[jndiii]

	Originally Posted by Hariar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That is sidestepping the issue.

No sidestep. Science is not a collective, it is a methodology.

	If only one guy has expert knowledge in a field, we may have no criticial voices on the topic other than his own, which is pretty bad.

Science isn't pronouncements from on high, whether made by one person or many.

	Four states of matter? Now that can't be an accurate formulation.

List the extras. Or the one that isn't a state of matter.

The functions are more than just labels, they describe how the mind takes in and processes information. That's all fine and dandy, but then they are combined through 'dominant' roles, 'auxiliary' roles etc. This implies something about how the brain is wired, just like the four elements implies something about the universe on micro scale. And the four elements are terribly wrong here. So I have patience and restraint.

Um, no. They are types. They are labels. The labels have meaning insofar as they useful map to real-world observations.

Like you mention w/r to MBTI, I don't think of functions as relating to any actual wiring of the brain, but as classifications of how Jung observed the human mind to work.

Just to be more specific: when doing my own personal validation checks of the MBTI, I don't think of 'INTJs', 'ESFPs', 'ISFJs' etc. Instead I think 'persons who test as INTJs', 'persons who test as ESFPs', 'persons who test as ISFJs' etc. This is not for fear of mistyping, obviously, as this already assumes validity. With 'cognitive functions', however, things seem get much more complex, such that layman thinking does not seem get very far in terms of validation. We would be more dependent on neurobiology to get anywhere.

The cognitive functions aren't so much more complex, but the concepts are nonesuch, very difficult to differentiate. Ti or Te? Unless you observe people and actively look for the differences in approach between those who (apparently) type as Ti or Te, you're not going to have a clear idea of what Jung was talking about. It took me several months to get a good idea what the differences are, and I'm still refining that understanding. The understanding can be learned, but it can't really be codified. It's a worldview, not a thing to be observed. A worldview cannot be proved or disproved, but it can be mapped. If the mapping is useful, then the typology is useful.

[Hariar]

	Originally Posted by jndiii To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	No sidestep. Science is not a collective, it is a methodology.

Of which peer review (in an extended meaning of the word) is a crucial bit.

	Science isn't pronouncements from on high, whether made by one person or many.

And that is exactly why one person alone is bad. Science is about attempting to falsify theories, for which many do much better than one.

	List the extras. Or the one that isn't a state of matter.

Creating a list would be ambitious, but let's for example mention superfluidity.

	Um, no. They are types. They are labels. The labels have meaning insofar as they useful map to real-world observations. Like you mention w/r to MBTI, I don't think of functions as relating to any actual wiring of the brain, but as classifications of how Jung observed the human mind to work.

The functions are separate entities, you can treat them independently of one another. This must necessarily assume something about how the human mind is constructed beyond the basics.

It's a matter of precision. One can say that INFJs and INTJs are highly similar because they have "the same dominant function", but 'same' is a too strong word when the similarities could be cause by something pretty different after all, i.e. there does not have to be anything that is 'the same' between the two any more than compared to other types.

[jndiii]

	Originally Posted by Hariar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Creating a list would be ambitious, but let's for example mention superfluidity.

It's still a typology, whether discussing classical or exotic states. Note that it is entirely arbitrary to classify superfluidity as being a different state.

The functions are separate entities, you can treat them independently of one another. This must necessarily assume something about how the human mind is constructed beyond the basics. It's a matter of precision. One can say that INFJs and INTJs are highly similar because they have "the same dominant function", but 'same' is a too strong word when the similarities could be cause by something pretty different after all, i.e. there does not have to be anything that is 'the same' between the two any more than compared to other types.

No, the functions are an arbitrary typology, thus each type is 100% dependent upon the rest. If the person or behavior being classified fits in one type, they are not of any other type, by definition. They are descriptions, not entities. That INFJs are similar to INTJs is part of the typology. Discussion of the underlying reality is interesting, but at that point it is no longer typology. At best, one can map the typology to the underlying reality.

That said, people often start treating the typology as describing real entities, which is a categorical error. Sometimes it's just a matter of simplicity and metaphor, especially among those familiar with the typology: "You're offending my Fi," for example, is merely a fast way of saying "those kinds of things and behaviors that you associate with Fi, which is merely a type and not a real entity, describe the quality of offense that I feel right now." But such sloppy language can lead those who haven't studied the topic for long to believe that there are real (at least hypothetically real) entities that Jung discovered, as opposed to a sophisticated typology based on years of observation.

