Sorry to interrupt, but I had to address these interesting thoughts.
so the best i've got so far is that the similarity finder floods the space of the object with an influx of alternate informational domains. these supply other contexts. you call the contexts Si, and surely they are informed by semantic representations, but in my interactions and discussions with entps (enps more broadly, too, i'd think), it has seemed to me that the decision structures (Ji) supply the contexts. pragmatics instead of semantics. stories. little bits of simulated/tested extensionality gathered from semantic tags but also by other ways of recalling and reconstructing experience episodically (merleau-ponty's pre-objective?).
It's much easier to think about it this way - Ne perceives something. It recognizes this something as a slice of a greater picture, or a piece of a greater puzzle. The brain can't handle this something without having a holistic understanding of it, however. So, Ne goes ahead and fills in the gaps with whatever the mind can come up with at the time. The introverted judging function serves as the internal check on the model that Ne creates, Ti judging whether that model is precise and internally consistent, and Fi judging whether the model rings true or rings hollow. As you note, this is the "context" that hems in any conclusions based on the model.
your comment about parameters narrowing rather than a specific story line anchoring you to a single context rings so true for me. but how the fuck do you do this? how do you experience purpose (when Je is so purposeful in its singular, goal-oriented kind of way)?
Well, I'd say I don't experience purpose in this sort of way. However, Ti's drive for accuracy, consistency and completeness does have an emotional component to it for me. So, the purpose comes because I am emotionally invested in figuring something out.
what governs parameters in exploration, how does one account for interest or relevancy?
That's what introverted judgment does. It holds interest until satisfied, and then loses it. That's why we can be a bit flighty.
you still choose the decisions you want to combine into a larger story as you jump from alligator to alligator? there is a kind of subconscious interest based on what pictures can come into focus? like it's kind of happening, you can feel it or not, but when it does come into focus, then you can analyze it more completely and figure out how to get there? inkling, inkling, inkling, completion. analysis. repeat.
There is no choice involved. In the absence of contradictory evidence, the story that arises, seemingly from the ether, represents something that fundamentally exists within the universe. There's no "figuring out how to get there," because at that point, I've already made it. i.e. "I've figured it out! I know it works. (Why?) Because it has to work. (How do you know that?) Because there's no way it can't work."
like a path of connection lights up and lingers for a moment. but how long do they stay open and active? what becomes the larger whole?
Nothing becomes the larger whole. The larger whole is the universe, as it exists. I don't create connections, I hypothesize about them, test them, and recognize them.
does each newly synthesized idea not make the creation of a whole more anchored to what has come before it?
No, because the whole is the universe, and its very existence is what anchors it to everything else.
the motivation is whether it is worth it to keep going, keep exploring, or turn the page and start anew? (and ultimately, the quality of the story is what drives your exploration, tho for that quality to be measured and experienced by you fully you need to give it and get it back with interest, to see it as reflected back to you by others? via Fe?)
The motivation is the mystery, seeing what comes next, solving the puzzle, and taking further steps toward "getting it." For me, I just like sharing my excitement and joy in this with other people.
so not an experience of time but of space. events. everything is connected because infinite stories connect all possibilities.
Everything is connected because it is part of the same universe. Ti attempts to determine exactly what those rules of interconnection are.
and what, then, is information to you? everything is based on difference as a way of measuring change, but change is rooted in what? (when there is no IS and there is/is not an essence? pure sketch, always a process of creation, addition?)
Information is another piece of the puzzle, another bit of evidence that clarifies the mystery. Change is just something that things do. Change itself is essential. Without change, the distinction between existence and nonexistence becomes meaningless.
One potential model.
how do those alternative contexts affect what something is or could be?
They affect our interaction with things. However, our interaction with things is just one subjective model. Ultimately, objective essence is unknowable because of things such as the observer effect.
just patterns that explode outward with their particular character and shape and symbol? to transpose endlessly... but how do they change then?
