functionaxes

[functionaxes]

YES EXACTLY!!!!!!! im glad you could apply it to your type as well!!! that’s exactly what i imagined it would be like for ENxPs :) it has to pass the first 3 functions to be fully appreciated

this applies to all other types as well. for ExFJs’ inferior Ti for example, it’s typically difficult for them to get a hold of it if they can’t figure out how it can account for the feeling realities outside of themselves. michael pierce says about ENFJ’s inferior Ti:

But the important word here is "posit", for, as I think is the case with all inferior functions, the ENFJ perceives Ti in the current moment as a stumbling-block, but imagines this being perfectly reconciled in the future somehow. This generates an awkward tension within the ENFJ, where they fear that whatever Ti principles they entertain will not account properly for the feeling realities outside themselves: in other words, they fear they will never be able to come up with the Ti model as idealized.

so Ti for the ExFJ is hard to use as something that remains stable between contexts for them because it needs to not undermine Fe’s causal efforts (which are oriented to the dynamic external world), and must be checked by auxiliary Pi and tertiary Pe (does it explain contexts i’ve been in before and this one right now?). a lot of times it seems like it doesn’t really matter anyway, since actual results are what are ultimately important for Je functions no matter the underlying explanation.

this is unlike IxTPs who can easily retain that sense of coherency and consistency between contexts (because their first approach to contexts is to evaluate them against their Ti).

clear explanation of inferior Se (and what it means for how we conceptualize the inferior functions in general)

heya fellas i’ve come to a quite… insightful insight recently about the inferior function that’s been continuously bolstered by my own experiences and what i’ve seen in others: the inferior function overreacts when it does not fall under the control of the first three functions.

i’m going to talk about inferior Se to paint what i mean by this in motion since, well, i’m most familiar with it. think i finally did a good job at putting it into words.

so, before i get into it, i’m not doubting or saying other people don’t experience frustration when it comes to these things, but the level of pure insanity it feels like is nothing compared to what INxJs experience.

to INxJs, the only time an Se experience is acceptable is when it:

A. does not violate the expectation set by Ni. Ni superimposes perceptual information (synthesized into an extrapolative “essence” from a lifetime of raw experiences) onto reality, anticipating reality to conform to this expected narrative.

B. it does not get in the way of Je doing what it needs to do, or getting in the way of the will/reason of Ji for doing so.

based on the true events of my life yesterday because it’s the clearest example i can think of, lets say INxJ is having a guest over for New Year’s and is making a ziti but they forgot to get garlic bread:

INTJ (with Te/Fi) will want to pick up garlic bread because having garlic bread with ziti is a value they hold dear. simply put, they want to have garlic bread with their ziti because they like it (Fi), so they will get garlic bread to go with their ziti (Te).

INFJ (with Fe/Ti) has more roundabout reasoning that is just as compelling of a motivator. they will want to pick up garlic bread because it’s what they feel is appropriate. what kind of host doesn’t serve garlic bread with their ziti, nay, who doesn’t want garlic bread with their ziti?! INFJ thinks it would be weird if they didn’t serve it! simply put, they see garlic bread as a necessity of any proper italian pasta dish—almost as if it were essential to its definition (Ti), so they will get garlic bread to go with their ziti because it’s the right or proper thing to do (Fe).

regardless of these differences in reasoning, they both have justifications already made. they have fully worked it out in within themselves and know what they want, why they want it, how to get it, and a vague sense of what they should expect to experience when going to get it. the final step is to act upon the external world to put it into motion. they have nothing left to work out within themselves, so their entire focus shifts to appealing to the external world to make it happen. but this also means it’s no longer in their ideal hands.

they can anticipate that trying to find a parking space at the supermarket will be a nightmare because it’s New Year’s... but it only prepares them for what’s to come in a general sense; like fitting data to an average, smooth-curved line as opposed to spiky, exact data.

Ni doesn’t account for the outliers they will experience trying to navigate that parking lot. they might think, “oh it’ll probably be hard to find a spot”, but only when they physically get there do they experience the impossible-to-account-for active, dynamic situation that is trying to move in the lanes to secure a spot while a bunch of other cars are barely skirting around you, trying to do the same thing as you, and yet still others are pulling out of their parking spots unexpectedly, with pedestrians weaving in and out of the lots all around you carrying bags and stuffing their trunks and talking on their cellphones, as if oblivious of the chaos that is absolutely everything the INxJ is confronted by in this moment.

when the INxJ sees the coast is clear, they can FINALLY move along to pick up their garlic bread. at least right up until they slam their breaks because a pedestrian in their blindspot walked right in front of their car, to which the INxJ thinks (or scorns out loud to themselves), “jesus dude are you fucking suicidal?”

none of this spiky exactness was accounted for in their Ni’s expectations. dominant Ni is like being able to identify the poison berries of situations to avoid interacting with them in advance, but sometimes one has no choice but to eat the berry and face the sickness that come regardless of one’s anticipation. INxJ feels the tension in the arms, their chest, their legs, one foot clinging to the break for dear life. day to day, the INxJ can seemingly handle it; they can concretely see it all happening in front of them and want to avoid making rash decisions they’ll regret, but this kind of stress isn’t sustainable.

every Se roadblock they don’t anticipate with Ni will feel like the world is conspiring against them to prevent them from just doing what it is they need to do. they’re THIS CLOSE to just getting it done. i’m sure everyone has had these kinds of experiences at some point or another, but with INxJs it’s literally constant. it’s more frustrating than most can imagine unless they experience it as an Ni dom. Se is the final hurdle but it’s essentially leaving it up to the whims of the world to decide how smoothly everything goes.

it makes the INxJ pass up many opportunities and even seem avoidant of them, not ONLY because they may see it will bear no fruit or won’t be worthwhile, but because they can never truly get used to the concrete, dynamic circumstances of every day life. no situation is ever concretely the same; specific details differ from situation to situation, so all that Ni hangs on to—all it CAN hang on to to provide some coherence of events—is an extrapolated narrative. that’s why Ni doms can say, “it’s all essentially the same thing” while living out concrete details that are never actually the same; they’re only one in the same by virtue of narrative/lesson/concept/Platonic ‘ideal form’ that was transcontextually extrapolated from many raw external concrete experiences. and while they appreciate and admire how straightforward and manifest and visceral Se is, they also loathe it when it gets in their way. they make a vague approximation of what they’re likely to find themselves in to defend against being overwhelmed, but that’s only to steel themselves in advance. it’s not the same experience as actually being there with the concrete details, external to one’s self, of a present situation.

people picture Ni doms as sort of these untouchable wise men with tons of wisdom and experience who patiently oversee everything unfolding “in due time”, and well... only if they don’t have any active motivation or will for doing something. which isn’t often, especially in this day and age. otherwise INxJs overreact to the smallest little obstacles. screaming in annoyance after dropping a shampoo bottle twice; the loud din of the noise clattering in the tub, the extra step to take to just get something done enough to make them see red, thinking “why is the world getting in my way preventing me from doing something as mundane as washing my hair?!”

we can also see this inferior Se action in INxJs putting the blame on the outside world because they see causes for things that inconvenience them or others. putting them through meaningless hassle elucidates how it could be solved if only measures were originally taken to avoid that kind of inconvenience in the first place:

(left turn lane is backed up) “who thought it was a good idea to make the left turn lane start so close to the light??? it’s constantly full because the light is so long and it holds everyone up; the cars have to end up lining up in the middle lane, blocking the people who are actually using the middle lane????

(misses something) “oh come on who the hell is gonna see that, it blends right into the surroundings”

(its head on cupboard) “who the fuck installed these cupboards installed so low?? why is there a cupboard right where my head usually goes????”

(shampoo bottle slips out of hand) “why don’t they make grips for these things or something god it’s like they WANT you to drop a 2 pound bottle on your foot”

that’s also why INxJs are so picky about what they like sensorally; aesthetics, music, art, sensory experiences in general. when they like it, they LOVE it, because it checks off everything that their first three functions need to be fully satisfied with and have a positive attitude towards Se, rather than negative or neutral. it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, something they’ve been searching for endlessly but have a hard time concretely finding. their proactive Se seeking is essentially put through a filter based on the contents of Ni, Je, and Ji, and they have a negative or neutral response to anything that isn’t what they’re looking for.

someone in a youtube comment described what i’m talking about very well:

“I also noticed as an Ni-dom that my interest towards Se related things is very focused / limited unlike Se doms, who seem to “swim" in all the Se possibilities and regard them all as almost equal. I instead have special Se interests like certain imagery, visual styles etc but almost a disgust towards Se things which aren't in line with that. Se is like that special thing, which I only want, when it goes completely my way. But when it does that, I idolize it even more than Se-doms probably would, although it's their domain. For example sometimes I find this special, rare movie, that has a visual style which I completely adore, because I unconsciously looked for something like that for a long time, but never found a movie which satisfied me in that regard. A Se friend of mine instead seems to be satisfied with a broad range of visual effects heavy movies and such a special [sensory] interest/obsession like I described don't seem to be on his mind at all, even though he has preferences of course.”

anyway i hope this helped you understand inferior Se better, and by extension all the inferior functions in general, since that “filtering” thing by the first three functions happens to give all inferior functions the attitude they have.

