their intimate behavior on other people to an extent that allows them to impress or maintain certain values on those other people. Ti would be part of the unconscious structure or influence to that intelligence; emotion is just a shallow side effect of the real intelligence involved in this process and you're thoughts on the theory seem very shallow.

Anyone have anything constructive to say about this at all, though? since I'm not here to talk to myself.

 

[garbage]

So what did you learn about typology from this thread?

At the very least, it's a helpful reminder of how difficult it is to predict behavior as a function of type.

Is an Fi user more likely than a Ti user to prefer his fries with ketchup? What if Fi/Ti were in the inferior position; does the answer change??

 

[Eric B]

I'm still here, of course. The discussion didn't go quite as far as I'd hoped, but then I didn't really expect it to, with Solitary. He did give an answer, which I responded to, and then dropped out altogether. (Which wasn't surprising).
It seemed at that time, he was becoming increasingly frustrated with this thing he was calling "folk typology" (hence, my raising the topic in the first place. proteanmix is another one who seemed to get frustrated about that around the same time, and then just disappeared, for the most part).

I guess I was just hoping that my ideas were not being seen as among the culprits. But whatever; I was evolving my ideas, and had continued to glean further understanding from the original Jungian underpinning (such as going back to the four natural functions and understanding the eight function-attitudes in light of them, rather than as eight "skills-sets", which I believe was part of the problem with this "folk" understanding of typology. Now, from my debates with INTP/Naama, I'm incorporating Jung's notion of functions operating in a loop, starting with the subject or object, going to the opposite orientation, and flowing back to the starting one. This to me further explains the difference between the attitudes, and how the complexes can "turn up the volume" on the opposite side of the function, and essentially change its orientation; hence the "shadows").

 

[Little_Sticks]

At the very least, it's a helpful reminder of how difficult it is to predict behavior as a function of type.

It's not supposed to predict behavior though. It's supposed to describe processes of interacting with the world. Type then, which builds on the functions, is just an abstract representation for how people, for one reason or another, have a proclivity to certain processes.

But those processes have to exist because of the way they are defined. For example, introversion and extroversion as a process over time means that as a person is introverting, they are philosophically having the world impact them more than they aim to impact the world; think about that. And vice-versa for extroverts. Where everyone seems to get hung up is that they don't understand that to explain say Ti, you also need to understand how it relates to Fe; in other words, to understand the process of introverted thinking, one needs to know how extroverted feeling leads into it as a culminating process of conscious Ti and unconscious Fe. People that separate the two and say that you develop unconscious functions will never get more than a shallow understanding.

And people that correlate these processes to what they create are also going to have a shallow understanding. For example, it's often said that Fi is about values, but no that's what the process creates, not what is going on in their qualia; and so does Ti create value, but in different ways. The value itself might imply a particular causation in a certain context, but the process of Fi(Te) or Ti(Fe) do not and are not intended to. There is nothing to predict, but only to understand.

I hope bolding that doesn't make it seem condescending, but I want to highlight that. Does that make more sense?

Is an Fi user more likely than a Ti user to prefer his fries with ketchup? What if Fi/Ti were in the inferior position; does the answer change??

People that think Fi and Ti are about preferences are going to be confused, no doubt. I think after ruminating about all of this for so long out of curiosity that I can say with little doubt that this is misuse of the types.

 

[garbage]

It's not supposed to predict behavior though. It's supposed to describe processes of interacting with the world. Type then, which builds on the functions, is just an abstract representation for how people, for one reason or another, have a proclivity to certain processes.

Well said. I'll just say that I only mean 'behavior' in the same way that it's meant in 'human behavior modeling'--which boils down to pretty much anything that manifests outside the head, as a function of whatever takes place in the head.

Yeah, typology is really not supposed to predict specific behavior. When people do so, they're trying to take these models out of their intended domains--with, of course, mixed results.

At the very least, we've gotta be careful when doing so because of ethical concerns and because our predictions probably won't mean anything.

Where everyone seems to get hung up is that they don't understand that to explain say Ti, you also need to understand how it relates to Fe; in other words, to understand the process of introverted thinking, one needs to know how extroverted feeling leads into it as a culminating process of conscious Ti and unconscious Fe.

