[MBTI General] Thinking vs Feeling...a false dichotomy?

[Nonsensical]

I agree that they oversimplified the distinction between thinking and feeling. It's always tough whe typing a person, and you come to the T vs. F aspect..I usually consider that Ts are more prone to do what's logically correct, whereas Fs usually are more emotional when making desicions, are focus on more of the..if I do this, who's feelings will it hurt?

 

[redacted]

There are two ways you can throw out the function order. Claim that there is only one function. (Pretend that other functions do not exist).

Or proclaim the following absurdity, the members of each pair of functions and attitudes are not antithetical to each other, extroversion and introversion, sensation and intuition, thinking and feeling, judgment and perception. (I have already explained thoroughly elsewhere why they are antithetical. Principles of Typology)

I'm not saying there is NO order to functions for a specific person. I'm saying that not all people of the same type have the same function distribution.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The axioms of Junging typology are as follows.

Axiom 1: 8 Functions and 2 attituded exist.

Axiom 2: For every function and an attitude that exists, there is another function or an attitude that is antithetical to such a function.

Axiom 3: Because the system contains an antithesis to each function, no two functions can have an equal amount of natural influence. This is the case because if the two antithetical functions in question had an equal amount of influence, cognitive paralysis would ensue. Or quite simply one would not be able to think in any particular way at all.

The entailment of axioms 2 and 3 is that all of the functions must be placed in a specific order. There will be a function that is the most prevalent of all, therefore the function that is an antithesis to that function would be the most supressed. Then there will be a function that is the second most prevalent of all, and the antithesis to that function will be the second most supressed of all. What I have described above is the model for the order of functions.

K.

In MBTI, a Thinker is one who is more comfortable using logic than relying on emotions for decision making. In Jungian typology a Thinker is one who has a stronger natural disposition towards dispassionate judgment than processing of emotion. This often entails a personality trait described by MBTI, but does not necessitate it. What this means is that a Feeler is less likely to be logical than a Thinker, but it is possible for a Feeler to be more logical than a Feeler. Humans, unlike animals have the ability to do differently from what their instincts or dispositions urge them to do. Hence, we can do contrary to our typological dispositions and develop a function that we have a weaker natural disposition towards using more than the function that we have a stronger natural disposition towards using.

We don't disagree.

In MBTI it does, in Jungian typology it does not.

Right, which is my problem with MBTI, which is the whole reason I've been posting in this thread.

I don't know about that, you do utter many absurdities.

Or maybe you just don't follow my intuitive leaps

 

[Kollin]

Ehm...I got the impression that the OP was saying that the T/F dichotomy shouldn't be characterized as "serves others"/"serves self" because it is inaccurate. I then got the impression that you were agreeing with this very characterization. That led me to wonder (and subsequently question) why you thought you were agreeing with the OP. Here:

What the OP says:



And here's what you said:



Totally opposite thoughts, yet you thought you were agreeing...And (s)he is suggesting that we stop using this as a legitimate way to distinguish between thinking and feeling. (S)he is also suggesting that the original reason that we currently think of thinking and feeling in this way is because of class based ideological domination.

Ok, you got me...

 

[Kalach]

No no no no no. Both forms of Thinking are entirely deductive. Anything that can be labeled inductive logic (at least the inductive leap itself) is Intuition. The thing with inductive logic is that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. This is exactly the type of thing that Intuition does -- make educated guesses.

Wait a damn minute... if Ni has logical properties by itself, why--say, in an INTJ--would a "deductive" Te play Ni's game? If Ni is being all inductive, why would a deductive Te not get just as offended as the average INTP sitting around trying to listen to an INTJ? A deductive system, by definition, will reject an induction.

In any type, isn't the auxiliary supposed to balance the dominant--to provide focus and structure which by itself teh dominant doesn't have?

Or to put it another way, if Ni in INXJs has some logical properties of its own, what does Si in ISXJs have?