[reckful]

^ I'm not a philosophy-of-science guy, so pardon me if this is super-basic stuff, but...

Do you consider male and female (as applied to people) an "arbitrary typology"?

Do you consider classifying mammals into species based on breeding compatibility (or however they do it) an "arbitrary typology"?

If the answer to those questions is no, are you saying you're sure that there's no way that, say, introversion and extraversion could ever be established as corresponding to some biologically real underlying duality that would render those categories non-arbitrary?

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm surprised that, instead of saying introversion/extraversion is an "arbitrary typology," you're not saying we don't know yet to what extent introversion/extraversion is just a theoretical typology arbitrarily imposed on the data and to what extent there's a real underlying biological introversion/extraversion duality — for (presumably) evolutionary reasons we may never fully understand — that corresponds to the theoretical typology (thus rendering it non-arbitrary).

ADDED: And, when I say categories and duality, I'm not intending to rule out the possibility that it could turn out that the underlying duality exhibits something like a normal distribution, with lots of people in or near the middle.

[jndiii]

	Originally Posted by reckful To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	^ I'm not a philosophy-of-science guy, so pardon me if this is super-basic stuff, but... Do you consider male and female (as applied to people) an "arbitrary typology"?

Male vs female? No, that's a concrete truth, like pointing at an apple and saying "apple."
Masculine vs feminine, on the other hand, is an arbitrary archetype, which doesn't map 100% to male vs female.

But most aspects of science start out as a typology: you see things, and classify things, and if you can't do any real experiments to see what's behind it all, you're kind of stuck with the typology. For instance, in astronomy, the fuzzy things in the sky were originally all called "nebulae" which is Latin for "fuzzy", more or less. Then when we had better instruments and other discoveries, and we distinguished different kinds of nebulae. Some of these nebulae were discovered to be made of stars, and called "galaxies" ... then the typology of galaxies began, with spiral, elliptical and irregular galaxies, and the spiral galaxies were further subtyped into kinds of spirals like barred spirals and so on.

Particle physics had a similar evolution, starting as a kind of zoology/typology of particles with arbitrary names and classifications, but concrete experiments helped sort things out.

The point is, you see something and name it, but the naming tells you nothing. It's a label. As Feynman points out in one of his pseudo-autobiographies, when someone knows the name of a bird, and then points at the bird and calls it by its proper name, no information has been conveyed about the bird itself. You have to study the bird to learn about it.

Whether or not Pluto is really a "planet" doesn't tell you much about Pluto.

That's what Jung was doing, he was observing things and naming them. He also tried to describe them as best he could, but the descriptions were arbitrary in the sense that they were all dualities: extroversion vs introversion, thinking vs feeling, intuition vs sensing. Even as he did so, he pointed out that his description of these things are archetypes: that no real people are like his descriptions, that there are mixtures of these archetypes, and that there appeared to be some sort of pattern in the mixtures. But it is all archetypes, all a typology.

	If the answer to those questions is no, are you saying you're sure that there's no way that, say, introversion and extraversion could ever be established as corresponding to some biologically real underlying duality that would render those categories non-arbitrary?

Certainly, it's possible that a typology directly maps 100% to some underlying reality, but that doesn't change the fact that the original understanding was little more than a naming and classification, as in particle physics. The main difference between particle physics and introversion/extroversion is that the former could benefit from experiment, while the latter largely eludes measurement.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm surprised that, instead of saying introversion/extraversion is an "arbitrary typology," you're not saying we don't know yet to what extent introversion/extraversion is just a theoretical typology arbitrarily imposed on the data and to what extent there's a real underlying biological introversion/extraversion duality — for (presumably) evolutionary reasons we may never fully understand — that corresponds to the theoretical typology (thus rendering it non-arbitrary).

I think I can see where you're going with this. I find "theoretical typology" to be an oxymoron, though. I see kind of a progression sort of like "typology -> hypothesis -> theory". A typology is what you have when you really don't have enough information to do much more than name and classify things: there is nothing from which to build a falsifiable hypothesis or a predictive theory. What does Introversion predict? That someone is introverted, and tend to behave in introverted ways. And even then, it doesn't predict that: most humans tend to exhibit some extroverted and some introverted behaviors.

