Discourse on Intuition

[Gilly]

There are two parts to a tree.

One part is its physical existence: that which reflects light and creates a sensory impression on the brain, allowing it to be physically perceived. The green leaves, the branches, the trunk, the bark...these are its external traits.

But it has internal traits, too, and these are precisely what the words that I use to describe the tree represent. When I say those words, an image is conjured in your head, a vague generalization of what a tree looks like. But that is not a real "tree." That is intuition: the vague representation of that which innumerable physical entities are actual manifestations of.

In this sense, language is a manifestation of human intuition. It is symbolic. It takes physical creates (sounds and pictures) and uses our capacity for symbolic interpretation to attach meaning to them. A leaf is not actually a tangible thing; it is a term that is used to refer to a "type" of thing.

Now there is another kind of intuition, one which examines not names of things, places, or any other kind of proper kind of tangible existence, but the processes that these things can be observed as parts of. Take the verb, "run." It is not the act of running in any specific sense; it refers to the abstract process that all instances of "running" have in common: the movement of the legs such as to propel the physical body. "Running" refers to all instances of this particular kind of movement that take place.

This is intuition. This sense of "sharing" qualities, or "not sharing" them, is what is examined by intuition. Intuition takes tangible, physical qualities, and abstracts them so that what is being observed might be related to other instances of the same physical qualities

Example: many people relate Ni to nostalgia in some ways. Here's why: we often find ourselves in a place, or hearing music, or speaking with a person, or performing some activity, and it reminds us of something we have experienced in the past. This "reminding" is the association of qualities of the present moment with qualities of another place in time. This is the "connection," the line between the past and the present, that is drawn upon making an association. Say I find myself in an airplane, looking out the window. In this situation, I am simultaneously bombarded in my own mind by feelings of wist, of times that I have flown to college, back home, to visit grandparents, to go to their funerals, to see friends, to leave them...the awareness of the "similarness" brings me back to all of these circumstances that share the abstraction of "looking out of a plane window" and brings all relevant experiences to the surface.

Next installment: Intuition as an "internal" element.

[tcaudilllg]

Good post. I learned something.

[idolatrie]

This made me think of Magritte's 'The Treachery of Images'.

[Gilly]

I am honored.

[Gilly]

By both of you.

[strrrng]

Say I find myself in an airplane, looking out the window. In this situation, I am simultaneously bombarded in my own mind by feelings of wist, of times that I have flown to college, back home, to visit grandparents, to go to their funerals, to see friends, to leave them...the awareness of the "similarness" brings me back to all of these circumstances that share the abstraction of "looking out of a plane window" and brings all relevant experiences to the surface.

But this is a concrete association, no? Unless you were focused on the underlying feelings/themes in those experiences. But how is looking out of a plane window an abstraction?

[aestrivex]

This is intuition. This sense of "sharing" qualities, or "not sharing" them, is what is examined by intuition. Intuition takes tangible, physical qualities, and abstracts them so that what is being observed might be related to other instances of the same physical qualities

yes. associations between stimuli. nailed it.

[Gilly]

But this is a concrete association, no? Unless you were focused on the underlying feelings/themes in those experiences. But how is looking out of a plane window an abstraction?

Because looking out a plane window does not describe one particular concrete experience; it can describe many. It is a concrete association in the sense that physical factors are being compared in order to relate the situation to other situations, but by virtue of not being focused specifically on the at-hand experience, via association with past experiences, it is most definitely an abstraction.

And yes, when Ni is blocked with Fe, what is noticed more acutely are the feelings and personal themes associated with the situation, rather than how the physical/concrete/"external" aspects of the situation compare, which would be Ni blocked with Te.

[Expat]

Gilly, the way you described it, it's exactly the way I see it.

[Gilly]

Excellent I'm glad this seems to be making sense to people.

[Expat]

Excellent I'm glad this seems to be making sense to people.

Well, it does to some, but there are others who seem to deny the very concept of Ni+Fe being significantly different from Ni+Te. Which to me makes no sense.

[Ritella]

Gilly, do you mean this to be a description of Ni, specifically? I can understand the description but I don't really relate to it...

[Gilly]

No, the idea of "abstractions" applies to both forms of intuition. The specific description I gave, the one about the plane window, that was Ni, but the rest is relevant to both.

[Ritella]

<shrug> it sounds super foreign to me. i wonder if any Ne ego types will identify with it.

[Gilly]

*shrug* Maybe you're not intuitive.

[Expat]

*shrug* Maybe you're not intuitive.

Maybe, but maybe what you described is really more a Ni than Ne thing.

[aka-kitsune]

I also think role plays a significant part in NiFe association. At least it always seems to me that these personal sensory things are so closely bound with my feeling memories and associations in a very Proustian manner.

[tcaudilllg]

He did a good job because he firmly distinguished S from N. He said that S was the form, N was the substance. He also showed how S/N duality works: seeing something in the "now" reminds oneself of things seen previously. Most importantly, he got down to the very foundation of what intuition is: a substance comparator.

