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What Best Describes Your Approach to MBTI?

What Best Describes Your Approach to MBTI?


  • Total voters
    37

Blackwater

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
454
MBTI Type
ERTP
Nominalist
E, I, S, N, F, T, J, P all exist a-priori , that is, they exist independently of human perception. The cathegories are there just as they were there before psychologists started desribing human personality and they desribe reality absolutely.

Realist
Reality is constantly mutating and morphing. Like light it can never really be truly caught or desribed but E, I, S, N, F, T, J, P are relatively precise ways of describing human personality even if they are ultimately approximated.

Social-constructivist
E, I, S, N, F, T, J, P concertly form a complex set of goggels that we unwittingly supercede upon ourselves. In doing so, we create confirmation bias, conditioning ourselves to see people primarily through whatever inclanation we believe their type to have.
 
Last edited:

Blackwater

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
454
MBTI Type
ERTP
No Social-Constructivists? I guess they won't be hanging around the MBTIc unless they are somewhat strange.

Then again, INTPs are somewhat strange...
 

Athenian200

Protocol Droid
Joined
Jul 1, 2007
Messages
8,828
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
I really don't think anyone is going to be a Nominalist.

As for Realist, the one I chose, I would extend that idea to everything. Things can only be approximated based on our perceptions, not known. But our perceptions are good enough for most purposes, although we should always acknowledge that there could be a flaw in them.
 

Usehername

On a mission
Joined
May 30, 2007
Messages
3,794
well, of course things can only be approximated based of our perceptions; perceptions limit the stimulus information we can think about. and our perceptions on personality are very limited.

all the same, i do believe that personality exists independently of human perception. an alien who knew MBTI perfectly could come and slot humans into the 16 types.

Or a better system. I don't think MBTI is perfect, of course.
 

Zergling

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,377
MBTI Type
ExTJ
It's an approximation that works o.k. for classifying and predicting what people will do.
 

Blackwater

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
454
MBTI Type
ERTP
I really don't think anyone is going to be a Nominalist.

Well as you can see there are. The logic is hard to follow from the realist's perspective but its certainly there and well established, I might add, after 2000 years of Plato and Christianity
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
50,145
MBTI Type
BELF
Enneagram
594
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Well as you can see there are. The logic is hard to follow from the realist's perspective but its certainly there and well established, I might add, after 2000 years of Plato and Christianity

Yup, the appeal to the Ideal.

I'm some variation of Realist, but I can't quite agree with everything you said. (Especially since you were equating J/P to the other functions, whereas it is really not a function pair.)

In practice, I find MBTI very useful and it works. But I think confirmation bias is a very real danger and must be kept in mind.
 

The Unknown Essence

New member
Joined
Sep 24, 2007
Messages
33
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
No Social-Constructivists? I guess they won't be hanging around the MBTIc unless they are somewhat strange.

Then again, INTPs are somewhat strange...

I'm an INTP and I voted Realist. The Social-Constructivists position doesn't give the theories any credit for how accurate they are sometimes. I read an INTP description that was extremely precise.
 

Lateralus

New member
Joined
May 18, 2007
Messages
6,262
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
3w4
I actually think most people are Social-Constructivists. They just don't realize it. Look at all the stereotyping that occurs in the threads on this forum (and INTPc). It's rampant.
 

SolitaryWalker

Tenured roisterer
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
3,504
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
Typology is within human nature. If our perceptions are likely accurate enough, nominalism will be sufficient. Realism, the way you described it suggests that we are far off.

Puzzling why you wish to label the former as nominalism and the latter as realism. Nominalism implies pertaining to the 'name' more than to the essence.

Are you suggesting that the latter approach is simply more 'realistic'. In that case it must be shown that typology does not accurately depict the unconscious tendencies within human nature. Without an argument for that, the term realism is not warranted.
 

SolitaryWalker

Tenured roisterer
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
3,504
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
I actually think most people are Social-Constructivists. They just don't realize it. Look at all the stereotyping that occurs in the threads on this forum (and INTPc). It's rampant.

Yes, most people are social-constructivists in a way that you use that word. Though typology is best utilized to obtain an understanding of human nature, rather than behavior of particular individuals or groups of individuals.
 

SolitaryWalker

Tenured roisterer
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Apr 23, 2007
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INTP
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5w6
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so/sx
Well as you can see there are. The logic is hard to follow from the realist's perspective but its certainly there and well established, I might add, after 2000 years of Plato and Christianity

That is called process metaphysics, a doctrine which is highly likely true. Just because reality is in a state of perpetual flux, it does not mean that our type changes. This world changes, but we can extrapolate the patterns by which it operates, those do not change. Much like Galileo once said that mathematics is the language that God wrote the universe with.

So, this is how mathematics symbolizes the way the world works: we have principles of mathematical reasoning which represent the laws of nature, and we ahve the variables that are operated by these principles that are always in a state of flux.

5,6,7.9..the numbers, they always change, though the laws of addition, multiplication, division never do. The J,P,T,N are the principles of human nature, the numbers that do change are how they interplay with each other in people. So, the numbers are the way people of certain types relate to each other and to the external world, though their unconscious tendencies stay unaltered because they represent general patterns within human nature and not specific ways in which human nature manifests externally.
 

Athenian200

Protocol Droid
Joined
Jul 1, 2007
Messages
8,828
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
So, the numbers are the way people of certain types relate to each other and to the external world, though their unconscious tendencies stay unaltered because they represent general patterns within human nature and not specific ways in which human nature manifests externally.

Are you willing to claim that no other patterns would grant equally valid results/predictions, then?
 

SolitaryWalker

Tenured roisterer
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Apr 23, 2007
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3,504
MBTI Type
INTP
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5w6
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
Are you willing to claim that no other patterns would grant equally valid results/predictions, then?


They'd have to do a better job of depicting the bigger picture of how human nature works.

But then again, just because we found better patterns of how human nature works, this does not mean that the MBTI patterns changed. It only means that we discovered that MBTI described only a small part of human nature, and something else that we've just come across covers more ground.
 

Blackwater

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
454
MBTI Type
ERTP
(Especially since you were equating J/P to the other functions, whereas it is really not a function pair.)

nor is I/E. - actually i know what you mean but in this respect it doesn't really matter.

I actually think most people are Social-Constructivists. They just don't realize it.

i agree. but this poll monitors people own percieved approach to MBTI.

Puzzling why you wish to label the former as nominalism and the latter as realism. Nominalism implies pertaining to the 'name' more than to the essence.

yerh i know its pretty counter-intuitive but i didn't coin the phrases. but the historical idea behind the terms are, that the essences exist and all that we need to do it label them. apple. table. feeling. and the realists being opposed to that because, in their oppinion, essenses are only approximated attempts to describe reality, thus realism. to use an anachronistic epigram, existance precedes essence to these people.

so no, i am not saying that realism is more realistic.
 
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
1,511
MBTI Type
ENTP
I don't see all of them as being mutually exclusive. I agree with the realist assessment of MBTI, but no one is perfectly realistic.
 
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