And for that matter, why doesn't an INFJ just explode? Their Ni is doing some kind of inductive trick, the Fe is making emotional judgments about it, and Ti is sitting in the background weeping because none of it can make any sense--there being such rapid and wild leaps from any decision to the next... Ask an INTP--Ti recoils at induction.

I dunno. I'm just running down the concepts as they appear to me. And Ni, as far as I know, is unregulated extrapolation. Nothing at all stops it leaping from "big fish" to "chocolate soap" unless and until some exterior judgment function steps in. To say that Ni has regulated logical properties of its own kinda defeats the purpose of systematising the existence of other judgment functions into a whole MBTI story, doesn't it?

However, I am not at all sure I have it right. I shall reflect more.

A good way of finding out is counting the number of times you think "x is true/false" and counting the number of times you think "x is good/bad" and comparing the two to each other over some amount of time. It's essentially impossible to do this way, but you can approximate.

That really isn't, you know. In any reasoning system at all, evaluations are just evaluations. True/false, good/bad, beautiful/ugly... they're all essentially (well, syntactically) the same as "positive"/"negative". It's not entirely suitable to use one positive term in place of another, but there's an extra thing in INFJs that makes it okay, I think...

INFJs don't deal only in "subjective good" and "subjective bad", do you guys. You deal in what's really good and really bad. Fe provides a judgment, and months and years of experience provide a library of insights that sharpen that Fe judgment even further... AND Ti checks truth. So INFJs at their best do not merely say "it's good/bad"; they can and rightly do say, "It's true that this is good/bad."

Good or Bad?

 

[Jack Flak]

speaking for myself, but definitely as a T, you couldn't be more wrong about our reasoning.

And you're surprised?

 

[Orangey]

Ok, you got me...

Just sayin'...

 

[redacted]

Wait a damn minute... if Ni has logical properties by itself, why--say, in an INTJ--would a "deductive" Te play Ni's game? If Ni is being all inductive, why would a deductive Te not get just as offended as the average INTP sitting around trying to listen to an INTJ? A deductive system, by definition, will reject an induction.

In any type, isn't the auxiliary supposed to balance the dominant--to provide focus and structure which by itself teh dominant doesn't have?

Induction and deduction actually work incredibly well together. Inductive leaps are essentially the premises that Thinking uses to deduce from. Once Thinking finishes a deduction, Intuition can expand the scope or change the topic entirely, providing Thinking with new deductive problems.

All reasoning is some induction + some deduction. That's what N and T do, and that's why NTs are usually good at abstract true/false reasoning.

Or to put it another way, if Ni in INXJs has some logical properties of its own, what does Si in ISXJs have?

Si also has inductive properties, but it stays in the realm of the concrete. Again, perceiving overall provides premises for judging to deduce from. Feeling is also a deductive function, by the way, in which the outputs are good/bad instead of true/false. In computer science terms, perceiving provides the arguments (premises, inputs, whatever) to a judging function, which merely parses the inputs with a bunch of if/then statements and produces a deductive output.

This is a point I've been making throughout the thread -- Feeling is rational. It just approaches different sorts of problems and outputs different sorts of answers than Thinking.

And for that matter, why doesn't an INFJ just explode? Their Ni is doing some kind of inductive trick, the Fe is making emotional judgments about it, and Ti is sitting in the background weeping because none of it can make any sense--there being such rapid and wild leaps from any decision to the next... Ask an INTP--Ti recoils at induction.

That's a ludicrous point. If you think for a minute that Fs aren't capable of logical thinking, you need to restructure your understanding of the MBTI. MBTI is about preference, not ability. It's descriptive, not predictive.

Thinking is necessary, just like all other functions. Just because you prefer a different process doesn't mean you have no ability to Think.

To think that Ti is sitting in the background weeping is entirely missing the point. Ti does the same thing for INFJs as for INTPs. It makes true/false deductions based on an internal standard (or framework, or whatever you want to call it). There's no reason that an INFJ couldn't be very logical. I personally am an example of this, as a math/logic freak...

