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Which Function Is Closest To The Unconscious And Why?

Kalach

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These thoughts crossed my mind too. I think we can safely say no function can operates exclusively and removed from input from other functions. However, I don't think this means this discussion is without merit. We still distinguish the functions individually in the theory, so I think we speak about them in similar terms when it comes to what parts of the mind they access.

In a discussion of the unconscious it's probably a bad idea to imagine that conscious practice is a good guide.

I think it's impossible to determine whether Judgement or Perception are more or less dependent on the other.

Most especially when neither are looked at any more closely than "ITZ A FUNCTION!"

(1) perception is not the operation of the senses, which is to say, all perception is created on top of and possibly without even much reference to, basic biological sense data.

(2) judgement is not especially clever, no matter whether it seeks subjectivity or objectivity, which is to say, it too is created by a person.

(3) there are objective functions that really do record and respond to items outside yourself.

Those, and a few other things, are a decent start down the path to knowing that the mechanisms of both judgment and perception are not what "we" think they are. Almost any version of "function" as described by people who "use" them describes a governing ideology, but not the function itself.

There aren't even any functions!





Perceiving doms have this attitude that they are, "just seeing things how they are" and that this somehow makes their views more honest, unfiltered and unfettered than Judging doms. But Judging is not always as cerebral, deliberate and complicated as Perceiving doms tend to believe it is - there can be a clarity and immediacy in the instinct too.

Pffft. Not only do I have teh Ni, it's paired with teh Fi. According to this thread, I HOLD ALL THE KEYS TO THE UNCONSCIOUS!

I WILL NOT BE DENIED!
 

Kalach

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Your unconscious: anything in your head that you are not currently inspecting. Items come up and out of the unconscious and drop back in as well.

The unconscious: any cognitive structure or form that will be in any human's head just by virtue of that head belonging to a human animal. There must be aspects of cognition that are built in to all people just by virtue of the same nervous system in the same basic body. Whether these things can ever come into consciousness is debatable because conscious appreciation of such things implies the ability to distinguish, and thus discard, those things in terms of other possible basic forms. But as far as our structure is concerned, the universal unconscious is elemental, primary, and cannot be discarded. We might however become aware of the elemental forms in terms of their common effect. We might call them the essences of humanity that we keep finding in one another. (Or not, just made that last part up.)

As for which function is closest to either of those... Ni and Si are the obvious candidates, but only because they're in a position to perceive those common effect forms. But if it's forms of common effect that means a function is close to the unconscious, then both Ti and Fi must be counted as "close" to the unconscious too. They both mimic the exclusive effect of built-in universal cognitive constraint: "It just is thus and so that I judge this to be that" is about the same in effect upon a person as the fundamental cognitive structural sameness in them excluding certain kinds of essences from coming true in them.

In short, just as extroverted functions draw close to the world, so do introverted functions draw close to the universal unconscious.

All of them.


You're welcome.
 

Eric B

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I propose to believe that functions do not exist. I believe the principal structures in the mind are complexes--feeling-toned bundles of cognitive items (memories, feelings, judgments, images, etc) wrapped around an archetype. These complexes, insofar as they include conscious elements, have function qualities, which is to say the cognitive items in the complex are conditioned toward given kinds of content. For each person there's one dominant kind of conditioning, and a lesser second (auxiliary) kind of conditioning, and so on, corresponding to type "function" order. In that sense "functions" exist. But talk of using these "functions" is misplaced. How it happens that given kinds of conditioning occurs is indeed a splendid question, and one for which I have no answer, but if it is "functions" operating in the background over the top of cognitive content, then cognition is not a matter of cognition, it's a matter of whatever is running the functions. And that particular ghost does not exist.
Well, the way I've always put it is that functions are not "things", which is how it's so easy to fall into treating them as. They're more like forms of awareness, what we pay more attention to, as our ego'e divide up reality.

You can pay more attention to perceiving what things are (S), or what they mean (N), and you can make rational judgments based on what things are (T), or what they mean (F), and you can reference them directly as objects (e), or through a subjective "storehouse" of information (i).