#long post #reply #inferior Si #inferior Ti

[functionaxes]

clear explanation of inferior Se (and what it means for how we conceptualize the inferior functions in general)

heya fellas i’ve come to a quite… insightful insight recently about the inferior function that’s been continuously bolstered by my own experiences and what i’ve seen in others: the inferior function overreacts when it does not fall under the control of the first three functions.

i’m going to talk about inferior Se to paint what i mean by this in motion since, well, i’m most familiar with it. think i finally did a good job at putting it into words.

so, before i get into it, i’m not doubting or saying other people don’t experience frustration when it comes to these things, but the level of pure insanity it feels like is nothing compared to what INxJs experience.

to INxJs, the only time an Se experience is acceptable is when it:

A. does not violate the expectation set by Ni. Ni superimposes perceptual information (synthesized into an extrapolative “essence” from a lifetime of raw experiences) onto reality, anticipating reality to conform to this expected narrative.

B. it does not get in the way of Je doing what it needs to do, or getting in the way of the will/reason of Ji for doing so.

based on the true events of my life yesterday because it’s the clearest example i can think of, lets say INxJ is having a guest over for New Year’s and is making a ziti but they forgot to get garlic bread:

INTJ (with Te/Fi) will want to pick up garlic bread because having garlic bread with ziti is a value they hold dear. simply put, they want to have garlic bread with their ziti because they like it (Fi), so they will get garlic bread to go with their ziti (Te).

INFJ (with Fe/Ti) has more roundabout reasoning that is just as compelling of a motivator. they will want to pick up garlic bread because it’s what they feel is appropriate. what kind of host doesn’t serve garlic bread with their ziti, nay, who doesn’t want garlic bread with their ziti?! INFJ thinks it would be weird if they didn’t serve it! simply put, they see garlic bread as a necessity of any proper italian pasta dish—almost as if it were essential to its definition (Ti), so they will get garlic bread to go with their ziti because it’s the right or proper thing to do (Fe).

regardless of these differences in reasoning, they both have justifications already made. they have fully worked it out in within themselves and know what they want, why they want it, how to get it, and a vague sense of what they should expect to experience when going to get it. the final step is to act upon the external world to put it into motion. they have nothing left to work out within themselves, so their entire focus shifts to appealing to the external world to make it happen. but this also means it’s no longer in their ideal hands.

they can anticipate that trying to find a parking space at the supermarket will be a nightmare because it’s New Year’s... but it only prepares them for what’s to come in a general sense; like fitting data to an average, smooth-curved line as opposed to spiky, exact data.

Ni doesn’t account for the outliers they will experience trying to navigate that parking lot. they might think, “oh it’ll probably be hard to find a spot”, but only when they physically get there do they experience the impossible-to-account-for active, dynamic situation that is trying to move in the lanes to secure a spot while a bunch of other cars are barely skirting around you, trying to do the same thing as you, and yet still others are pulling out of their parking spots unexpectedly, with pedestrians weaving in and out of the lots all around you carrying bags and stuffing their trunks and talking on their cellphones, as if oblivious of the chaos that is absolutely everything the INxJ is confronted by in this moment.

when the INxJ sees the coast is clear, they can FINALLY move along to pick up their garlic bread. at least right up until they slam their breaks because a pedestrian in their blindspot walked right in front of their car, to which the INxJ thinks (or scorns out loud to themselves), “jesus dude are you fucking suicidal?”

none of this spiky exactness was accounted for in their Ni’s expectations. dominant Ni is like being able to identify the poison berries of situations to avoid interacting with them in advance, but sometimes one has no choice but to eat the berry and face the sickness that come regardless of one’s anticipation. INxJ feels the tension in the arms, their chest, their legs, one foot clinging to the break for dear life. day to day, the INxJ can seemingly handle it; they can concretely see it all happening in front of them and want to avoid making rash decisions they’ll regret, but this kind of stress isn’t sustainable.

every Se roadblock they don’t anticipate with Ni will feel like the world is conspiring against them to prevent them from just doing what it is they need to do. they’re THIS CLOSE to just getting it done. i’m sure everyone has had these kinds of experiences at some point or another, but with INxJs it’s literally constant. it’s more frustrating than most can imagine unless they experience it as an Ni dom. Se is the final hurdle but it’s essentially leaving it up to the whims of the world to decide how smoothly everything goes.

it makes the INxJ pass up many opportunities and even seem avoidant of them, not ONLY because they may see it will bear no fruit or won’t be worthwhile, but because they can never truly get used to the concrete, dynamic circumstances of every day life. no situation is ever concretely the same; specific details differ from situation to situation, so all that Ni hangs on to—all it CAN hang on to to provide some coherence of events—is an extrapolated narrative. that’s why Ni doms can say, “it’s all essentially the same thing” while living out concrete details that are never actually the same; they’re only one in the same by virtue of narrative/lesson/concept/Platonic ‘ideal form’ that was transcontextually extrapolated from many raw external concrete experiences. and while they appreciate and admire how straightforward and manifest and visceral Se is, they also loathe it when it gets in their way. they make a vague approximation of what they’re likely to find themselves in to defend against being overwhelmed, but that’s only to steel themselves in advance. it’s not the same experience as actually being there with the concrete details, external to one’s self, of a present situation.

people picture Ni doms as sort of these untouchable wise men with tons of wisdom and experience who patiently oversee everything unfolding “in due time”, and well... only if they don’t have any active motivation or will for doing something. which isn’t often, especially in this day and age. otherwise INxJs overreact to the smallest little obstacles. screaming in annoyance after dropping a shampoo bottle twice; the loud din of the noise clattering in the tub, the extra step to take to just get something done enough to make them see red, thinking “why is the world getting in my way preventing me from doing something as mundane as washing my hair?!”

we can also see this inferior Se action in INxJs putting the blame on the outside world because they see causes for things that inconvenience them or others. putting them through meaningless hassle elucidates how it could be solved if only measures were originally taken to avoid that kind of inconvenience in the first place:

(left turn lane is backed up) “who thought it was a good idea to make the left turn lane start so close to the light??? it’s constantly full because the light is so long and it holds everyone up; the cars have to end up lining up in the middle lane, blocking the people who are actually using the middle lane????

(misses something) “oh come on who the hell is gonna see that, it blends right into the surroundings”

(its head on cupboard) “who the fuck installed these cupboards installed so low?? why is there a cupboard right where my head usually goes????”

(shampoo bottle slips out of hand) “why don’t they make grips for these things or something god it’s like they WANT you to drop a 2 pound bottle on your foot”

that’s also why INxJs are so picky about what they like sensorally; aesthetics, music, art, sensory experiences in general. when they like it, they LOVE it, because it checks off everything that their first three functions need to be fully satisfied with and have a positive attitude towards Se, rather than negative or neutral. it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, something they’ve been searching for endlessly but have a hard time concretely finding. their proactive Se seeking is essentially put through a filter based on the contents of Ni, Je, and Ji, and they have a negative or neutral response to anything that isn’t what they’re looking for.

someone in a youtube comment described what i’m talking about very well:

“I also noticed as an Ni-dom that my interest towards Se related things is very focused / limited unlike Se doms, who seem to “swim" in all the Se possibilities and regard them all as almost equal. I instead have special Se interests like certain imagery, visual styles etc but almost a disgust towards Se things which aren't in line with that. Se is like that special thing, which I only want, when it goes completely my way. But when it does that, I idolize it even more than Se-doms probably would, although it's their domain. For example sometimes I find this special, rare movie, that has a visual style which I completely adore, because I unconsciously looked for something like that for a long time, but never found a movie which satisfied me in that regard. A Se friend of mine instead seems to be satisfied with a broad range of visual effects heavy movies and such a special [sensory] interest/obsession like I described don't seem to be on his mind at all, even though he has preferences of course.”

anyway i hope this helped you understand inferior Se better, and by extension all the inferior functions in general, since that “filtering” thing by the first three functions happens to give all inferior functions the attitude they have.

#intj #infj #mbti #cognitive functions #inferior Se #Se/Ni

[functionaxes]

something i think people miss about Fe (instead thinking it’s about maintaining harmony and being nice or whatever) is that really, to Fe, moral character is influenced by external effects. hence why it’s objective. so like for example, actively making an effort to help communicates morals/ethics/whatever the Feeling functions deal with in an externalized way gets you Fe points instead of just the static purity of the beliefs like Fi. analogously to Te about Ti. Fe is really just like, “oh youre a good person? prove it”

in contrast to Te though, it’s not so much about the mechanical efficiency of what’s externally accomplished, but the objective measure of moral effort put into it and its sentimental effects.

