I like to call it a regulative idea.
What does it regulate? I'm guessing "the world". The regulative idea can be counted on to tell us about outcomes of action in the world. Assuming the world exists, it amounts to describing the regulations of that world?
There's always that need for assumption though, isn't there? There's always that part that can't formally be counted on, the actual existence of the world. It's something we must take for granted if any regulation is to be meaningful.
I actually think that tension between wanting to know and needing to assume is the origin of a lot of thought. One works harder to approximate what exists rather than assume what exists.
I'm sort of under the impression that all the Ti folk need are categories and relationships between categories. In essence, as far as I'm aware so far, what they do mostly is go deep and far into describing these categorical relationships. I suppose one should wonder where the categories come from. Maybe they take them as axiomatic. I don't know.
I am not convinced that is true. Perhaps Ti folk merely withhold truth judgments longer and prefer to think about system coherence first. This is, by the way, not a question of what the theory tells us but of what those who identify as INTPs and so forth actually believe. In other words: they might have the same requirements for truth, they just care less about it.
The theory tells us that they'll have to check with the world at some point. But yes, maybe with less emphatic cry-babying than someone preferring Je. The theory tells us we're all some dynamic balance of different aspects of outer checking and inner categorizing. And naturally, different philosophies arise.
Ergo, to actually know the true nature of truth, we're going to have to find out both what cognitive preference imports for us as innate assumption
and which of those assumptions, if any, are... real? It becomes necessary to question the adequacy of one's own perception and judgment.
Or does it? I mean, how is it even possible to use a preference to question a preference? The preference automatically brings in its own mode of functioning and the assumptions that go with that.
OR IS THIS JUST THE Ni PARANOIA?!
I have some vague idea that the usual claim "Everyone uses every function" is a sop to this paranoia, that it's not that everyone uses every function but that all people necessarily cut down what they can use so that they can use even anything at all. Without the specialization, there is no cognitive product, but without the opportunity to use other functions, no product is complete. And if it's not complete then it is adequate as neither "true" judgment nor complete perspective. So the claim "everyone uses every function" is really the idea that there is and must be some way to communicate between the disparate function perspectives and judgments.
That's not quite right. Nor perhaps even barely right. It's mostly just an attempt to express the thought that every attempt at cognition is by nature partial. To really and genuinely know if it is also accurate, then... all the other functions are needed eventually?
Anyway, the thing where there's such a seemingly obvious structural similarity between Te and Fe is blinding in its... its... ability to inform communication however disparate the actual content of the different dialogues may be?