It seems in Jung's usage (or at least in interpretations of him) that what things are as objects is seen as the most "conscious" form of awareness, and what things mean (i.e. to the subject) is considered the unconscious.
This then ties into the discussion on what "concrete" vs "abstract" really means. We usually think of it as S vs N, but it also in Jung's usage can sound like E vs I (Abstract is I, while concrete is any function tied up with sensations). So it seems to Jung, "concrete reality" is what we are "conscious" of, and anything not concrete (whereby we are sorting through the data, and "abstracting", which is "removing irrelevant data"), is unconscious. It's not what we're actually sensing, it's our own imaginary [you could probably say] processing of the data, whether it's S, N, T, F × i; or just N in general as opposed to S.
 

Kalach

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My instinct is to say that whatever the fundamental processes of cognition are, they don't become "we" or "us" or people or "me" until later. At first they are and must be something unconscious. Whether it significant or not (to the notion of the unconscious) that they are unconscious, I don't know. But they're not us. Is the fullness of the processes anything we can ever become aware of? That might be a wrong question. I mean just that if we're talking the construction of cognition, then we're not talking about things we control or develop.

But e as more conscious and concrete and i as more unconscious and abstract... hmmmmmm... iz prompting thoughts
 

Kalach

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Another version of the OP might be that there are some functions that operate less consciously than others. Fingers get pointed at Ni on that one. And I'm like, dude, get your head out of your fascination with the mystical. I think we may have quite a lot of people here confusing logic with consciousness.

Now, honestly, I don't know, but the stories of T being machine-like and precise are not particularly indicative of how it works as cognition. IMHO. Those stories tell us a lot about what's valued in T, but not how it works. Frankly, the parts of Thinking that are precise and clear are the top layer only. Naturally, I'm speculating here since I don't have T uppermost and can't really speak for those with T dominant, but hey, what of it, punk.

I don't think any "function" is particularly conscious. Potentially, e functions are more "conscious" than i in that their raw material is outside the person and can be inspected by anyone, whereas i functions require a lot of background material that isn't present in the consciousness immediately when some i functioning is going on. But that seems a superficial take on e operation.


Consciousness is a thin layer over the top of everything that goes on. Worse, it exists only because there is a dynamic interaction between e and i. In fact, we should say that any function that operates in isolation is by definition unconscious.
 

OrangeAppled

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Of course the Si type is unaware of this fact, that's why it's called the Unconscious and not the Conscious mind. But the Si is close to the Unconscious in terms of how it colors his perceptions, as described there by Jung.

I certainly agree with that.

But I think a point here is that what is unconscious for many manifests for some in a more conscious way. Can't think of a better way to articulate that, so it will have to do.
 

OrangeAppled

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Interesting discussion - especially the descriptions of Fi. I'll just throw this out there.

Is it possible that Fi permeates the subconscious, but as a judging function is somewhat steered from the conscious mind? A bit like a ship on the ocean?

See below. I explain how Fi orders such content, but that content is not Fi itself.

These thoughts crossed my mind too. I think we can safely say no function can operates exclusively and removed from input from other functions. However, I don't think this means this discussion is without merit. We still distinguish the functions individually in the theory, so I think we speak about them in similar terms when it comes to what parts of the mind they access.

I think it's impossible to determine whether Judgement or Perception are more or less dependent on the other. You are a Perceiving dom and I a Judging dom and I think we would struggle to even comprehend each other's primary processing method (IMO even more so than the differences in function preference). It is so ingrained, one cannot step outside it and view it objectively. I will say, I often think with MBTI discussion, Perceiving doms have this attitude that they are, "just seeing things how they are" and that this somehow makes their views more honest, unfiltered and unfettered than Judging doms. But Judging is not always as cerebral, deliberate and complicated as Perceiving doms tend to believe it is - there can be a clarity and immediacy in the instinct too.


YES. It's always amusing when a Pi-dom tells you perceiving comes first. This is not the first time I've heard them say it. But when you're Ji-dom, then you're applying judgment inwardly & perceiving outwardly.