I know that the functions are difficult to isolate and describe out of context, but I'm not sure whether the context is necessarily a combination of it and 'opposite' function (e.g. Ti and Fe), a combination of introversion and extraversion, or human cognition in general.

You hit upon something important, though--that the functions are difficult to extract from their context. And since they're so hard to extract, they're difficult to explain; since they're difficult to explain, they're difficult to get any sort of meaningful predictions from.

How should we extract and explain the true meaning of the cognitive functions? Can they be taken in isolation, or must they be taken in pairs?

 

[Little_Sticks]

I know that the functions are difficult to isolate and describe out of context, but I'm not sure whether the context is necessarily a combination of it and 'opposite' function (e.g. Ti and Fe), a combination of introversion and extraversion, or human cognition in general.

That's the really interesting part though! Let's use Ti as an example. If someone undergoes a Ti process, they are removing themselves in part from having an impact on the world and attempting to devise some sort of containing architecture of thought that relates and differentiates things in terms of some weight. This creates personal value I guess some could say in navigating and understanding the world.

But what's the point of this introversion if it doesn't lead to extroversion? That value is meaningless unless it asserts itself through making an impact via extroversion. So perhaps we could then say that a Ti user could extrovert through Te or Fe. So the question then to me becomes "what is the difference in relationship between Te and Fe to Ti?"

Well, think about it another way, what would be more natural, using Te to impact the result of that Ti directly, or using Fe, which requires that the result of that Ti orients itself in a more foreign capacity through Fe compared to Te? Most people don't dispute this difference, but then there's the more important difference in that to use a Ti process requires repression of Fe by its completely opposing orientation; Te on the other hand, while not being used when Ti is used, can be simply ignored to do this. Ti and Fe have a philosophical duality going on here similar to the duality of good and evil, but there is not one with Ti and Te. To properly understand how that Ti process manifests, it will depend on how it is in conflict with Fe. But by conflict I don't imply that a person is weak in the process, but that they feel a need to not use it, or repress it.

The functions are then a lot deeper than most people seem to appreciate. I don't know if I'd say that type is innate then because it's ignorant to say either way, considering the problems of philosophy this would conflict with and how everyone is different and has different experiences that can change them in various ways. But does that make sense?

You hit upon something important, though--that the functions are difficult to extract from their context. And since they're so hard to extract, they're difficult to explain; since they're difficult to explain, they're difficult to get any sort of meaningful predictions from.

Perhaps, but we understand lots of abstractions that are taken for granted like how something can be pretty or hot or cold or how we can be sad or whatever, which I'm sure you understand.

In a way it's like comparing how a person understands a book after reading it the first time compared to the third time reading it. It takes time to understand what these abstractions represent. But, much more importantly and intuitively, you'd probably find most of it is already taken for granted by our psyches without understanding what those parts are (Socrates answer to Meno's Paradox brilliantly explains what I'm saying). I would imagine that's what the functions aim to elucidate then, an awareness of knowledge that we already have. Otherwise, we're fabricating ideas and what's the point then; because what we're really looking for is insight in understanding the nature of our seemingly open-ended existence, right?

How should we extract and explain the true meaning of the cognitive functions? Can they be taken in isolation, or must they be taken in pairs?

I believe they have to be taken in pairs to understand them correctly in isolation. It's like understanding what it is that makes up a human being. If you only aim to understand parts of a person and don't consider how those parts form the whole person as well, what do you really know about that particular person? We're both the sum of the parts, as much as the parts of the sum? Or does that seem like a contradiction?

 

[garbage]

stuff

You've given me some things to think about. I'm mulling over the whole of it

In the meantime.. maybe some Jungologists out there can clarify for me, but it seems that Jung's writings are full of x type repressing x' (where x' is the opposite). e.g. this, for Te:

Since feelings are the first to oppose and contradict [p. 438] the rigid intellectual formula, they are affected first this conscious inhibition, and upon them the most intense repression falls. No function can be entirely eliminated -- it can only be greatly distorted. In so far as feelings allow themselves to be arbitrarily shaped and subordinated, they have to support the intellectual conscious attitude and adapt themselves to its aims. Only to a certain degree, however, is this possible; a part of the feeling remains insubordinate, and therefore must be repressed.

So I think the notion of defining the functions in terms of duality is an interesting and promising one.