#Fe #cognitive functions #mbti

[functionaxes]

the best explanation of Ni i’ve ever given up to this point

if you want to really understand Ni look no further than this post. i can’t believe i managed to finally put it so well LOL.... i hope it helps you understand it better because we REALLY gotta demystify it. this comes from my firsthand experience with highly conscious/differentiated Ni, that and a Lot of reading on theory to make sure what i experience is indeed Ni.

you can see potently how Se/Ni works (at least when Ni is dominant) in what i wrote here on a profile:

“i should note that i analyzed one clip in depth here but i used it because it’s so representative of sadie’s character as a WHOLE. my vote comes from my general impression of her personality over the course of the entire show, not any one single clip—i actually just used the first clip i came across on youtube and that was enough to demonstrate my point about her being ISFJ! so i’m not cherrypicking evidence. (also right here perfect example you can actually see that “all the top 3 functions need to justify Ne use” in me too but with Se instead lol)”

that “i actually just used the first clip i came across on youtube and that was enough to demonstrate my point about her being ISFJ” is so Se/Ni. it’s so.... “detached” from the particularity one’s own concrete experience, like Se is something to be utilized where experiences are easily exchangeable with any other. because the main point is that overall impression with Ni (like an ant colony), and using any clip you can find merely as a demonstration of it because you have no choice to if you want to objectively point to it (a single ant).

but Se/Ni finds that a single clip is still only a slice of the full picture and shouldn’t be taken by itself as its own self-contained argument without paying mind to all the other concrete examples out there. this single example is simply an epitomization of Ni’s impressions in an Se form that i can actually point to and others can objectively see. i have to keep it simple, because even though i think it would be more well-rounded for giving people that evidence to support Ni, putting together multiple clips to make a point isn’t always energetically sustainable and wastes my time, and i doubt other people have the time to sit through it either. i’ve done it before and it takes hours, not worth it. but that’s the ideal cognizing of Se/Ni.

just to put into perspective how much lack of justice a single clip—a single concrete example (Se)—does to communicate the depth of an Ni impression, understand that to communicate an Ni impression in its entirety i’d have to have the other person watch the entire series. or at least every scene and episode with this character in it. because that’s what i did, and that’s where my Ni impression is derived from. every single raw experience is important and adds nuance to Ni's impression until it’s so well molded that it genuinely takes on a character that feels “realer” than any one example it was derived from. because that impression IS the culmination of the entire thing, compressed into a well-established impression, but removed from any specific concrete representation.

and i trust that other people have context besides this single clip because they watched the show. that is Se’s ontological prejudice: assuming that concrete experience is in the public domain and is available to anyone that cared to look. and this single clip is just one arbitrary pick in a sea of equally compelling examples to choose from to demonstrate Ni’s impression and the user’s reasoning in a way that can be objectively pointed to.

i love the ant colony-ant metaphor for Ni and Se respectively. like the concept of an “ant colony” being something that you can’t easily point to yet it exists. so the only thing you can do is point to any single ant at a time, since they are the basis upon which the whole ant colony exists in the first place. but it would be a mistake to assume that any single ant you point to is all that there is to the entire ant colony. that's EXACTLY Ni and Se. it’s easy to understand because it’s at such a microscopic level that anyone, including Ne/Si users, can know what you mean.

but Se/Ni takes this to a MUCH larger scale, where not all “ants” (or Se examples/experiences) are visible and working together all at once in the same time and place, but rather are broken up and stretched across a period of time and space that aren’t going to be visible in its entirety at any given moment.

it’s like in edwin abbott’s flatland, where the 3-dimensional sphere passes through the 2-dimensional plane and the flatlanders only see it as a line that grows and shrinks in width, unable to make sense of the entire thing at once. if each slice of that sphere through the 2-D plane is an individual Se experience, then Ni is tracking them all, and mentally piecing them all together into something greater than what was ever objectively manifest at any individual point. no one else saw the sphere, because the image of a sphere on its own was never objectively there at any point (unlike the ant colony, since all the ants contributing to the entirety of the ant colony exist in one contained place and time).

the flatlanders just can't see it as a whole thing at any given time because Se only works with what is objectively manifest without extrapolating. Ni tracks all these individual raw experiences and fuses them together, tossing aside whatever was concretely there at any point (the individual Se slices) because it perceives the whole thing in its accumulated entirety in a way that takes on a new qualia, distinct from the pieces that made it up. if you’re interested or want more examples, this phenomenon actually has a name—it’s called “emergence”. it’s exactly the kind of stuff Ni extrapolates out of Se.

for the purposes of providing a fuller picture of the reality of Ni, i would also like to add that when there isn’t really any objective truth or “source” underlying multiple pieces of data (though there usually almost always is), Ni will still perceive it as if there is; a mental illusion of sorts. the 3-D sphere needn’t even actually exist in the first place; it can be a 2-D object that somehow grows and shrinks in diameter. Ni will still piece it together and perceive it as a 3-D sphere. this can be either ultimately harmless or dangerously delusional, but that is why the judgment functions exist to counter it, to check for soundness by applying reason and getting objective feedback from the outside. this is why Ni doms seek to know first and foremost if their intuitions have any “meaning” in the first place before wanting to hear what people think or feel about them.

INTP friend: “It must be hard knowing you usually can't give people the whole picture easily. I see why you're inclined to mainly interact with people as the same interests as you: way less explaining and providing context”

this is exactly why i use spongebob so much for analogies and as a concrete basis for communicating or exemplifying trans-contextual Ni constructs that exist in my mind. because people know the context, they know the characters, i can trust pretty much anyone i talk to to have seen every season 1-3 episode. so spongebob is a rare example of the ant colony analogy at the macroscopic level, the level at which Se/Ni functions at.

Si is pickier about what concrete information it chooses to store, and tends to miss the forest for the trees when it comes to concrete perception. however, it makes up for this by maintaining that original fidelity and detail.

Ni doesn’t have the concrete fidelity that Si does, but you had better believe it is taking in the entire palette of Se without filtering those concrete experiences against an internal concrete representation. just as Ne takes in the wide palette of intuitive possibilities and doesn’t identify any extrapolation that is more prevailing than another, which is something that Ni users cannot do.

the weak part of Ni is that it has trouble hanging on to all this detail because it’s simply so much. so instead what it does is perceptually summarize possibly years’ worth of Se information as a single impression. it cuts corners on the detail because the details are ultimately irrelevant and would be impossible to remember, so what remains are the prevailing constants (see how it’s similar to Si?), but regardless of detail (hence, making it an extrapolative/intuitive function since it deviates from what was literally there). so most of the time this ends up being perceived by Ni as archetypes, tropes, “vibes”, a potent particular atmosphere about a thing, all very hard things to convey in words. they need to be refined with the judging functions to be deciphered in any meaningful way, yet the raw experience of that impression is already lost the moment you try to make sense of it by rationalizing it. it’s simply not possible to convey the extent of it.

Ni is vague, yet still perceived as strong and unshakeable.

if i could describe it visually, it’s like a circle made with the airbrush tool in an art program. fuzzy and ill-defined around the edges, except the opacity is 100% and the value is dark in the center, like it was gone over and reinforced multiple times. if it was on paper the ink would’ve easily bleed through. like this:

INTP friend: “That in mind, is there anything I could do that'd make communication more comfortable /easier for you? You've talked about putting in effort to understand others only to not get it in return, and I want to be considerate of that experience.”

see thats the thing. even if someone does everything right it’s impossible to communicate the depth of an Ni insight unless the person has experienced the exact same things as you have and can innately understand that depth. and in that case i wouldn't have to bother elaborating much in the first place.

you’re doing everything right. you’re engaging with my ideas; letting me know that they have meaning (by identifying that you also see examples that my intuition applies to, implying to me that this is evident outside of my own perception, like “OH THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE NOTICES THIS”). i don't expect the depth of the insight to be shared because that’s an impossible order; someone would basically have to live my entire life the way i lived it because Ni intuitions utilize cross-contextual experiences, usually in the form of other intuitions, all ultimately derived from the entire palette of Se data i've gathered over a lifetime.

and i think that’s why Ni seems so powerful and why we just “know” things, because it’s like an entire life’s worth of the entire spectrum of raw experience but HIGHLY compressed (and of course has to lose some concrete fidelity because of that). it’s like taking a 1080p 20GB movie and compressing it to 45MB. the picture is fuzzy, but the same amount of info is there and takes up less space on your hard drive.

or like how a star can be really small in diameter yet have a super high density from compressing all the mass that once made it hundreds of times larger. Ni is like that. it’s all that information packed into a small space. it doesn’t seem like much, especially to an Ne/Si user who sees Ni intuitions as just another possibility among many.

Ne is only quickly glancing over stars’ diameters, giving it a broad, general picture. since it is an objective function, it can’t know the density of any given star, because the density of experience is on the inside of the star and is not objectively observable to the outside world. it’s quite alienating when it’s your dominant function!

(the analogy falls apart with the fact that we can know the density of stars. however, the analogy still applies in a sense since we can only know a star’s mass, and thus its density, by observing the effect it has on space around it, not unlike the way extraverted functions comprehend stuff.)

#introverted intuition #Ni #cognitive functions #mbti

[functionaxes]

Ji and emotions

Fi itself is not the capacity to feel emotions, it is simply the values behind beliefs/things. alignment or violation of the value can PRODUCE feelings. for Fi these are tightly bound but they are not the same. for Fi, the value of something can be “good” if it gives way to positive feelings for instance. the CRITERIA Fi uses to designate “good” or “bad” values often comes from the way something makes them feel emotionally. but Fi itself is not one’s emotions.

Ti users also have a capacity for feelings, just based on different criteria. they can also be happy when their system is aligned and angry when it’s not, but the core difference is that they cognize the coherence between or within a belief/thing (processed in a linguistic/logical manner) but overlook the innate value of it. therefore, they are more “detached” from the emotion that a core value brings (for Fi users). they have a different processing route that their emotions come from, it’s like a level “abstracted” away from Fi. the stuff they get emotional about isnt the good/bad value of a thing itself, but the logical coherence within and between things. the things in of themselves, word for word. it’s like the derivative of Fi in a sense lol. so oftentimes the emotions they feel are more along the lines of satisfaction or irritation at something being internally logically consistent or not.

the alignment or disalignment with Ji can lead to feeling emotions because these things are near and dear to one’s fundamental understanding of the world, but these functions aren’t emotions or the capacity to feel emotions entirely in of themselves. also the difference between Fi and Ti is is the CRITERIA that they use to judge.

#mbti #cognitive functions #Fi #Ti #Te/Fi #Fe/Ti #judging functions

[functionaxes]

Is MBTI really dichotomy based or function based? Why do we think that auxiliary function is (e) when dominant is (i)? Didn't Jung mean that when a function becomes conscious it becomes of the same attitude as a dominant one (we'll say it's introverted, for example), meaning it will also become introverted [I-E-E-E] → [I-I-E-E] → [I-I-I-E]? /1/

From the various sources on MBTI I can only conclude that they don’t really use 4 functional stack model. You have to only take a look at their official tests; they have separate columns for answers; each column corresponds to I/E, N/S, T/F, J/P dichotomy.