So, the reason I'm making the distinction between typologies on the one hand and hypothesis and theory on the other is that just a science sometimes needs to use typologies as a first (learning) step, recognizing that you're using a typology helps to clarify that you're still in the sheer guesswork stage, just gathering information and trying to make sense of it. There is no theory. There's not enough information to come up with a theory that can be tested. There's just barely enough information to talk about it and perhaps come to a meeting of the minds about what we do and don't know.

	ADDED: And, when I say categories and duality, I'm not intending to rule out the possibility that it could turn out that the underlying duality exhibits something like a normal distribution, with lots of people in or near the middle.

Yeah, I figured as much.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


Just as you need to study the bird to know it, I find the concept of a sliding scale of I vs E to be of limited usefulness. It presumes we already know what I is and what E is, and that somehow we can quantify them and even posit that sometimes they're more or less equal. Part of what I've been doing over the past few years now is to learn and refine what these qualities are, what people mean by them, and more specifically what Jung meant by them. I believe his function theory is a more accurate picture of I vs E than your sliding scale: that people are introverted or extroverted in particular ways, and that these ways/qualities aren't on a sliding scale, but are archetypes in themselves. That isn't to say I believe that function theory is "true", but that it is more useful.

[Fecal McAngry]

	Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The past few weeks I have been studying the cognitive functions to get a clearer understanding of how I use them. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of contradictory or at least slightly different interpretations of the cognitive function definitions posted online. Where is the best place for accurate and detailed definitions?

Have you read Jung's original descriptions? Have you read Lenore Thomson Bentz' book?

[Hariar]

Originally Posted by jndiii To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

No, the functions are an arbitrary typology, thus each type is 100% dependent upon the rest. If the person or behavior being classified fits in one type, they are not of any other type, by definition. They are descriptions, not entities. That INFJs are similar to INTJs is part of the typology. Discussion of the underlying reality is interesting, but at that point it is no longer typology. At best, one can map the typology to the underlying reality. That said, people often start treating the typology as describing real entities, which is a categorical error. Sometimes it's just a matter of simplicity and metaphor, especially among those familiar with the typology: "You're offending my Fi," for example, is merely a fast way of saying "those kinds of things and behaviors that you associate with Fi, which is merely a type and not a real entity, describe the quality of offense that I feel right now." But such sloppy language can lead those who haven't studied the topic for long to believe that there are real (at least hypothetically real) entities that Jung discovered, as opposed to a sophisticated typology based on years of observation.

It is typology to say that an INTJ is

Dominant: Introverted Intuition
Auxiliary: Extraverted Thinking
Tertiary: Introverted Feeling
Inferior: Extraverted Sensing

while an INFJ is

Dominant: Introverted Intuition
Auxiliary: Extraverted Feeling
Tertiary: Introverted Thinking
Inferior: Extraverted Sensing

?

How can you recognise for all 16 types no less than 4 distinct functions; where some functions are even supposed to have very little visibility?

I have a hard time believing that is what Jung actually did. I am much more inclined to believe that he used symmetry arguments and from this distributed the functions to the types in a way which would, based on their personalities, give the best fit.

[My Feral Shadow]

	Originally Posted by Fecal McAngry To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Have you read Jung's original descriptions? Have you read Lenore Thomson Bentz' book?

Yes on Jungs descriptions and no on the book. Although I have read excerpts online.

[scorpiomover]

	Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Thanks. I'm thinking a stack of pancakes with sausage would beat experience and logic right now. The problem is that the Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood is the only place serving at this hour. Maybe my answers are in a fortune cookie. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Nice. If that was your way of saying that I was too terse, then thanks for letting me know. A lot of people hate my wall of text. I was trying out being more terse.

I'll explain in more detail:

	Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The past few weeks I have been studying the cognitive functions to get a clearer understanding of how I use them. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of contradictory or at least slightly different interpretations of the cognitive function definitions posted online.

"Subjective perception of cognition is related to mood and not performance" = When asked to report side effects of a drug, the patients had to answer questions about their behaviour and feelings. The answers didn't really give answers that reflected what what objective machine-based tests measured. The answers did reflect how the patient was feeling that day, such as answering questions more positively when they had received some good news that had nothing to do with anything related to the experiment, and answering questions more negatively when they had received some bad news.