I dunno. I'm just running down the concepts as they appear to me. And Ni, as far as I know, is unregulated extrapolation. Nothing at all stops it leaping from "big fish" to "chocolate soap" unless and until some exterior judgment function steps in. To say that Ni has regulated logical properties of its own kinda defeats the purpose of systematising the existence of other judgment functions into a whole MBTI story, doesn't it?

No no. Intuition is certainly not unbounded -- otherwise it'd be almost useless. First, there are two kinds of Intuition, extroverted and introverted, which have different focuses -- extroverted focuses on breadth, introverted on depth -- Ne makes inductions about environmental information, Ni makes inductions about the internal state, as in, the current thought process + unconscious state. Second, Intuitive leaps have to come from somewhere -- they also use premises to guess a conclusion from. Intuition has a massive storehouse of information, refined throughout a lifetime -- it would look like a giant web of concepts, with hundreds of connections from concept to concept. New Intuitions are based on this structure.

(Edit: perceiving is defined as unconscious and judging conscious, if that helps at all. So anything unconscious is by definition perceiving and everything conscious blah blah.)

Again, I don't see what problem Thinking would have with inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is incapable of expanding scope or coming up with anything new. Unless there's constant induction going on, Thinking is just going to sit there with no problems to solve.

A point I do want to hammer home, though, is that everyone uses all functions. Just because someone is an F doesn't mean they don't constantly use Thinking. It doesn't mean Thinking somehow is kept in a prison in the mind, constantly beaten down until its will is broken. In fact, I know plenty of Fs that constantly outperform most Ts in logic puzzles or math or physics or computer science (coughmyselfcough).

That really isn't, you know. In any reasoning system at all, evaluations are just evaluations. True/false, good/bad, beautiful/ugly... they're all essentially (well, syntactically) the same as "positive"/"negative". It's not entirely suitable to use one positive term in place of another, but there's an extra thing in INFJs that makes it okay, I think...

Yes. This is an essential point. Thinking and Feeling don't really do different sorts of things. They just focus on different sorts of problems. You could really just use the overarching term Judging. Thinking is just the part of judging that works from a framework of True/False, Feeling is the part that works from the framework of Good/Bad. But they both take data, parse it, and deductively spit out results.

INFJs don't deal only in "subjective good" and "subjective bad", do you guys. You deal in what's really good and really bad. Fe provides a judgment, and months and years of experience provide a library of insights that sharpen that Fe judgment even further... AND Ti checks truth. So INFJs at their best do not merely say "it's good/bad"; they can and rightly do say, "It's true that this is good/bad."

I don't know what you're really trying to say. Good/Bad is always going to be subjective, because it always depends on premises. You can say, given these ethical principles, x is wrong or x is right. But you can never call x in and of itself wrong or right. Just like you can't call a concept true unless you define the problem you're approaching about the concept first.

Good or Bad?

Bad.

 

[Nocapszy]

This is a point I've been making throughout the thread -- Feeling is rational. It just approaches different sorts of problems and outputs different sorts of answers than Thinking.

Well that's not the whole truth.

There are many dimensions represented by Feeling/Thinking.
This is why people make assumptions like the one about it being a false dichotomy.
They blame it on the concept, when really it's their own inability to cope with complexity.

Dig this guys: Evan is actually right about what he said except for one part.

This is a point I've been making throughout the thread -- Feeling is rational. It just approaches different sorts of problems and outputs different sorts of answers than Thinking.

The word "just" is not applicable. It's true that Feeling attempts to tackle different problems, but it's also true that it attempts to tackle the same ones.

Same as Thinking types often screw up their relationships because the other party is acting irrationally, Feeling types screw up their calculations of a situation.

Example: The rules for what's good and not made by Feeling don't have to be consistent. The Thinker frequently fails to recognize this and will assume they can get away with things only to be trounced by the F.
The same Feeler misunderstands the goal of a T's project, or the prevalence it may have, and, while hoping to help in the workshop, might destroy said project, having a poorer understanding of the operating principles of the parts.
Now everyone hates eachother.