Your questions seem to be based on misconceptions. The functions are dichotomy based. MB studied Jung and refined the ideas to bring out certain concepts according to what they wanted to prioritize. I’m obviously not privy to their exact thought process but I assume they believed that the extraverted functions were particularly important for identifying and describing type, hence the creation of the J/P distinction, and it explains why their test is so behaviorally focused. Newbies know MBTI mainly from the test but the test itself does nothing to reveal the complicated process of how those ideas were extracted and revised from Jung’s theory. In other words, just because you don’t see those ideas directly in the test+results, don’t just assume that they’re not already baked in there. 

Jung’s writings were very preliminary, speculative, exploratory, and unclear. The functional stack order is up for debate and there have been many refinements of Jung’s ideas in several different directions. While it’s probably true that undeveloped functions do not have i/e differentiation because they haven’t yet developed, this misses the point of the functional stack. The alternating functional stack tells you which direction is ideal for self-actualization and not meant to measure the reality of your individual developmental state, and type dynamics accurately describes what happens when you don’t develop the way you should. I’m not for or against MBTI or any other model, they are all potentially useful interpretations to consider, in fact, I try to bring them together.

The J/P dichotomy is particularly interesting because, say, you have already three letters I N F, the last letter decides not only your dominant and auxiliary functions, it flips the stack; INFP (Fi-Ne-Si-Te) vs. INFJ (Ni-Fe-Ti-Se), and then we read that according to descriptions those types are very different. But then we also have a lot of people who can’t really decide if they’re INFJ or INFP. It’s all very strange to me.

It’s strange to you because (judging by the earlier question)you haven’t understood what the J/P distinction really means and you haven’t properly distinguishedcognition and behavior. Two different cognitive functions can manifest similar looking behaviors on the surface (as I have explained numerous times in the guides, please read them carefully). E.g. Any introvert can be reflective but the reasons WHY a particular individual is reflective, the motive and explanation behind it, differs according to the cognitive functions involved (Fi vs Ni). If you don’t know the details of their inner cognitive processes, you cannot see the differences because, just looking from the outside, all you see is that they are both reflective in demeanor. And, furthermore, if you ask them to type themselves based on the characteristic/behavior of being “reflective” as tests often do, then how would they know the difference between Fi and Ni dominance? 

MBTI type descriptions are purposely simplistic because newbies don’t know the theory and therefore must identify themselves through simple behavioral descriptors. MB designed their system in part to sidestep the complicated process of learning function theory so that more people could access it, a noble intention, therefore simple type descriptions do not include all the info you need to type accurately because they do not address variations within type and cognitive function specifics. In other words, problems with typing stem from lack of knowledge of the theory, usually because of not going any deeper than the simplified descriptions/tests. The test was meant to be administered and interpreted by an expert, which means that people run into all kinds of problems when they try to self-type with limited to no knowledge of type theory.

Is there any real scientific proof that Jungian cognitive functions exist? Dario Nardi’s attempts are certainly interesting, but it’s a common knowledge that EEG method is far from being reliable. Also, on one of his AMA discussions on reddit he presented instances when he was testing midlife INFJ adults who he couldn’t differentiate from of ISTPs, which he attributed to the use the second most common pattern (Ti-Se for INFJs).So, which model is true, or is this a combination of dichotomies and functional stack model? Can you shed some light on those issues and inconsistencies? Additionally, I’d really like your opinion on Reynierse’s articles (“Preference Multidimensionality and the Fallacy of Type Dynamics”, etc.). Thank you. 

The question of “science” has already been beaten to death over and over again so I’ve grown impatient with this can of worms.I don’t have much to say about Nardi, he’s pursuing his ideas and more power to him, but his work is not particularly interesting to me because it is getting away from other aspects of type theory that I am more interested in. He’s useful for distinguishing the functions with greater precision and the infj example would be consistent with the idea of age and type development. Some people latch onto him because they desperately want some kind of “scientific proof” of the functions. 

Some people dabble in typology and keep demanding “scientific proof” but don’t understand the differences between quantitative and qualitative research. There are different kinds of theories, with different kinds of objectives, with different standards of measurement, with different methods of application - the scientific method is only one valid research framework and it should not be the measure of all things. Traditionally, science often includes the concept of falsifiability but you can’t falsify that which is not within the realm of empirical fact, e.g., you can’t falsify human valuations or subjective meaning/experience, so are these things not “real”? Do you understand the difference between facts and values? Do you believe that only scientific measurements can imbue ideas with value? Do you believe that materialistic explanations of human psychology are the be-all and end-all? Not everything about human experience can be reduced to neurons and electrons. If you think it can, then feel free to dismiss type theory as crap because it’s not going to fit well with your assumptive worldview. 

 Also, abstract and concrete knowledge are different and should be treated differently. No idea is “real” because “real” implies concrete, and ideas are abstract. One can easily claim that any idea is not “real” depending on how you want to set your standards of measurement. People try to claim there is no empirical proof that gravity is “real” even as I drop a book on their head. They will say that there are many other possible explanations for the book falling on their head, yet they can’t offer a better theory but simply replace “gravity” with a different word. Similarly, people claim that “types” or “functions” are not real even when they themselves: behave as type theory describes, suffer the problems that type theory describes, feel attracted to the relationships that type theory describes, follow the developmental path that type theory describes. 

Before you ask for “scientific proof”, you should first define exactly what standards of proof would satisfy you and make you believe that cognitive functions are “real”. It is quite often the case that people who like to harp about scientific “proof” don’t even understand what they’re asking for or to what end, they demand proof but no matter what proof is offered, they keep moving the goalposts because they are actually more interested in criticizing than understanding (see climate change deniers as the perfect example). Just so you know, many mbti bloggers are tired of dealing with such people, we’ve already gone through all these arguments a million times. I’m not saying you’re one of these people but beware that you’re stepping into a complex discussion and don’t seem sufficiently prepared. Instead of making people explain or educate you, state your exact criteria of scientific proof and I’ll happily tell you if type theory passes. 

Type theory is a big theory and some people find it hard to understand even the basic type concepts which barely scratch the surface because the theory goes far beyond simple typing. It is an incomplete and fragmented theory, with many people working on it for different reasons in different directions. Many people have found elements of type theory very useful and accurate in their lived experiences, even using it to permanently solve long running psychological issues, even using it to deftly cure relationship problems. There is piecemeal neuroscience evidence which does not directly relate to type theory but nonethelesscorroborates it. I wouldn’t know if any of this is enough “proof” because you haven’t specified exactly what proof you’re demanding. If the book falling on your head doesn’t prove gravity is “real”, then I suppose all the people whose thought processes match the principles of type dynamics don’t count as real proof either. 

The results say a lot. I run a popular type theory blog and have dealt with thousands of people, so I at least don’t suffer from sample-size-1. Type dynamics describes very specific problems and offers workable solutions (as any good theory should). I’ve witnessed many different kinds of people from different backgrounds, cultures, walks of life apply these ideas with great success. Is this “empirical evidence”? I’ve had the most hardened scientifically-minded strangers think I’m a magical wizard when I can knit together their life story and reveal their innermost insecurities based only on four letters, yet all I’m doing is applying and extrapolating from the theoretical ideas as I understand them, nothing more.

All I will say about arguments against type dynamics is that they usually can’t see the forest because they’re stuck in the trees: they get wrapped up in granular details and superficial inconsistencies; they don’t see the historical big picture of how every model evolves from and contains the same set of ideas; they don’t see how some disagreements between models are merely semantic and actually address the same underlying concept; they don’t fully grasp the principles of type dynamics and then produce strawman criticisms (some of the points in those articles actually support, add to, or help clarify type dynamics rather than debunk it); they perceive the explanatory flexibility of type dynamics as a flaw, not a strength; they probably prefer trait theories because they are easily quantifiable (and then completely miss the point of type dynamics); they don’t see how the ideas could potentially fit with mathematical dynamics and energy flow. Any theory worth its salt should remain open to criticism, development, and further clarification but, in order to critique a theory successfully, you must first understand it, and I don’t think the author of those articles has understood type dynamics well enough to critique it.

#misconceptions #mbti #theory

[functionaxes]

what people don’t get about Ni

ok so like. so many people dont get this about Ni and mistakenly type themselves as one (or type themselves as an Ne user because Ni descriptors are subpar). i also hope this helps those who dont understand Ni understand it better from my experience as an Ni dom (by which i mean it frames Ni from an INxJ perspective), though my ESTP friend says they couldn’t have put the Se/Ni process i described here better, “thats EXACTLY it”

so like Ne, Ni can also approach things from many different angles. but unlike Ne, it’s always about the Same General Concept. that’s why Ni is said to be “focused on one thing”, but the reality is, that “thing” is detail-barren enough that we can actually look pretty scattered from the outside when attempting to talk about it because that’s the only way to communicate it or make it more “solid”

imagine Ni being the center of a flower and Se being the petals pointing towards it.

unlike Si, the Ni “object” being perceived has no detail. the best way to think about the “objects” processed in Ni are that they are like conceptual skeletons. like tropes. they need to be filled out with details and specific instances of that “concept in motion” using Se. Se is any experience in reality that lends itself back to that general Ni concept. Se is just another example of that Ni skeleton but fully fleshed out with its own unique situational attributes. that Ni skeleton is the basis extrapolated (or better yet “excavated”) from those different Se situations and experiences—the shared “theme”, no matter how different the details or contexts may appear on the surface.