You just know, much like you just know if a piece of music is good, without any outside criteria. They change simply because that's what things do.
like, you know the Ni joke, that tranpose to a new key, organizing principle + content replacement, jazz chord substitution, endlessly layered embedding of contexts into an ongoing recursive structure, seeing what's at the bottom of the well, well, we create the stretchiness between expectation and what is (which is the grounds of our symbols when grasped in as many of their possible contexts ordered by significance to prevent gravitational distortion), but with you it becomes that context or inhabits its possibilities but is not attached to the original in the same way??????? like, it just is this AND this AND this, and so all of those potentialities can be used in the same story, shifting definitions to skip steps and reach further into unknown realms?
More like it might be one thing, and if so, that would imply this; but, it might also be another thing, and if so, it would imply that; but, it very well could be another thing altogether, and that would imply these; but, it could be nothing whatsoever, and then it's back to the drawing board. All of this continues until new information rules out the various possibilities.
The idea of an original is perhaps one where there may be a fundamental distinction. There is no such thing as an original. Ultimately, it represents nothing more than an abstract relationship between essences the nature of which are far beyond our own comprehension. Like, the most mind-blowing thing to me is that I have no fucking clue what my own existence actually is. Because of this, models that provide a means of understanding all have equal significance, and equal insignificance, because they absolutely cannot come anywhere near accurately describing, explaining, and making predictions about existence itself.
There is no Se "the image is the essence." All information does is to provide clues as to what we actually are, and what that means, and nothing more in isolation.
"Unknown realms" is a bit of a mischaracterization. What I've come to realize is that at their core, all realms are equally unknown to me. Therefore, I ask myself what this new piece of information tells me about the universe that I didn't realize or understand before.
(and what is the essence that is carried through from beginning to end? is that something that must be analyzed via Ti to test the strength of each connection, to go back and build in the story to fill the gaps in the simplified story, to scale down from wider space to more narrowed parameter, driven by inquiry to test what can actually extend to... what, according to your best powers?)
I don't "test connections." I basically ask how this new piece of information fits together with everything else I know, and whether the means I am using to fit it together follows from how other things in the universe fit together. There is no distinction between wider space and narrower parameter, because they both represent aspects of the universal whole.
^^ I do this too! When I read, my mind eats whole sentences at once, often starting in the middle, then working towards keywords to resynthesize meaning, rather than read what was actually written.
I actually see words as pictures. I can understand writing without sounding out the words in my head (though I usually do that, but only to personalize the words). I actually derive a lot of meaning in sentences from the visual structure of the sentence, though I can get in some trouble with comprehension when I'm relying on Ne a little too much to fill in meaning rather than actually read the words.
Ne is just seeing the obvious connections and patterns, LOL. Haha, I think they are obvious, but it is so very strange when other people cant see them. They are so blatant sometimes. When in doubt I find the entp, and cross check, but sometimes it is like we are sitting in a room and ghosts are floating by but other people just dont see them.
Another interesting way of looking at it is that those patterns and connections are our crutch, so to speak. Without those connections, our brains can't even comprehend the most basic bits of sensory info. It may seem like a magic trick at times, but really, it could just as easily be seen as compensation.
Ne seeks information and never wants to stop, as the goal is to complete the map. Once the map is complete, I will be connected to the world, the world with I, and everything will become one and be whole. It sounds self centric, but it is almost totally the opposite-there would be nothing more beautiful than to lose self identity and become part of everything, simply a grain of sand in the wind-but to do that the connections must be completed.
It's funny, I used to think that I wanted to complete the map. However, it's just as you say - the desire was rooted in a yearning for integration with the universe, which I often felt very isolated from. Now, I've come to realize that I just have to accept that the universe is far too big and complex for me to know even a miniscule fraction of what there is to know. Furthermore, the obsession with completing the map prevented me from enjoying the experience of life and fully embracing it. It prevented me from knowing what it meant to love things.