But true enough, they do tread on one another's turf.


Now for the other dimension: T/F approaches whatever problems with different intentions. So the very goal or motivation is entirely different.

And now we'll give it a third: T/F would employ different techniques when solving a problem.

It's even likely I'm leaving one out, but I don't care.

In the end, anyway, the point is, Feeling is not rational; it's definitively not rational; it was only given the name because it might yield rationale.

Jung was an idiot when it came to language, and was rather careless, about that fact.
There are far too many reckless mistakes on his part.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

It is true that Jung was careless, perhaps naive, with his wording. This is one situation where nothing is wrong though.

In the end, anyway, the point is, Feeling is not rational; it's definitively not rational; it was only given the name because it might yield rationale.

I find this statement more ironic than usual because I believe it's the first time Nocapszy has chosen to use the word "definitively". What definition is he referring to, exactly?

Well, here we go again:

[Rational]

adjective-
1. agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development.
2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm and rational negotiator.
3. being in or characterized by full possession of one's reason; sane; lucid: The patient appeared perfectly rational.
4. endowed with the faculty of reason: rational beings.
5. of, pertaining to, or constituting reasoning powers: the rational faculty.
6. proceeding or derived from reason or based on reasoning: a rational explanation.

[Rationale]

–noun
1. the fundamental reason or reasons serving to account for something.
2. a statement of reasons.
3. a reasoned exposition of principles.

Well, that was pretty vague. Let's look at some of the words that keep coming up in those definitions.

[Reason]

–noun
1. a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.: the reason for declaring war.
2. a statement presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action.
3. the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences.
4. sound judgment; good sense.
5. normal or sound powers of mind; sanity.

[Judgement]

–noun
1. an act or instance of judging.
2. the ability to judge, make a decision, or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely, esp. in matters affecting action; good sense; discretion: a man of sound judgment.
3. the demonstration or exercise of such ability or capacity: The major was decorated for the judgment he showed under fire.
4. the forming of an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion, as from circumstances presented to the mind: Our judgment as to the cause of his failure must rest on the evidence.
5. the opinion formed: He regretted his hasty judgment.

If you look at these carefully, you'll notice these words keep twisting back together. They're pretty heavily related, and they also happen to be pretty broad. In examining it, you will also notice that nothing in these definitios seems to rule out Feeling. If you go through the whole loup, and come full circle back to the world "rational", you won't find a reason in their to exclude Feeling. Perhaps one reference to objectivty being the most notable, but still minor thing, for us to question the place Feeling. That itself is highly debateable, though.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

If you go through the whole loup, and come full circle back to the world "rational", you won't find a reason in their to exclude Feeling. Perhaps one reference to objectivty being the most notable, but still minor thing, for us to question the place Feeling. That itself is highly debateable, though.

Yes, Magic, there is absolutely no reason to claim that the definition of rational does not include feeling. Virtually anything can be regarded as rational. Whether it is the barking of a dog, a feeling I get at consuming chocolate. Its whatever you want truly! Remember, most importantly of all, the term rational has noting at all to do with logical reasoning! Whatsoever!

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Yes, Magic, there is absolutely no reason to claim that the definition of rational does not include feeling. Virtually anything can be regarded as rational. Whether it is the barking of a dog, a feeling I get at consuming chocolate. Its whatever you want truly! Remember, most importantly of all, the term rational has noting at all to do with logical reasoning! Whatsoever!

As usual, good sir.

There's clearly nothing in my post that implies that. I pointed out, as I believe you can see quite clearly, that if we use conventional definitions (as one generally does when they say something "definitively"), there is no aspect of the definition of rational or the words most related to relation that exclude Feeling.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

As usual, good sir.

There's clearly nothing in my post that implies that. I pointed out, as I believe you can see quite clearly, that if we use conventional definitions (as one generally does when they say something "definitively"), there is no aspect of the definition of rational or the words most related to relation that exclude Feeling.