Se is helpful to Ni because those Se experiences are the way in which Ni users can SHARE that vision with others—by using an Se experience as a sort of “vessel” for it, like by telling a story or just showing people clips. (“Whereas Si emphasizes the involvement of their own subject in perception (e.g. “this is how things are for me”), Se takes it for granted that its ordinary perceptions touch the thing-in-itself (e.g. “this is how it is for everyone”). It involves the assumption that reality is publicly accessible; thus, its tendency is to assert matters as though they were obvious to anyone who cared to look.”)

this is why Ni doms seem to tend to be able to write forever about one general thing for such a long time, or will have more to say after they finish a conversation (as new examples for what they were trying to ‘get at’ start coming to light). there’s no concrete “end” for that concept, and thats the connection to Se. they don't subjectively filter Se the way Si does. for Ni users, no concrete experience is out of the question to be seen as an example of that Ni narrative “in the flesh”. what Ni does is subjectively filter Ne, if anything.

that’s also why our intuition triggers at the most inopportune times: an Se experience happens that exemplifies some greater (but more detail-barren) theme and we bring it back to the same conversation we had earlier, (with ourselves or someone else). that’s also why examples are hard for Ni users to spontaneously come up with when prompted and tend to just come “in the moment”, or why we say “idk any examples right now but i’ll let you know when it happens”. Ni is a reactive process.

when Ni users bring up examples using seemingly different things, that’s not Ne. that’s them using Se as a medium for their Ni which could otherwise not be shared. it seems more jumpy than Se is, at least Se in Se doms, because the specific details are irrelevant in describing the Ni skeleton that they’re trying to convey to you. you can’t see what’s in their Ni for yourself on the outside, but you can see them attempt to “shape” it by plastering examples on the outside of it. it’s like they’re putting a coat of paint on something invisible so others can see its contour.

#infj #intj #ni dom #Ni #Se #Se/Ni #cognitive functions #mbti

[functionaxes]

Ni imagery and another nice Ni/Se analogy

Ni can be imagery-based. for me as an Ni dom these images are VERY basic. they’re not detailed visions whatsoever; they’re not as cool as those descriptions make them sound like we have insight powers that let us picture the future in detail. no, Ni in my experience as an Ni dominant, uses very simple shapes and very simple animations that move those shapes around—very gestalt-like images. they move almost like those tweening-style puppet animations that kurzgesagt and the like use. a big thing is visual properties like size difference for instance to visualize something as a component of something bigger than it. again, as i said, the images arent detailed theyre very general, like lines to represent objects, circles to represent constructs, etc. like simple diagram type stuff. most common shape is circles for me.

this is not the same case for Ni in ESxPs though. my ESTP friend told me:

friend: Okay, so I have a really really good ability to picture things in my mind exactly how I have perceived them. For instance, I can recall the leather stitching in intricate detail on a motorcycle I admired two years ago, down to how it felt to touch them. I can recall the stained glass on the church I used to sing in. I can recall the cathedral details from literally when I was 11 in Prague. This is a bit weird, but when I see a picture of an internet friend or someone I’ve never seen before, or if I have enough audio clips of them speaking, I can visualize/what’s the word for the auditory thing here- basically I can hear them speaking as if they were here even when I get a text. When I see something (car, motorcycle, art, even a pretty person) I can recall all of that data whenever I want. My mental palace is LITERAL. I can literally imagine a palace me: why tf they say Si doms have the best memory god damn maybe associatively sure but they dont have that Viscerality it's still sort of floating above reality through associations they can remember someones birthday well because they associated it with something. but Se dom probably remembers it by literally seeing it written down somewhere like on a calendar or something friend: YEAH EXACTLY i picture the actual date as it’s written. So no, I don’t really have simple shapes pop up when I’m thinking about something tbh. That seems so foreign to me but I get it when you make diagrams. But that is NOT how I think. I played this mechanic simulator for a while and now I can mentally take apart and put back together ENGINES FJSKDHD me: so like if it had a certain font or stylization you’d remember that? friend: Yep. I remember logos and signs super well me: for me it would just default to whatever the brain equivalent is of times new roman on a plain html page LOL i still got that information viscerally though “i saw it on the calendar, it was 9/2” but the image in my head isnt the font i took it in with, the details of the font weren't important, it was the content itself that was. i still suck ass at remembering birthdays though. i do remember something in detail sometimes though, a lot of times a specific meme im trying to find where i remember the visceral details but simply can't find the image

and i mean that makes sense. first off, i cover here why Se doms seem to have such a good visceral memory. secondly, because the details of specific circumstances are so irrelevant to dominant Ni (unless Se takes the wheel for a little bit in a given circumstance), it’s basically a skeleton of a narrative. Ni is the skeleton and Se is the meat.

think of all the dinosaurs that we only know the skeletons of. for the longest time we thought they didn’t have feathers because that external detail got lost along the way—that’s essentially what Ni is chasing and seeks to synthesize. scaled dinosaurs are just one example of what the details of that skeleton could manifest as. feathered bastards are just are just one example of what the details of that skeleton could manifest as in another context. it’s basically infinite because you just have the skeleton.

however, the endpoint for Se/Ni is that skeleton, not the beginning (as it would be for Ne/Si).

if i, as an Ni dom, saw all kinds of examples of what a particular species of dinosaur looked like on the outside, ranging from differences in color, patterns, featheredness, scaledness, muscle tone, all of that doesn’t matter to Ni because it is going to take in all these observations together and find the similar underlying property between them all. and what ends up being similar between them all is the skeleton, that holistic yet pinpointed narrative that every single possible manifestation of it is contingent on. that is the end product for Ni.

the specific details of that skeleton could manifest in so many possible ways. this is why it’s hard for me to give examples on the fly. i could show you one particular instance of that narrative (say, a scaled dinosaur of a certain species). however, i’m aware that any given example of something has details reliant on context that i consider irrelevant to that narrative i’m trying to show you, and i don’t want you to latch on to the irrelevant details. so i give you more examples of this narrative in different contexts (i’ll now show you a feathered dinosaur of the same species) to de-emphasize the importance of any specific details and highlight the similarities. the more examples within different specific contexts, the more you know which details are irrelevant to perceiving this narrative at its most fundamental (the skeleton).

when Ne encounters this skeleton of a concept, it sees opportunity, it’s only the beginning. Ne is the one building that external structure back on with all kinds of possible ideas for what it could have looked like. they don’t necessarily have to already have been found in reality.

#dominant ni #mbti #cognitive functions #Se/Ni #mine

[functionaxes]

How do you develop the Ni function? It seems like "aha" moments are up to chance rather than something you can consciously control?

This is a tough question. To understand Ni, you need to understand how it stores information. Every cognitive function selects particular kinds of data to remember. Ni stores data about relationships: abstractions about the way in which things are related to one another. Relationships between things come in many different forms: logical, causal, correlational, metaphorical, symbolic, qualitative, interpersonal, intrapersonal, etc. These abstractrelationships inform Ni about the meaning or significance of an object. This is why Ni dominants always focus on the idea of (underlying) meaning or purpose…

Keep reading

#THIS IS SO TRUE #ni #not mine #as i said Ni can circle the same object with so many connections #which is why writing can seem endless because there are so many ways in which a single narrative can manifest #but it’s easiest to come up with detailed examples or even be aware of the contents of your Ni when some Se stimulus exemplifies a concept #oftentimes it’s hard to come up with ideas or examples spontaneously #it’s more like “i’ll let you know when i see it”

[functionaxes]

Hello. Is Ti, the ability and interest in solving complex puzzles or mind games? And are Ti dom and aux people, the only people good at debating others without getting bored or hurt? I ask because I know an ENTP youtuber who's a debate coach. He sort of determines Ti by conditional logic and the ability to solve puzzles and mind games, (and debate for a long time without being hurt or emotional). Also, since Ti is subjective, are Ti viewpoints and judgements irrational and personal?

No. A general point: The way many people learn about personality type is by picking up disorganized bits and pieces all over the internet (sometimes from dubious sources) and then they wonder why they get confused. One of the learning problems I commonly see in students is trying to run before learning how to walk, which should be remedied by learning things in the right order and with the most effective methodology. I see people try to identify specific judging functions like Te vs Fe when they haven’t even understood the basics of what T, F, and e are to begin with. Or people try to apply type theory without knowing the technical meanings of academic terminology, so they get lost in misconceptions. In your case, you’re trying to understand the advanced concept of Ti without a good grasp of basic principles, and you lack clear definitions of the words you’re using, like subjective, irrational, personal.

1) In type theory, all perception functions are irrational because they do not require any reasoning to process information, and all judgment functions are rational because they all require reasoning to process information.

2) In type theory, all introverted functions are subjective, and all extraverted functions are objective. Subjective is not equivalent to personal, although, to be fair, people (myself included) often use the two words interchangeably, so it’s easy to get confused. 

“Personal” means that you are viewing the situation through “psychological lenses”, e.g., in terms of how it makes you feel, how it affects your body/mind, how it changes your plans, etc. Your sensations, feelings, ideas, and plans all “belong” to you and no one else. You basically generate them for your own purposes. No one can ever know exactly what your personal experience is because no one can ever wear the exact same set of psychological lenses that you possess. This is the basis for claiming that every person is unique.

“Subjective” means from the vantage point of where you are standing. There are many possible vantage points to stand on. The vantage point doesn’t “belong” to you because you’re not technically generating anything personal. You could easily move to a different vantage point, and someone else could just as easily come stand where you were standing to see what you were seeing. The picture of a situation may shift dramatically when you change a vantage point and new facts get revealed. This is the basis for claiming that one is able to get closer to objective truth by incorporating more vantage points. The word “objective” refers to universality, i.e., the things that are always true and/or don’t change significantly with vantage point.

