Ni/Se, Ne/Si, Fi/Te, Fe/Ti: mated pairs?

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the interactions of functions within a person, or interpersonal relationships?

 

I think it depends on the people. They can either fight against each for dominance or complement each other. But as they say, opposites attract. So, even if it doesn't fit, there's something appealing or compelling about interacting with our opposites. I think Ti is a nice counterbalance to Fe, and vice versa.

 

I have sincere trouble understanding Fe. In a manner of speaking, I am afraid of Fe. It does not yield to reason, evidence, or even reality. It is not cerebral. It is raw sensibility. It responds to emotion, not thought. In a symbolic sense, it is the heart.

Ti is not attentive to the feelings of others. It does not place value on how people feel, but rather how they think. It places significance on ideas, truths, and justice. In a symbolic sense, it is the mind.

And yet, for a person to be complete, there has to be a balance between the heart and mind. Someone who is only guided by their heart will overreact, exaggerate, complain, deceive, act passively aggressively, and create endless drama for themselves and others. Someone who is only guided by their mind will detach from, criticize, and humiliate others. For a person to sustain healthy relationships, they need both Ti and Fe. Humans are both emotional and cerebral creatures, and relationships are built on trust and respect.

 

It does yield to reason, but you must use human oriented value arguments. Or if you will the appeal to emotion. It's a paradox because this is after all a logical fallacy, yet the best argument to use on a Fe user.

There is a lot of complementarity between these seemingly opposite functions in the person her/himself. While it seems like they are inherent opposites, in reality they will come to a full circle where they facilitate their needs in a symbiotic union. Look into Jung's concept of Individuation. It is essentially the process of the psyche, personality rounding itself fully, achieving a state of wholesomeness. This is the reason for the instinctual attraction to those who carry out inferior functions as their dominants because we naturally gravitate to this completion.

However, there is quite some difficulty in sustaining these relationships, maybe because the attraction is just a reminder that we must achieve this union within ourselves first and foremost.

 

The fact that it yields to the lack of reason is not evidence that it yields to reason. The only reasonable conclusion is that you can't use reason with Fe.

 

If you define reason as formal logic, then you are correct.

To me all judging functions as reasoning processes, have a certain sense of "logic" to them, which is after all needed for any discerning capability. It is arguable whether these adhere to any standard notions of reason, but they can certainly be influenced and swayed with the right kind of appeal.

 

+1

you guys are awesome. i need to come to the forums more often.

 

I think you have your terms mixed up. Jung referred to judging functions as "rational" processes, not "reasonable" processes. And he referred to them as "rational" only in the sense that they were how people came to decisions or judged significance, not anything to do with reasoning or formal logic.

 

They are "rational" because they use varying criteria to create judgments, this means they do employ a sort of reasoning to do this. What kind of reasoning it is depends further along the line on the function and the person.

Does that clear up the semantic confusion?

 

Not really. "Varying criteria to create judgment" is not a valid definition of reasoning. Fe works primarily off of value judgments, which have no basis in reasoning, although they may be considered rational. Rational is not the same as reasoning. Rational can mean either "reasonable" or "sensible". Either consistent with thought or with emotion.

 

I wrote an entire essay on this a long time ago, too. If you don't know who wildcat is, he's the one who inspired me to write it.

When I read what Wildcat posted, something clicked, and I remembered something I had thought of while reading Jung's work. What do you think of this:

Te and Fi both consider the existence of a thing in itself to be a truth, and subjugate expression to existence. Te sees things that actually exist in an external reality, data. Fi sees things that actually exist in an internal reality, emotions. They create rules, but only based on their observations of what exists.

Fe and Ti both consider rules aspects of reality, and subjugate reality and expression to rules. Ti tries to use rules to define/predict internally what exists (or should exist) in external reality, data. Fe tries to use rules to define/predict externally what exists (or should exist) in internal reality, emotions.

Therefore, Te and Fi are in fact the same process engaged in reverse, as are Fe and Ti. This is why you always see those processes together in the initial four functions.

This means that people with Te and Fi are focused on describing what's there as an assumed truth, and people with Ti and Fe attempt to define what should be there using rules and principles. Does this make any sense so far?

Now, you may think I've mistaken Te and Fi for perceiving functions, but I haven't. Their function is still to evaluate things in terms of rules, they just base these rules on what they actually perceive within their respective forms of reality, rather than seeing rules an independent entities to which one can subjugate reality as Ti and Fe do. So, Te/Fi subject their rules to reality, and Ti/Fe subject their reality to rules.

The perceptions themselves, however, are separate, and simply feed the above processes.