Conventional definition of rational is synonymous with 'logical', which means in tune with the proper ways of reasoning. There is nothing about a Feeling or a simple impulse that forces it to be in tune with the proper ways of reasoning. In short, the definition of rational has nothing at all to do with 'Feeling'. It certainly does not exclude feeling completely, as you may have noticed, or in other words Feeling may be made compatible with 'rational'. For example, some feelings may be rational, as for example an accomplished logician tends to feel good about a statement that is logically justified, and feel negatively about a statement that is not logically justified.

This however is not relevant. When we deal with Feeling as a function of Jungian typology we deal with the unconscious tendency to process emotion. Such a tendency in itself has no connection at all with the tendency to think rationally.

In summary, Feeling by itself is not rational because it lacks a tendency towards logical thinking. However, Feeling could be made rational if it is influenced by an entity outside of itself. (Consider the example of a logician forcing his own emotions to interact directly with what is rational.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The question that we endeavor to solve in this discussion is whether or not Feeling as an entity in itself is rational (just like Thinking is), the answer to that question is no. Whether or not Feeling could be made compatible with what is rational is irrelevant.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I do not know of what convention you speak. The dictionaries I have read show rational and logical to have an inclusive relationship, rather than a synonymous relationship. That is to say, the word rational has a broader definition than the world logical, which includes the world logical. Logical, being a narrower and subsidiary word, is a part of, but does not encompass, rational.

So, all things logical are rational. But not all things rational are logical.

However, if you are speaking of what is conventionally defined in thesauri, which specialize in synonyms, I will inform you that you are right, they often do define rational and logical as synonyms. The problem is that they also say rational is synonymous with words like "balanced" and "reflective", as well as a very broad range of other words which obviously do not mean the exact same thing as rational, and certainly do not mean the same thing as logical (which is what we would have to assume if we agreed that all synonymous words mean the same thing).

So, I say comparing definitions is the only way to truly now how the meaning of the words relate to each other, and I have already elaborated that in all dictionaries I have found, logical is only one possible form of rational.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

I do not know of what convention you speak. The dictionaries I have read show rational and logical to have an inclusive relationship, rather than a synonymous relationship. That is to say, the word rational has a broader definition than the world logical, which includes the world logical. Logical, being a narrower and subsidiary word, is a part of, but does not encompass, rational.

So, all things logical are rational. But not all things rational are logical.

However, if you are speaking of what is conventionally defined in thesauri, which specialize in synonyms, I will inform you that you are right, they often do define rational and logical as synonyms. The problem is that they also say rational is synonymous with words like "balanced" and "reflective", as well as a very broad range of other words which obviously do not mean the exact same thing as rational, and certainly do not mean the same thing as logical (which is what we would have to assume if we agreed that all synonymous words mean the same thing).

So, I say comparing definitions is the only way to truly now how the meaning of the words relate to each other, and I have already elaborated that in all dictionaries I have found, logical is only one possible form of rational.

Logic is the essence of rationality. Rational, as the dictionary entitites that you have cited show, means in tune with what is sensible, practical or reasonable. How do you do sensible, practical or reasonable things? By knowing what it is that you want to do and doing it efficiently. This requires logical thinking as this is the most reliable way to knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it.

You certainly can do rational things, or practical, sensible things by non-logical means, for instance, you may have been instructed with regard to what you should do and you can simply do what you were told to do. Or you could somehow guess what the proper thing to do is and because of this do what is sensible.

However, logical thinking is the essence of rational thinking because it is the primary path to rational thinking.

You're correct that all logical things are rational, but not all rational things are logical. However, almost all rational things are logical and the more logical a thing is, the more likely it is to be rational. Hence, because Feeling is non-logical, in almost all cases it is non-rational.

 

[antireconciler]

It is true that Thoughts and Feelings are intimately intertwined, however, from this it does not follow that there is no distinction between Thinking and Feeling.