MBTI questions also require people to answer questions about their own behaviour and feelings. Answering those questions, also requires perceptions of cognition. So it has the same issues as these tests, namely, that how someone was feeling that day, and how he/she interpreted the answers accordingly, has a great fluctuation on those answers, while performance, what you actually do, how you actually think, doesn't have much effect on the answers. Since performance is the whole point of an MBTI test, the answers more reflect how people feel, than what type the person is. Hence, why people who take self-administered tests seem to take years of investigation to be sure of their type.

When people are trying to describe what the functions do, they are relying on observing who has them, and what traits they show, which they do via the data they have access to. However, a lot of their types, are misdiagnosed for years. Different sets of test data show different sets of results, depending on how the subjects were feeling on those days. So the different people, who have access to different sets of data, end up with different sets of people with the same functions, resulting in a different commonality of behaviour, and consequently, a different description for the same functions.

	Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Where is the best place for accurate and detailed definitions?

I've tested myself lots of times. According to these tests, I am INTP, ENTP, INFP, and INFJ. If I live long enough, and tests continue as they have in the past, I'll almost certainly test as ESFJ at some point. So I don't rely on tests for an accurate reading. I see them as more of a guide, giving indications of what might be someone's type.

The way I finally figured out that I was an INTP, was when I found a thread called "You know you're an INTP when..." and well over 90% of what was written on the 20+ pages, was all stuff I had done, and most of it, I still did. When I came here, it became increasingly clear that I am definitely NOT like an INTJ.

If I would type anyone personally, I would just ask them to read the posts of such a thread on the 16 types, and answer which one(s) resonate most strongly with his/her personal experiences. I recommend such threads to everyone.

Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I want to learn more about how the functions work in different combinations. I would like to learn more about how the combo of Ti-Ne-Si works together vs Ni-Te-Fi. I would like to have more detailed info on how Si or Fi look and act in the tertiary position but all I seem to find are descriptions of them in the dominant or supporting rolls. And of course some details on the inferior functions would be nice.

One way I know, is by observing people with similar functions, and then seeing what they have in common. Another is analysing people with the same type, and working out how their functions produce the exact behavioural patterns that seems to be extremely common with them. You can also read what others say about them. But remember, the descriptions differ a lot, and so they are not that guaranteed, and are more of a guide, than a rule-book.

	Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What are the most accurate tests out of all the free,internet MBTI or Jung style tests?

The study I quoted above, suggests that any self-administered test, would be incredibly biased. You'd need to know the person's mood when they took the test, to know what the bias was. So those tests have to calibrate for bias, to be reasonably accurate. Plus, since self-administered tests do not highlight differences in performance as strongly as mood, differences appear more slight, and there are more errors in the answers, meaning that tests probably under-estimate the number of questions required to get an accurate reading.

However, people know their experiences, and in my experience, people are highly consistent in their habits and their approaches to situations. Thus, the more info that one can get about their experiences, how they perceived them, and how they handled them, the better.

In my personal experience, a lot of people generally seem to talk like their MBTI functions, in order. INTPs start with reasoning, and follow it to an answer. INTJs start with a hypothesis and then (if needed) support it with as many scientific studies as needed to prove their point. INFJs start with a theory about people, and then support it with lots of testimony from lots of people. People do sometimes use a different approach, but in the main, have a specific style of talking, that corresponds to their MBTI type.

So I would have to say that the best way to type someone, is to study their behaviour, and figure it out for yourself, by comparing to others of that type. Experience.

Originally Posted by My Feral Shadow To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I score as one type on the MBTI style tests but a different type on the Jung/cog style tests. I have taken the many tests posted in the TESTS section of this forum. My scores seem to be pretty close and consistent across the board within each test type. The discrepancy between each test type is very clear. I can't be both types. Is it my interpretation of the questions causing the error or the accuracy of the tests?

Lots of different tests would average out the mood. However, each test calculates the same answers differently, according to their perceptions of how the mind's behaviour subdivides into categories. Can't say which is the best, until we can objectively measure the accuracy of each test.

So again, to be sure of what you are, you have to look at how others behave of the types you might be. When I ask people to do this, they are usually very clear which type they belong to.

Wall of text completed for this post.