Thus, personal is always subjective insofar as it is seen from a particular and singular vantage point, but subjective is not necessarily personal. It is possible to change your subjective vantage point without substantially using/affecting your personal psychological lenses.

3) In type theory, T functions are considered to be impersonal because they do not utilize any psychological lenses to process information - they only use plain factual and empirical information to make judgments and draw conclusions. F functions are considered personal because they rely on psychological lenses to process information - they need to know how people feel in order to make judgments and draw conclusions. Accordingly:

Fe is rational, objective, inter/personal*

Fi is rational, subjective, inter/personal*

Te is rational, objective, impersonal

Ti is rational, subjective, impersonal

*F is personal and interpersonal because it primarily uses feeling states to reach a judgment/conclusion, irrespective of who the feeling state belongs to.

#meta #personal #subjective #not mine

[functionaxes]

Fi/Te vs. Ti/Fe on interpretation

two months ago i had a conversation with a friend where we talked about how things are interpreted differently by Fi/Te and Ti/Fe.

friend: O.K SO LIKE the thing ummm i was thinking . what if what makes Te facts is the objectivity that comes from leaving phenomena out of perspectives. Fe would be objective from being the result of all the perspectives taken, Te from the fact that it's up to Fi's interpretation. Like when stories are being shared about the same thing you can get the story by itself or by the pieces of everybody's interpretation "He did [x], and i interpreted it as [y]" (everybody shares their own interpretation). Te like a sole fact with all moral/biotic tone striped away, giving Fi the sense of "We are in different paths and that's ok as long as they dont cross with each other" (TeFi makes reality what it wants it to be, FeTi defines reality through what its judgements gather to make a system of principles). Something can be [x] by itself, and it can mean another thing to you personally depending on how you judge it, coexisting with the fact that That something is still [x]. Others can think oh maybe this is [y] and that is fine to you. Without the sentimental factors there, Te processes phenomena not in terms of giving voice to others' perspectives, but by not giving perspective itself to it. me: so what you're saying is Te is the barebones rules of reality but Fi interprets it deeper for itself individually? friend: yess !! it's like an anchor to Fi's judgements. "o.k so this is a story about [redacted] but i personally interpret it as [y] ^_^". TeFi does not need the judgements of the crowd for connotative interpretation because they find connotative interpretation in their own self and what it makes reality out to be. me: YEAH meanwhile Fe (and especially paired with Se/Ni) is like "actually this is a narrative about something we all experience as part of the human condition" friend: YEAH and with Si its more cautious to reach the conclusion that others indeed experienced that narrative. but on the other hand it's more intensified when its proven true (like inside jokes). and with the example i gave before: Ti would be inclined to Prove to others the story is indeed about [x]. Fi only needs its own opinion. me: YES TI IS THERE TO PROVE A STORY IS ABOUT [X]

likewise, these two sources talk about basically the same thing which is something i rarely see get brought up in discussion about cognitive functions, but based on the essential qualities of Fe/Ti and Te/Fi they are by extension true: Fe/Ti is more explicative about how something should be (sentimentally/connotatively) interpreted.

“The question of ontological truths are handled by Fi, but with the "a priori" embedded within it since Fi will carry the necessary ethical axioms to address existential questions at the root level. Ti, on the other hand, draws its ethical answers from the dynamic human environment and leaves the philosophical domain as one that's handled with sterility of reason. This is the case even if Ti's answers cycle back around to, and support, the ethical answers that are arrived at in the end. Indeed this difference causes Ti/Fe to be more explicative with morality even if both share the same general opinions of how best to live. That which Fi/Te believes implicitly and simply lives out, is linguistically encoded by Ti/Fe due to how it parses the question out differently.” (x)

“The subject under this [Fe/Ti] mode of cognition sees other individuals as extensions of the self and how all human beings are manifestations of the same ideal object. Because Fe/Ti types see other human beings as extensions of themselves in hopes of identifying or realizing cleaner but more idealistic principles for dictating order, they are typically less direct than the Te type in asserting their will on their environments, but are also less inclined than the Fi type to withdraw their judgements in the name of tolerance, more consistently maintaining that whatever logic applies to them must also apply to others.” (x)

so Fi is like “there's no wrong way to interpret and characterize something – it's what each individual makes of it” while Ti tends to more like “actually your interpretation and characterization of something can be wrong”

ultimately seeing this video was what gave me the insight to put this post together because this was just the perfect example to base it around—jhonen vasquez (INTP) explaining why fans are watching invader zim wrong. (x) this is a clear Ti/Fe axis judgement.

although he’s a Ti dominant, remember that Ti is on an axis with Fe, which prominently shows itself at the end here:

"the major tenets of this show are sarcasm, cruelty, and violence. affection, and warm, fuzzy things—anything that would inspire "awww"—it's not in the show! it's just not in the show, so anyone responding to that, in that way, you know there's something wrong with them!"

#mbti #cognitive functions #Te/Fi #Fe/Ti #judging functions #mine #what do i even tag this as

[functionaxes]

hi! could you tell me about how you would distinct an intp from an istp? literature about ti tends to focus really heavily on how it works with ne. anyways, the more of a rant the better, i follow you from pdb and absolutely love your perspective!

sorry this took so long to answer, i’ve been trying to perfect it. for the future if you want to send me any typology asks do it at @functionaxes

first off i think it would be helpful in clarify how we can think about Ti by itself first and then getting into detail about the perceiving functions and differentiating the types.

Ne/Si and Se/Ni are the two axes of perceiving. and Fe/Ti and Te/Fi are the two axes of judging.

the aim of perceiving functions are to synthesize data without discriminating between that data. it doesn’t designate distinct barriers between things, it just experiences. judging, however, is the conceptual splitting of things from another with the aim of organizing information into definitive concepts (and for the F functions, additional criteria for judging that pays mind to sentiment).

from Function Axes in Jungian Typology:

By perception, we mean any psychic process in which the intentionality and end product is experience. Jung refers to experience as “irrational,” by which he means that raw experience, if taken by itself, is incoherent and dynamic.

By judgement, we mean any psychic process in which the intentionality and end product is a proposition. Jung refers to judgments as “rational,” by which he means that formal propositions, if taken by themselves, can be coherent and stand apart from reality even as the experiential elements the propositions pertain to have changed.

Ti, like Fi, is an introverted judging function (Ji) which means it tries to be self-aligned by differentiating the qualities of a single subject and evaluating something for its inherent/static qualities. it evaluates how a thing compares to itself rather than how it compares to other things in a causal way like Fe and Te do (Je). basically what something “is” is not classified by its applicable function or its causality, but instead its essence; what something “is” to Ji is everything that‘s left once other things that are not “it” have been omitted. Ji can judge the qualities of objects, concepts, or even one’s self as something to keep in alignment with.

as for what Ti is exactly, it’s helpful to contrast it to Fi.

Fi defines singulars in a way that is contingent on matter (as evidenced by how finely-diced and unique Fi users’ values are about things since no two things are exactly alike when it comes to matter), i assume that would make it more specific and nuanced about the essence of things and thus more particular about their values. matter is also what Te bases its criteria for judgement upon: as Aristotle put it, “it would be absurd to try to prove ... what is obvious by what is not” so it makes sense that this extends to Fi as well. Ti just kinda sees matter as useless when it comes to defining things by essence. Ti is super ontological and defines stuff using categorization that floats “above” matter, therefore individual differences by virtue of matter are kinda negligible (and that's where Fe comes from: making external decisions on the assumption that we’re all similar but like in a meta way). you can think of Ti classification as sort of like... taxonomy? at least that's how i experience it. which is why Ti is more general and broad about its definitions since it does so from different levels of magnification depending on scope, with more specific (small) categories and more general (larger) categories. “we are all homo sapiens” is an inherent justification for how we are more similar than we let on, whereas Fi would be more inclined to think “yes but every homo sapien is unique” since the judgement is contingent on matter. also note that i mean “unique” here in a neutral way—Fi users see each thing as having qualities that are inherent and unique to each of those things, regardless of what the Fi user’s personal sentiment towards each of them is. which means we can say that Fi is more inclined to look at differences and Ti is more inclined to look at similarities. Ti really only tends to look at differences when it comes to justifying why groups are split a certain way, but not everything is seen as unique to Ti like with Fi. pretty much everything is seen as similar in some ontological, semantic, or categorical way that transcends matter alone.

to see what Ti looks like in comparison to Je functions let’s take the singular “chair” for example. Ti conceptualizes stuff according to ideal ontological properties. so “what constitutes as a chair at the bare minimum” is a Ti sort of question. to me, the static self-aligned components that make a chair are: “if it makes sitting upright at some level above the floor possible, it is a chair.” my ISTP friend says “glasses are chairs if you think about it.” i mean it wouldn’t be comfortable and could hardly be considered much of a change from sitting on the floor (which is my auxiliary Fe function talking), but technically they’re right if we are aligning with what that essential definition of a chair is (which is my tertiary Ti function talking). and the contents of everyone’s Ji is going to be different, how things are self-aligned is going to differ from person to person, unlike with Je where we could all agree “glasses as a chair” goes against common sense because it’s impractical (hence what i mean by Je’s judgements being causally-derived), even if it “technically” fits Ji’s subjective proposition.

basically, perception is this:

judgement discriminates between them based on categories and properties that don’t require you to actually experience perceiving them and can stand apart from reality. you can read the following without having to have ever seen these shapes:

A square is a closed figure with four straight sides of equal lengths and four right angles. A rectangle is a closed figure with four straight sides and four right angles. Therefore, a square is a type of rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square.