Thinking by definition is a tendency towards dispassionate contemplation and Feeling is a tendency towards processing of emotion. We do both when we engage with most activities, though clearly in some cases one of the two aspects is more emphasized than the other. For example, when we play a chess or solve a mathematical problem, Thinking is more emphasized than Feeling. When we read poetry or listen to music, Feeling is more emphasized than Thinking. In the first case, Feeling is part of the procedure because the person derives a positive sentiment from doing the proof. Thinking is part of the procedure in the second case because the person has a clear idea of the work of art he is enjoying. In order for him to enjoy poetry or a painting, he must have an understanding of what the poetry is saying on the basic level or what the painting portrays.

In summary, Feeling by itself is not rational because it lacks a tendency towards logical thinking. However, Feeling could be made rational if it is influenced by an entity outside of itself.

The question that we endeavor to solve in this discussion is whether or not Feeling as an entity in itself is rational (just like Thinking is), the answer to that question is no. Whether or not Feeling could be made compatible with what is rational is irrelevant.

Hello, Aleksey! Congratulations on your book!

I like your distinction between Thinking and Feeling in the first quote, while making their intertwining nature explicit. In the second, you say, "Feeling is not rational because it lacks a tendency toward logical thinking." I wonder if you could explain this more clearly. It would seem logically possible that something, in this case, Feeling, could in itself be rational, even if its object is not clear before the thinking subject. In other words, why jump from discrepancy between the the logical clarity and rigor of Thinking and the less clear Feeling, in the subject's awareness, to an actual discrepancy in their base logic. Obviously Feeling follows a kind of logic of its own. (It is not simply chaotic.) Why then say it is not rational? It does not appear explicitly logical, and for that reason, can fall into error, but to suggest that it does not follow an order isn't plausible. A natural result would be that there are reasonable things to feel and unreasonable things to feel. That appears prima facie quite acceptable. For example, it is unreasonable to become angry if you find another has achieved an award you wanted instead, and quite reasonable to be happy for them. If the intuitions compelling me to such statements are wrong, however, I would welcome their undermining.

 

[Kalach]

Well, Evan, you forced me to read Jung. Payback is an opaque quotation.

What Ni is:

"Introverted intuition apprehends the images which arise from the a priori, i.e. the inherited foundations of the unconscious mind. These archetypes, whose innermost nature is inaccessible to experience, represent the precipitate of psychic functioning of the whole ancestral line, i.e. the heaped-up, or pooled, experiences of organic existence in general, a million times repeated, and condensed into types. Hence, in these archetypes all experiences are [p. 508] represented which since primeval time have happened on this planet. Their archetypal distinctness is the more marked, the more frequently and intensely they have been experienced. The archetype would be -- to borrow from Kant -- the noumenon of the image which intuition perceives and, in perceiving, creates."

A more accessible version, kinda:

"Just as the extraverted intuitive is continually scenting out new [p. 507] possibilities, which he pursues with an equal unconcern both for his own welfare and for that of others, pressing on quite heedless of human considerations, tearing down what has only just been established in his everlasting search for change, so the introverted intuitive moves from image to image, chasing after every possibility in the teeming womb of the unconscious, without establishing any connection between the phenomenon and himself. Just as the world can never become a moral problem for the man who merely senses it, so the world of images is never a moral problem to the intuitive."

Really doesn't sound like Ni is making decisions about positive evaluation, does it? Ni isn't privileging one possibility over another. It's just shooting them all out there. It's "...chasing after every possibility..."

So... how does Ni get regulated? Jung says "auxiliaries":

"In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that such pure types occur at all frequently in actual practice. The are, as it were, only Galtonesque family-portraits, which sum up in a cumulative image the common and therefore typical characters, stressing these disproportionately, while the individual features are just as disproportionately effaced. Accurate investigation of the individual case consistently reveals the fact that, in conjunction with the most differentiated function, another function of secondary importance, and therefore of inferior differentiation in consciousness, is constantly present, and is a -- relatively determining factor."