---

The dominant function is your ego, but not your whole self. Non-cognitive stuff in your "inner world" like emotions, imagination, memory, & elements from the unconscious, etc, is not any function then, and THIS is what Fi is generally ordering; and in doing so, the individual is creating value-concepts. Judgment is not applied using outer measurements like it is with Fe. It's more like a scale for judging is being refined (that scale being YOU), and when something meets or violates some ideal, then the Fi type is moved (this is why we're not known for being super decisive in everyday matters, ordered in our lives, or openly expressive of feelings). How something outward relates to the ideal is often how Pe is "used". You explore the outer world & see what is or could be a manifestation of a value-concept.
 

Kalach

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YES. It's always amusing when a Pi-dom tells you perceiving comes first. This is not the first time I've heard them say it. But when you're Ji-dom, then you're applying judgment inwardly & perceiving outwardly.

What you are identifying as the unconscious nature of Fi is more exactly the unconscious role Si plays in the work of Fi.

When you are reflectively stewing on (DON'T SAY IMAGE) a judgment-to-be, what does your judgment judge? Obviously it's not images. Not records of events. Not pictures of what could be. Not stories. Not magically evident scenarios that come TOTALLY FROM NOWHERE AND COULDN"T POSSIBLY BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN UNCONSCIOUS IMAGERY. So, that leaves...

[...]Non-cognitive stuff in your "inner world" like emotions, imagination, memory, & elements from the unconscious, etc, is not any function then, and THIS is what Fi is generally ordering; [...]

"Non-cognitive" eh?




NB: as far as I recall, I didn't say perceiving comes first. I asked which does. This is a conceptual question, not an evidentiary one.
 

OrangeAppled

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What you are identifying as the unconscious nature of Fi is more exactly the unconscious role Si plays in the work of Fi.

When you are reflectively stewing on (DON'T SAY IMAGE) a judgment-to-be, what does your judgment judge? Obviously it's not images. Not records of events. Not pictures of what could be. Not stories. Not magically evident scenarios that come TOTALLY FROM NOWHERE AND COULDN"T POSSIBLY BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN UNCONSCIOUS IMAGERY. So, that leaves...



NB: as far as I recall, I didn't say perceiving comes first. I asked which does. This is a conceptual question, not an evidentiary one.

orangeappled said:
Non-cognitive stuff in your "inner world" like emotions, imagination, memory

Read the rest of the post for more context.

Jung said these aspects are not the functions. Memory is not Si. Imagination is not Ni. The more differentiated a function, the less mixed in these things are. Of course these things are perceived & judged, but I'm saying a Ji type focuses on assigning them meaning (hence why Jung says the Ji types relate things to the self to give it meaning, and have a hard time understanding that Pi types don't), which is judging; and for a Fi type, these amount to value-concepts. Where do people think Fi values come from anyway? Is our thinking just a list of stuff we randomly like or don't like? Come on.... Fi isn't static values. It's forming value-concepts & using the inner world as a gauge. It's not what is good or bad, but defining what goodness & badness are in their essence, what they feel like, etc. This is more exploratory than dry categorizing. Most descriptions of Fi note it does not look or feel like the most people's idea of "judging".
 

Kalach

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Read the rest of the post for more context.

Jung said these aspects are not the functions. Memory is not Si. Imagination is not Ni. The more differentiated a function, the less mixed in these things are.

That doesn't sound right.

Of course these things are perceived & judged, but I'm saying a Ji type focuses on assigning them meaning (hence why Jung says the Ji types relate things to the self to give it meaning, and have a hard time understanding that Pi types don't), which is judging; and for a Fi type, these amount to value-concepts. Where do people think Fi values come from anyway? Is our thinking just a list of stuff we randomly like or don't like? Come on.... Fi isn't static values. It's forming value-concepts & using the inner world as a gauge. It's not what is good or bad, but defining what goodness & badness are in their essence, what they feel like, etc. This is more exploratory than dry categorizing. Most descriptions of Fi note it does not look or feel like the most people's idea of "judging".

