That's fantastic. Perhaps you ought to stop flaunting your knowledge of it as though it means anything, then..
I did not claim or imply to have knowledge of MBTI in this correspondence.
But not in such a way that it supports your original counterargument, or even disagrees with me at all...
Review the discussion more carefully, it can be summarized as follows.
B: NTs by definition describe themselves as emotionally reserved.
S: An NT, if coherently defined is a mere cognitive tendency, not a full blown personality trait. By definition, 'NTness' entails no behavior even similar to emotional reservation.
B: NT is an MBTI label, and MBTI is just a test.
SW: No, MBTI is not just a test, a test is one thing that MBTI is, yet it is also a system that purports to explain the nature of human thought and behavior. The explanations of human behavior provided by MBTI are often erroneous.
B: The MBTI personality profiles frequently attribute emotional reservation to NTs.
S: This means that MBTI is not only test.
Explanatory note: You said MBTI is a test, yet you did not say that it is just a test. By pointing out that MBTI is more than test, I am not a disagreeing with you but merely pointing out that your initial thesis was incomplete.
S: Furthermore, because MBTI explanations are typically erroneous and the system is itself incoherent, it is proper for MBTI to be rejected.
B: Agreed.
My review of the discourse up to this point. I have shown that your initial claim is false; namely the assertion that NTs by definition describe themselves as emotionally reserved. In order for the above claim to be true, it has to be the case that at least some MBTI claims to be true as this assertion is in itself an MBTI claim. I have also pointed out that it is impossible to salvage your argument by merely redefining MBTI as a test, because a test is one but not the only aspect of MBTI.
In one sentence, I have shown that your claim that 'NTs are by definition emotionally reserved is false' by exposing it as an MBTI-grounded comment on personality theory and by appealing to the general falsity of MBTI assertions. The conclusion that absolutely all MBTI claims are false is controversial, however, for the sake of this argument we have agreed that MBTI is incoherent altogether and should be rejected, in other words, we have agreed that we can regard all MBTI claims as false. This leads your argument to the following contradiction. All MBTI statements are false and a certain MBTI claim is true, specifically that regarding NTs being by definition emotionally reserved.
Just because I agree that it should be abandoned doesn't mean I don't understand it....
Whether you understand MBTI is irrelevant, what is relevant is that by saying that NTs are by definition emotionally reserved you embrace the system. In other words, you assert that such a thing as 'NTs exists' and NTs are emotionally reserved. This is an MBTI claim. I think that now you attempt to look at MBTI from a purely exegetical account or to merely describe the claims it makes without proclaiming adherence to them. You could accomplish this goal by saying that according to MBTI NTs are by definition emotionally reserved, or according to the MBTI test, NTs are emotionally reserved.
To better understand the difference between your original statement and my recommended correction, consider the distinction between the two claims below.
1. Christians are by definition destined for eternal salvation.
2. According to many contemporary Christian theologies, Christians are saved by definition.
The study of what people in fact do is actually the domain of behavioural psychology, not personality theory..
Personality theory is a subset of the domain of behavioral psychology. Contemporary researchers rely very heavily on behaviors to explain one's fundamental personality features. For example, a person is deemed to have an outgoing or an extroverted personality because he consistently behaves in an outgoing fashion. This is the cornerstone of empirically informed research on personality theory, it allows us to ground our claims about an individual's character in 'simple and demonstrable observations'. This methodology stands in sharp contrast with the Jungian method of personality inquiry that deals with mental tendencies rather than observable behaviors.
Tangential note: When neuroscience sophisticates, researchers should be able to run empirical testing on mental tendencies, that way it will be possible to discover if Jungian conceptions truly do reflect the fundamental cognitive proclivities of the human mind.
This is a textbook example of the fundamental attribution error.
Make sure that you understand the psychological terms that you have in mind before writing about them.
Fundamental attribution error - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The fundamental attribution error consists in attributing a person's behavior to his fundamental personality features rather than circumstances. For example, John was the life of the party for the last five years, yet recently he has gone to war and now suffers from a post-traumatic stress syndrome, if his therapist assumes that John's reservation is to be attributed to his general introversion rather than his recent circumstances, the psychologist would be guilty of the fundamental attribution error.
I made no such error, I merely invoked the distinction between the study of mental tendencies and behaviors. The error you think I have made consisted in misdefining personality theory. In order for you to corroborate that assertion you'd have to show that I was incorrect to maintain that personality theory is a sub-discipline of behavioral psychology. In other words, to be Extroverted on the Big Five model means to consistently behave in an outgoing manner, the essence of this claim is underscored in light of its comparison to a Jungian conception of Extroversion cognitive tendency to favor an outgoing mentality. The behavioral foundation of the Big Five allows researchers to predict how people may behave in the future, if the Big Five was non-behavioral at best, it would allow people may think in the future which is something that the researchers of this personality model are not profoundly interested in.