Originally Posted by
labcoat
Slave Ni. Here's how I see it:
Intuition and sensation work as pairs. Sensation offers the "real" information, intuition gives only the phantom concept that makes it easy for us to think by taking in a shitload of concepts at the same time.
In the case of Ne-Si, the subjective perception is the "real information". You know how you saw something, but leave in the middle what it really was. This gives a certain freedom, as what you saw could literally be anything. I see Ne as the function that tries to define or redefine everything it takes in: it's what makes us INTj's wonder "what is Ni? What is Se? I know what it looks like, but what is it really?"
Ni-Se works the opposite way. You first recognize the object as something already seen before, and then take control over the perception of it, leaving the meaning of the objective stuff intact. The subjective percept, or the 'situation', is something artificial, which you can then think and speak about with greater efficiency.
I've told you before that I think slave functioning means "the base (atomistic) experience of reality". I think that when one reads a sentence, the first appraisal of the meaning of it, occurs through the slave type.
So when the both of us read a sentence, I would be using Ne, whereas you would be using Ni as a perceptive function. I'm going to take a guess that....
when you see a word like 'energy', you don't hessistate much to attribute meaning to this word. The word energy pretty much has a meaning that can be taken for granted, and that can easily be imported into a different context (what Ni does).
But for me, it's different. When I see 'energy', the first thing that comes to mind is that I don't have sufficient "real information" to understand it's meaning. Energy isn't really a word that connects to a lot of concrete subjective perceptions, so as a concept I distrust it.
The roles would probably be reversed in the case of those terms that smilingeyes is so fond of: internal, external, taciturn, narrator... Those don't "mean" anything from Ni-Se's standpoint, but to Ne-Si they are useful, as long as there are observations at the ready to identify them with.
That preference to think of objects as "real" as opposed to phantom concepts could also explain a thing or to about your irritation towards mathematical jargon. (not that I'm anywhere near fond of it myself)