Cool. tell me about ISTPs

so basically ISTPs are going to explore these judgements with Se.

Se is a little weird because it “grounds” Ti a bit based on what is directly observed in reality. ISTPs experience reality viscerally, but their comprehension of it will be semantic in nature rather than nomological (the way Te would).

see, Te creates judgements based on how something can yield practical results. Te could care less about why something works, it just focuses on it working (and if seeking to know why/how something works, usually does it ultimately for practical results, such as in learning coding for example. the goal is to make a functional application, not to learn a coding language and aimlessly play with it like a sandbox just for the sake of it. i’m not saying Te users can’t do this but they very likely have some developed Fi for the intrinsic motivation of it if they’re gonna be doing that.)

Ti seeks to fully know the reason why something works, exceptions to rules, and seeks alignment with their “truth” no matter how impractical it may be. so like INTPs, ISTPs aren’t really doing stuff with reaping extrinsic rewards or results in mind, but more so for the sake of intrinsic motivation, self-alignment, and exploration like other IxxPs.

Ne/Si (INTP) vs. Se/Ni (ISTP)

because Ti’s judgements “hover above” reality, it’s often more conflated with Ne than Se because Ne’s short-term associations also hover above reality.

check out this at-a-glance comparison of Se/Ni vs. Ne/Si here, and you can read my essay i wrote for school in which i elaborate on the technical difference between Se/Ni and Ne/Si (with the primary focus being on defining Se/Ni), but basically:

after a stimulus is detected,

Ne quickly moves on from direct observation, as the user's observations are turned into mental facsimiles and associations that are indirect, recalling past details in seeing how they might relate to the present or considering new perspectives adjacent to what is concretely in front of them.

Se locks in and directly enhances the present properties, deriving inspiration from, and about, the immediate objects and factors themselves. Se is just a double layer of acute observation that is more “extreme” than the average person, where the focus lingers directly on, and about, a present, concrete factor.

this makes ISTPs generally more pragmatic than INTPs, (though not necessarily practical), more visceral, gritty, and hands-on.

i think one of the best ways to tell the difference is that INTP is pretty much always gonna be more of a “cloudcuckoolander” due to Ne/Si.

ISTPs are cautious with extrapolations; they don’t make disparate superficial connections willy-nilly due to Ni, as insights have to come from some basis in raw observed reality to begin with over time, but they are proactive with exploring concrete objects in their entirety.

INTPs are cautious about concrete experiences; they are generally more inclined not to take new experiences at face value due to Si, but are proactive with exploring new connections and fiddling with ideas. they will generally explore something from at a bunch of different angles, all but directly.

ISTPs, like INTPs, can also very philosophical due to Ti. what comes to mind is Bruce Lee’s “be like water” speech, or the entire existence of Skips on the regular show. with more developed Fe you can really see how they fit with the rest of type family B (ENFJ, INFJ, ESTP) but a bit different, more withdrawn in their judgements than the others but more grounded in the experiences of the present.

ISTPs aren’t always all business, nor are they all sporty. bob belcher is a good example of what a typical ISTP looks like irl. they can be just as eccentric as INTPs (x), but because Se is more “objective” than Ne (by which i mean that everyone else can see something exactly as the Se user is seeing it; Ne is more subjective since not everyone is going to see the short-term connections as they do) it mutes that eccentricity in that they’re not all over the place. but their quirks are very much there (x) and it’s very charming when you see it.

i really don’t like that ISTPs are perceived as “less friendly” INTPs. they may seem to come off as more blunt or cold but that is because they are not inclined to humor short-term possibilities like INTPs by virtue of already perceiving that such a possibility wouldn’t work out. this is because an underlying narrative was synthesized and excavated from prior direct experiences and they can apply it to all similar narratives that would play out in a similar way, regardless of specific details. but their judging function placements and roles are exactly the same.

Ti + Ni

i am an INFJ and i have experience with Ni + Ti, i just use them in a different from way from ISTP. (my Ti judgement is contingent on my Ni perception, my Ti is very much tertiary and I ultimately use it make sense of and rationalize my perceptions rather than leading with it.)

so when having both it’s kinda hard to determine which is which when i’m using them, but as i said, Ni is a perceiving function and it doesn’t differentiate one thing from another. Ni excavates the existence of universal narratives that run beneath a body of unrelated experiences, and disregards the specific details of those experiences in favor of emphasizing the similar narratives between them. what comes out of me verbally or in text is a best approximate articulation of that vision which has been filtered through Fe and Ti to make sense of it, unfortunately bound to the confines of language. that’s why i use examples and metaphors a lot and why my posts get so long lol because i want you to be able to have the same insight as i do, i want you to be on the same page as me experientially seeing the same narratives in the way i do. Fe/Ti and Se (when i show you examples) is my means of doing that. my analogies are very general because having Se in the stack emphasizes the need for shared, universal experiences. for example, water... everyone has seen water. everyone knows the properties of water, how it moves and how it interacts with things. people’s experience with water is universal, which is the perfect subject for an analogy. that’s where ISTP bruce lee got his “be like water” speech from.

the presence of Ti/Fe only adds to that, which makes the Se/Ni + Ti/Fe combo (type group B) the most holistic, universal, and objective in that they see their experiences and values as being applicable to everyone and everything else as well. that’s why the types in this group tend to have that sort of a "guru" vibe regardless of whether they actually are spiritual or not. the similar thing about every type in this group is that they tend to be inclned to pass on knowledge or wisdom in some form because they are confident about universal application and value. of course people of every type like to help people, not just this group. but the types in the Se/Ni + Fe/Ti family (ESTP, INFJ, ENFJ, ISTP) just have a similar “guiding” thing they do, i can’t really explain but i hope you see what i mean.

but Ni and Ti are actually really similar, just in different ways. they are simultaneously vague and general while the subject they're both differentiating and perceiving feels pinpointed and clear. Ti and Ni are both really general in terms of their content, but specific about that generality.

but articulating that is like Shit Fuck which probably explains why ISTPs often don't bother to tell anyone much (not a necessary aspect of them though) and are generally seen as more “quiet” and “mysterious” than their Ne/Si counterparts. i cant blame them, it’s often really hard to put into words. Ti is meta as fuck with its ontological categories so its hard to communicate it to others, and Ni is meta in its perception of reality (where a present situation/object is perceived as being merely an example of or representative of a greater narrative). inferior Fe further disincentives wanting to explain it to anyone and tertiary Ni sees it as being pointless before you even consider it.

TL;DR

attributing INTP aspects to descriptions of dominant Ti (and thus also to ISTPs) has been addressed here where it pretty much covers what you asked for, but i wanted to go all out so you gain a more well-rounded perspective.

TL;DR (again)

(btw not all INTPs are as talkative and fruity as rusty just letting you know. but the group A types (Ne/Si + Fe/Ti) tend to have this scattered cloudcuckoolander wine mom energy INTPs included. here’s some other examples of an INTP and ISTP together too to compare.)

#cognitive functions #mbti #intp #istp #dominant Ti #mine

[functionaxes]

function ego development literally goes from thinking about your opposite type like “oh i fucking HATE this type” to “wait actually why do they make a good point. why am i seeing pieces of them in myself” to “this is my favorite type”

#cognitive functions #mbti #hm i need a new tag for less analytic posts uh #ramblings

[functionaxes]

i may or not make another blog to put down my typology thoughts about cognitive functions but at the same time i need to share this immediately and i dont wanna wait for however long it takes new blogs to be able to post in the tags so i’m putting it on my main blog fuck it.

but if this interests you and you want me to make a side blog, let me know. because i think we need more well-informed posts and analyses about mbti and cognitive functions instead of shitflinging stereotypes and making the system look like stupid pop-psych shit to everyone who doesnt know about it. here’s an example of what i get into edit: okay hii the blog is @functionaxes

here’s a post regarding the inferior Ni of Se dominants (ESxPs)

these things really helped me get into the head of Se doms

1. this part of this video

2. i elaborated on this in this thing i wrote (jump to the section called “Opposites”)

3. this response i got on pdb

we already know that Ni is formed out of the raw information gathered by Se, but if Se doms take in so much information, why isn’t their Ni’s intuition well developed?

it’s because Ni describes the process of taking direct, raw data from reality and finding underlying connections between them, similar narratives that appear to underly multiple pieces of data. when connections are found, that connection then becomes the defining trait of all that information, and the original individual circumstances of the data points are lost in favor of “fusing” them together into new assumptions (that then go on to become supporting details to more narrowed down assumptions, and finally the moment that “explains everything” leading up to that point).

i think Se doms have difficulty finding the same underlying narrative between too many things at once, and have an easier time finding connections between smaller amounts of information rather than the entire reservoir at once, which is what weaker version of Ni looks like. but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad—it has its own quirks in this position. this also means that their inferior Ni stores data closer to how it concretely was since the data it holds isnt nearly as assimilated as it is in Ni dominants.

this is different from Si because the data stored in an ESxP’s Ni has not been extrapolated by a process like Ne and had those associations from Ne preserved by Si—it is simply raw data without extrapolation. which is why Se dominants have a strikingly vivid and visceral recall abilities of things that happened despite Se being a continually outward and short-term function. it’s actually their unique manifestation of Ni in the inferior position that allows them to do that. (this is also why INxJs including myself have shit recall for specific detail but the concept/lesson remains. everything in the present relates to an overarching concept which still could be considered a “stored experience” of some sort, just not a detailed one. if someone comes up to me and i absorb all the sensory details that give me the impression this guy is bad news, i’m only going to remember my perception that he was bad news. let me tell you it makes keeping track of academic sources and recalling which info i learned from which paper hell)

but back to the smaller connections at a time i was talking about, it’s hard to explain just in words so i illustrated what this looks like

Se doms are so attentive to the minute qualities of the information in front of them that on the surface they appear to be too different to be seen as having a similar thread. and i don’t mean this to make it sound as though ESxPs are shallow—what i mean is when they’re looking at things, they see them for what they concretely and individually are because of their different physical properties (though with Ti auxiliary in the ESTP, they could be comprehended as being more similar to other objects semantically/ontologically), but compare it to Ni doms who are like “fuck it theyre basically the same thing due to [similar underlying perceptual narrative property]”

Se dominants also take in so much data that there’s not really enough opportunities to use Ni because there’s a constant barrage of new information, and it’s hard to cognitively disconnect from that.