If Ni has logical properties, if Ni is privileging as "evaluated positive" some possibilities over other possibilities, then Ni is in principle in competition with the auxiliary function, especially if the auxiliary is (also) a judging function. Is this what happens?

Ni has conceptual properties, I guess. Possibilities are related to each other by concept....

But, sorry, no, not even that is true. Ni does not function in isolation. It gets its version of conceptual connections from the auxiliary. Ni in an INTJ grooves on external world things because Te is the auxiliary; Ni in an INFJ grooves on people because Fe is the auxiliary.

(And not just the auxiliaries either. In any INXJ the conceptual structures in Ni are set up by all 8 functions--just with some more privileged than others by relative conscious strength.)

And for that matter, why doesn't an INFJ just explode? [...]

That's a ludicrous point. If you think for a minute that Fs aren't capable of logical thinking, you need to restructure your understanding of the MBTI. MBTI is about preference, not ability. It's descriptive, not predictive.

It was a reductio argument: if Ni were making inductive decisions, (and Fe coincidentally adding a value), and if Ti were making deductive decisions about the NiFe product, Ti would fail. It would be able to accept none of the inductive steps. Thus, since INFJs do perform logical thought, Ni doesn't make inductions. (It just lists possibilities.)

Perhaps some terminology?

"Induction": a logical maneuver that says Y is "evaluated positive" when X is "evaluated positive" just because if X is "evaluated positive" then Y is probably "evaluated positive".

The terms induction and deduction--as I have been using them--refer to matters of the transmission of "positive evaluation". Compared to induction, deduction requires a stricter connection between the "positive" of X and the "positive" of Y before it will allow that if X is "evaluated positive" then Y is "evaluated positive".

So what I want to know is why INXJs sound like induction machines. This is in contrast to INXPs who, as we all know, sound like deduction machines. INXPs require all the detailed evidence to be presented. INXJs appear to operate on thinner evidences.

I don't know what you're really trying to say. Good/Bad is always going to be subjective, because it always depends on premises. You can say, given these ethical principles, x is wrong or x is right. But you can never call x in and of itself wrong or right.

Yes, you can.

What is Fe:
"In precisely the same way as extraverted thinking strives to rid itself of subjective influences, extraverted feeling has also to undergo a certain process of differentiation, before it is finally denuded of every subjective [p. 447] trimming. The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either correspond directly with objective values or at least chime in with certain traditional and generally known standards of value."

Besides which, Ti is there to back it up. If T produces true and false at all, INFJs produce properly formatted and well established claims like "It is true that X is good/bad."

I rule.



And as for the distinction between Thinking and Feeling... I still like the suggestion that Thinking and Feeling are appropriate labels for times when different conscious approaches are taken to be more controlling:

Feeling is affective consciousness. Thinking is ... contemplative consciousness?

 

[Jack Flak]

Treating Jung's work as heavenly scripture, like so many before you, will not increase anyone's understanding of anything, except Jung's work.

 

[Kalach]

No shit.

Discussing MBTI without a preliminary definition of the relevant concepts is... entertaining?


(Oh Jeez, now my Fi says I'm being too harsh... see how I'm growing as an INTJ?)

 

[Jack Flak]

No shit.

Discussing MBTI without a preliminary definition of the relevant concepts is... entertaining?

They aren't perfectly relevant to MBTI. There are far better ways to get to the heart of the T/F dichotomy than discussing Jung's definition of introverted intuition, which has in any case been misapplied to MBTI types.

 

[Kalach]

Okay.

How about, "Discussing MBTI without a preliminary definition of some version of the concepts..."?

Discussing Ni in this case seems relevant for the discussion seems to be warning that if the functions as conceived by Jung mean anything, it is as abstractions, being that none of the functions make genuine sense if viewed completely in isolation. (In other words, by extension, perhaps yes, "T and F is a false dichotomy". Or at least it's a possibly artificial abstraction.)

But now I'm interested... what are the better ways of conceiving Thinking and Feeling?