You keep on saying inner world. And for no particular reason that I can see, you disallow that inner world to be made of Si. Whether Jung said memory wasn't Si or not is irrelevant to what aspects of the whole of the inner world are available to cognition. Just because you're not aware of it being Si.....
 

rav3n

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An introverted function doesn't necessarily mean it's an unconscious function. That's the attitude of the function. The further down the function stacking you get, the closer to the human unconscious. If I recall, the aux function can be semi-unconscious, where the full unconscious begins with the tertiary function and downwards. As people age and develop their functions, they bring them out of the unconscious, into the conscious mind.
 

Kalach

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CG Jung, Welcome to the Jungle, track 62:

Intuition maintains a compensatory function to sensation, and, like sensation, it is the maternal soil from which thinking and feeling are developed in the form of rational functions.

There're probably other possibly even substantive quotes, but it seems again and again, it's a grave mistake to imagine type to be built over modular components. Imma go all out and claim that though cognition becomes more function-like the more it is conscious, far from this meaning this makes it freer of the unconscious, it means the contribution of unconscious elements is in fact greater. It's kinda axiomatic, really. The more you focus on controlling or developing one kind of determination or observation, the freer the other kinds are to present wherever they may--and more particularly to present as the form you think you're focusing on.
 

Mal12345

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"Supposing, for instance, a man is overtaken by a psychogenic attack of giddiness. Sensation is arrested by the peculiar character of this innervation-disturbance, perceiving all its qualities, its intensity, its transient course, the nature of its origin and disappearance in their every detail, without raising the smallest inquiry concerning the nature of the thing which produced the disturbance, or advancing anything as to its content. Intuition [Ni], on the other hand, receives from the sensation only the impetus to immediate activity; it peers behind the scenes, quickly perceiving the inner image that gave rise to the specific phenomenon, i.e. the attack of vertigo, in the present case. It [Ni] sees the image of a tottering man pierced through the heart by an arrow." [Psychological Types, 505-6.]

Ayn Rand, who was an INTJ, would envision such scenarios. She didn't describe how they made her feel (the innervation influence arising unbidden from the unconscious), but only the visions they produced. She could literally "see" the future collapse of Western civilization upon reading about or hearing some particularly disturbing news story, for example. Or she could "hear" African drum-beats rising up in the distance, which to her represented the return of primitivism.

"In this way introverted intuition perceives all the background processes of consciousness with almost the same distinctness as extraverted sensation senses outer objects. For intuition, therefore, the unconscious images attain to the dignity of things or objects."

So for Ayn Rand, the future collapse of Western civilization, and the concurrent rise of primitivism, were images as real to her as the sensation of objects in the present moment.
 

Mal12345

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Ayn Rand killed the thread.
 

Nicki

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Definitely the introverted perception functions (Si and Ni)
 

Mal12345

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Definitely the introverted perception functions (Si and Ni)

Yes, and in interestingly different ways. Ni does not experience these intuitions as coming from the self, they are treated as if they are external realities. This gives the Ni type motivation to act upon these "realities." For example, if I were an Ni-dominant, and I saw a loved one die in a vision, and I also mistook the vision as real (although real in the future as a prophecy), I would do everything in my power to prevent it from happening.

This suddenly reminds me of Neo in the second Matrix movie, in which he dreams about Trinity dying, as a perfect example of an INTJ visionary. Neo visited the Oracle for advice on how to prevent this future from happening.

Si, on the other hand, mythologizes external reality, unconsciously converting objects into symbols or ideas such as devils and angels (demonizing and deifying things and people). Objects are not fully real to the Si-dom until they have been subjected to the unconscious influence of archaic imagery.
 

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This suddenly reminds me of Neo in the second Matrix movie, in which he dreams about Trinity dying, as a perfect example of an INTJ visionary. Neo visited the Oracle for advice on how to prevent this future from happening.
Dude, Neo is a ISFP - it might be Ni but it's the tertiary form.
 

Z Buck McFate

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The further down the function stacking you get, the closer to the human unconscious. If I recall, the aux function can be semi-unconscious, where the full unconscious begins with the tertiary function and downwards.

Yeah, this is all that comes up for me when I think "unconscious" or "subconscious" as well. So I had a hard time understanding what [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] is asking in the op. [highlander- by "closest to", are you asking opinions about if it seems like one function has more access/insight into the unconscious? ]
 
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