#heres what you can expect to see here btw #cognitive functions #estp #esfp #dominant se #inferior Ni #mine

[functionaxes]

Why do we sometimes act like our opposite types? (ex. ISFJ/ENTP, ISFP/ENTJ, ISTP/ENFJ, etc)

It is said that our opposite is our aspirational self, it is how we wished we were, or how we aspire to be (when healthy and mature). So thorough our inferior function... sometimes... we tend to flip the way we think and act, but is less likely to do so in a healthy way, since our inferior and tertiary functions are unconscious most of the time.

But I guess that, given the fact that we share all the functions but in different order, in some situations when we're fed up or just tired of the shit of everyone, or we just want to be self-indulgent, we act pretty differently than we usually do, and it's more likely to "adopt" an opposite personality that still shares our principal functions.

this is all my theory, tho. But I do admit I sometimes realize I have been very "INTJ-ish" sometimes so i think there's a point somewhere xd

#cognitive functions #type dynamics #mbti opposites #i think this is called uhh #subconscious type #not mine #i can sometimes act like an estp. not a full fledged one but #depending on the situation i can get more playfully rude and let loose #and i find this to be common when im interacting with ExxPs but especially ExTPs #and it comes especially easy since im heavy on Ti by default anyway so #but yeah when a situation is immediate i’ll tell people whats happening what im doing right now. send pictures so they can experience it too #when i engage Se it feels more natural to use Ti alongside it when rationalizing it rather than Fe #even though Fe is higher in my stack. just goes to show the way functions are blocked together is not arbitrary #i can imagine what its like to be an ESTP temporarily but i cant imagine that being my main approach to life yknow #gotta go back to engaging Ni or else i’ll get too worn out #i think ive gotten better at taking advantage of opportunities more recently. not in a Try Everything way but baby steps #having a friend of the opposite type is so helpful for recognizing specifically where you (both) need development #and i find that it really helps you see what these functions ARE by process of elimination when you see how much your opposite type — #struggles with what comes as first nature to you as breathing #like having those balanced aux/tert functions sort cancel each other out so you’re left with only the essentials of what the essence of — #your dominant function really is cause it sticks out like a sore thumb but its so cool to see

[functionaxes]

breakdown of how 16personalities scores its test and why it is not a valid mbti test

it’s very damaging that 16personalities is the first result for a mbti test when the reality is you can’t quantify cognitive functions like that.

simply put, 16personalities is actually the Big Five / Global 5 with a coat of paint using the mbti letter dichotomy despite the fact it does not use any jungian concepts whatsoever. the result you’re getting is that of the Big 5. see for yourself.

so lets talk about the Big 5 and what it measures. i’m sure you’ve heard of it.

background of Big 5

the Big 5 model by itself is free-floating since you’re only getting percentages for each of the five elements. the Global 5 (aka SLOAN) is a way for you to give a name those results, in letters. there is no “SLOAN” test since it’s just a naming system that uses the results from the Big 5.

it’s explained here but i’ll explain it in simpler terms:

Reserved or Social = Big 5 Extraversion score

Calm or Limbic = Big 5 Neuroticism score

Unstructured or Organized = Big 5 Conscientiousness score

Egocentric or Accomodating = Big 5 Agreeableness score

Noncurious or Inquitisive = Big 5 Openness to Experience score

it’s a sliding scale where 50% marks the tipping point between which letter you use. the notation also changes depending on the strength of each element.

Uppercase letter = Strong tendency

Lowercase letter = Mild tendency

x = In between, on average

|?| = Your strongest element

you need to think of these results as like a statistical distribution. 50% is the average, where going closer to 0% or 100% is more extreme on either end.

there’s no hard rule for what percentile encompasses “strong”, “mild”, and “average”, but personally i’d divide it like such:

0–24 or 76–100 percentile would be strong tendency, use uppercase letter.

25–40 or 60–75 percentile would be mild tendency, use lowercase letter.

41–59 percentile would be average tendency, use “x”.

let’s use my results as an example.

on the IPIP-300 my Big Five dimensions were:

Extraversion - 15th percentile

Agreeableness - 78th percentile

Concientiousness - 64th percentile

Neuroticism - 16th percentile

Openness - 60th percentile

Extraversion is strongly low (15th percentile), so i would use uppercase R for Reserved. it is also my strongest element in either direction so i will put vertical bars around it: |R|

Neuroticism is also strongly low (16th percentile), so i would use uppercase C for Calm: |R|C

Conscientiousness is mildly high (64th percentile), so i would use lowercase O for Organized: |R|Co

Agreeableness is strongly high (78th percentile), so i would use uppercase A for Accomodating: |R|CoA

Openness to Experience is mildly high (60th percentile), so i would use lowercase I for Inquitisive: |R|CoAi

my Global 5 type is RCOAI, with the notation |R|CoAi giving more information about the relative strength of each dimension.

now that’s not to say there aren’t correlations to MBTI types but correlation does not equal causation and there absolutely are exceptions to the norm. also the Big 5 is NOT testing for cognitive functions, which is what the mbti actually uses (even if hidden behind a 4-letter code).

you can see by this, i am a typical INFJ according to these semi-correlations but just barely—had my Openness scored just a point lower i’d be on the fence between RCOAI and RCOAN (the latter of which is correlated with ISFJ). in mbti though, ISFJs have a completely different perceiving axis than me: they use the Ne/Si axis and lead with dominant Si.

that said, i’ll tell you how your ““type”” is calculated on 16personalities.

how 16personalities calculates type

i’ve consistently gotten INFJ-A on 16personalities but that’s because i’m RCOAI. i am indeed an actual INFJ in the NiFeTiSe sense as well, verified by understanding the cognitive functions, and it is merely coincidence.

this is how they score it. ready?

I / E = Extraversion score

S / N = Openness score

T / F = Agreeableness score

P / J = Conscientiousness score

-A / -T = Neuroticism score (tacked on because of course the fuck it is)

so you wanna know how and why so many INFPs (actually FiNeSiTes) test as “INFJs” on that site? it’s when they score high on Conscientiousness (so in the Global 5, instead of Unorganized its Organized).

RxUAI is normally correlated with INFP but RxOAI is normally correlated with INFJ.

that means there is just one dimension that separates the INFP and INFJ result on 16personalities. and the implications are fucking awful. using the MBTI 4 letter dichotomy for a Big 5 test is such a bad move i cant even BEGIN to describe why, but that’s partially why i made this blog in the first place— to rip apart typology myths that are fundamentally wrong or flawed while also offering explanations as to why (and hopefully getting more people to understand it correctly and pass on valid information).

in reality, INFJs and INFPs share absolutely nothing in common functions-wise.

an INFJ’s dominant-inferior axis is one of perceiving (Ni/Se) and their balanced auxiliary-tertiary axis is their judging (Fe/Ti). Ni(Fe-Ti)Se.

an INFP’s dominant-inferior axis is one of judging (Fi/Te) and their balanced auxiliary-tertiary axis is their perceiving (Ne/Si). Fi(Ne-Si)Te.

so what is MBTI then actually??

the MBTI and cognitive functions are not setting out to describe personality traits. they are describing patterns of cognition as feedback between two parts of the same process (the function axes), like systole and diastole of the heart, or a walk cycle with your two legs driving you forward. cognitive functions are not concerned with boxing people in to define motivations or disposition, it just tells how information is assembled and processed in the psyche. this has real value in examining and analyzing why and how people process and discern information the way they do, and how to understand oneself and each other in a deeper way using shared descriptors for how we perceive and judge information. it is especially helpful for me as someone who perceives things deeply but has trouble making sense of those experiences without the semantics to understand and to articulate them. it’s not a tool to box you in, but a tool to explain what already exists. it’s a lot more flexible than you think.

one’s cognition can be split into two divisions: Perception and Judging.

the role of Perception in the psyche is the incidental synthesis of information without discriminating, and the role of Judgment is to differentiate between information sources and organize that information into definite concepts and discrete ideas. this article explains it well.

everyone does both. however, people will have more of a focus on either Judgement or Perception, finding the most compelling sense of “truth” from one of these divisions over the other.

to an INFJ, an ultimate sense of truth is found in their Perception processes (Ni and Se), and their Judgement processes (Fe and Ti) serve to rationalize/make sense of those perceptions.

to an INFP, an ultimate sense of truth is found in their Judgement processes (Fi and Te), and their Perception processes (Ne and Si) serve to contextualize those judgements.

that is why the axes (the dominant-inferior and auxiliary-tertiary) are formed, and why the placement of these functions matter, because they will manifest differently depending on where they are and what “role” they play in the functional stack.

#mbti #big 5 #16personalities #cognitive functions #typology