Se and Ni both deal with reality as it happens, believe it or not. Se simply appears to look outwardly at reality as it happens, and unconsciously is reacting to an abstract model of it created by the senses and mind, believing it to be reality. In other words, Ni works unconsciously, creating a representation of reality. Because we only perceive things in our minds, through our senses, we cannot see reality, only a representation of it. Whoever said, "We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are" was quite correct.

Ni is a bit different. It focuses on the creation of the abstaction itself, aware that it is only creating a representation of reality. With the awareness of your mind constructing this abstraction, you have to consciously focus on creating it. But with this awareness, you aren't limited to representations of reality. You can take an awareness of any given thing, and represent it internally. Se works unconsciously, feeding data from the senses with which you consciously try to create the abstractions. In other words, Se percieves the "reality", Ni perceives the internal construction of the "reality".

Si and Ne both actually try to fit reality into patterns. Si simply appears to compare the reality that exists to reality that has previously been experienced. But truthfully, it is actually comparing the abstraction just unconsciously created to represent "reality" with a previous set of abstractions that it believed did the same. Ne works unconsciously, perceiving obvious patterns via which to compare previous abstractions with the new one, and the overlapping and most common trends in these result in "standards" by which reality is judged, as well as memories of how one situation was, based on how it differed from another.

Ne is different, again. It focuses on the process of seeking the patterns in the data itself, aware that it seeks patterns and not previous experiences. However, with the awareness that the patterns are being sought, it can look for patterns in several ways, rather than simply through previous experiences and information. It can proactively see patterns between things that are around it, things it has experenced before, and things that it has envisioned. It constantly tries to create new patterns and new associations. Si works unconsciously, holding up previous memories and associations from which patterns can be detected. Without an awareness of previous data, there would nothing from which to deduce patterns.

So, to recap, this means there are four two-sided functions:

Ti/Fe -- Creates rules by which to subjugate reality.
Fi/Te -- Creates rules which are determined by reality.
Se/Ni -- Deals with the experience and construction of our reality.
Si/Ne -- Deals with the comparison of reality to other things.

 

I use the broadest possible terms when discussing functions, because I consider them at the most basic levels from where they diverge in different paths; the kind of judgments (logic or value based) they make is secondary to the mechanism of the function itself, and that's why I said there are different kinds of reasoning they use. The definition of reason and reasoning I'm using in conjunction with this is also the most rudimentary one; simply the arrival to a conclusion, or judgment.

Whether they produce logical or value based judgments is something I consider as a separate layer to the function.

 

I would say that defining reasoning as "the arrival or conclusion or judgment" is a vernacular definition more than a broad definition. Either way, it seems to be important to you to define reasoning as synonymous for judging, regardless of whether that reasoning is actually based on reason. I can't say I understand your reasoning as to why you wish to confuse the language in this fashion. That is perhaps why Jung, and a good share of other psychologists in this field, chose the word "rational" as a term for decision making divorced of the reasoning process.

But what we can agree on is that Feeling does not use reasoning in the conventional sense. Feeling is a means of forming conclusions or judgments, usually based on emotions or values rather than on thought or reason.

 

Fi is based on personal value judgments. Fe is based on reasoning how somehting will effect others. I don't see a problem with calling Fe reasonable, but Fi certainly is not.

 

That is not reasoning. That is sensibility.

 

Oddly, from my pov it is actually more precise because it doesn't compartmentalize functions into overly rigid boxes allowing for higher variety of their manifestations, while still satisfying the basic definition of how they work, either way I think the problem is that we're stuck in a semantic disagreement.

My definition of reasoning is not that fallacious, which you can see if you look up any official definition of it.

It is just used to accommodate more possibilities within the context of functions.

 

Your definition is fallacious, which is the problem I have with it. There are also two different definitions of reason. The first being simply "A basis" and the second being "consistent with logic". The latter is what is referred to when speaking of "reasoning", not the former.

I have no problem with you using your own vernacular definition of reason, but it isn't a valid definition in the psychological sense or in the sense of how they have been defined by Jung.

Using such fuzzy language will not provide a better understanding of the functions since few people will probably grasp what you are truly talking about.

 

Yes, there are two different definitions of reason, one of which I am using. Being that it is still defined as reason, what is so fallacious about it?

So it is rather that you think I'm misusing it in the context of functions? I doubt I've missed something, but I want to see what definition in particular you have in mind.

 

The fact that you stick, "ing" on the end of it. As I said, the definition of reason that means "a basis or cause" is not the reason referred to in the word "reasoning". The word "reasoning" refers to the second definition, as in "consistent with logic".

As I said before, you would be better off using the word "rational". That is what Jung used. "Rational" can be used in the broad sense of being consistent with either coherent thought (reason) or emotions (sensibility) when forming decisions or conclusions.