[Ritella]

*shrug* Maybe you're not intuitive.

are we playing the "name the implicit assumption game"?
Okay then:

Maybe you're not Ni ego.

Maybe you're not intuitive.

Maybe you're not really Gilly.

Maybe you didn't even write that paragraph.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

This also explains why IEIs can be addicted too much to those fantasy roleplaying games, I think. Or maybe not as bad as other types because we understand our fantasy natures too well having been criticized for it more than others.

Or how we both weren't that good in sports when were younger because its too purely concrete and goal-objectivist (straight man powers eww) instead of all the possibilities that could happen. Even the 'game plans' were set with too many limited rules and structures for my liking, and the actual game itself makes for bad drama. We saw too many possibilities and stuff. It's associated with painfully bad memories because it really was as simple as 'putting the ball into the hole' and we didn't like that. We naturally see the connectiveness into other areas, that's where creativity comes into play. But the "manly" 'just do it' approach does not allow for true creativity and richness. So even though we were physically as capable, our makes us realistically poor warriors and assassins.

Maybe it's not what we seek. Maybe it's something we have to have for our own good. I don't think I actively go out to find . I just simply need it to direct my Ni and put me on a path already. It's about accomplishing my potential I think, not necessarily what I love or enjoy. (As an IEI I get too wrapped up into that.)

But on the bright side? We can use that to unify things and to bring people together and become true humanitarians. I also think we can truly find out what works and what doesn't because we're like watching all the systems at the same time you know. Even though we're not being very goal-directed or ambitious ourselves, we're keeping a watchful eye on all the institutions and structures.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

So therefore, I don't get why people want to be like everybody else in the long run. We need to pay attention to our children true strengths and functions from an early age.

If this socionics shit is true, then realistically, you'd have a childhood development plan to unlock their true potential for each kid. The world wouldn't be perfect (no such thing exists, cause ya know -boring. zzz), but it would be way better. It might even be challenging, but in a way that's actually challenging for the individual instead of cruelly putting people into situations that are beyond their natural psychological control.

Our current school systems are way beyond archaic. We've evolved in a primeval sense but we haven't quite realized it yet. So the methods and techniques need to start evolving rapidly with us. I think this is another method of how my operates. It's like both slow and patient and really fast and 'I want it nooooow!' at the same time. I don't see all possibilities as much as I see, like - the nostalgic connection you were talking about.

But now that I'm really starting to understand the inherent nature of the functions I am learning that practically applying this shit is easier said than done, and really it's not about that anyway.

[tcaudilllg]

I also think role plays a significant part in NiFe association. At least it always seems to me that these personal sensory things are so closely bound with my feeling memories and associations in a very Proustian manner.

Everybody feels that, I think. It's a matter of the aspects, not the elements when you take memory into account. I would think that Ni brings with it observations of instance comparison (Ne) which in turn have Si associations. It's just the same as when you experience a sensation; identify a will behind it; and then are reminded of what part that will played in the past. (which is how SiFe deals with Ni). You see a conflict; you observe the fundamental forces behind it; and recall what the previous roles of those forces was.

That said, I think those Si associations would be something along the lines of revisited experience, or an initiative to conflict. If you see a bad thing happening over again, you are like to contest the situation.

[Christy B]

<shrug> it sounds super foreign to me. i wonder if any Ne ego types will identify with it.

It makes sense to me, but I do not identify with it. I think it is a wonderful description of intuition, though I certainly would not describe Ne this way. Could be that Gilly is Ni person describing what he believes both Ni and Ne are and so the description is resonating with Ni valuers rather than Ne valuers (?).

Good post Gilly. This really helps me to understand Ni better!

[Wynch]

An Ne-ego opinion:

Although the description focuses mainly on Ni, the theme of intuition as abstraction and association is equally applicable to Ne. The difference lies in seeing something through a plane window versus seeing something. Take a tree, for example. If you look at a tree it's possible to see the single individual tree that you are looking at and define its characteristic. But if you consider it abstractly and view the tree as simply "tree", then you create an array of possibilities, like shapes and colors of leaves, heights, different barks, growth shapes, etc. Similarly, if you look at a leaf, recognize that it's shaped like a triangle, then you can say that the leaf is a triangle. From there you can exchange triangular associations with the leaf. Similar to Ni, Ne uses association in order to define its perceptions.

If you want to narrow down the difference, you could call Ni the experiencing and Ne labelling. While Ni focuses on a wide lens view of intuitive perception, Ne wants to zoom in on individual pieces.

I think Gilly's language analogy is perfect. Language consists of words which humanity gives meaning. These words are entirely constructed and built on abstract reasoning. This means that when you say "tree" it can mean different things to different people. Intuition is a recognition of those varied answers.

[Gilly]

An Ne-ego opinion:

Although the description focuses mainly on Ni, the theme of intuition as abstraction and association is equally applicable to Ne. The difference lies in seeing something through a plane window versus seeing something. Take a tree, for example. If you look at a tree it's possible to see the single individual tree that you are looking at and define its characteristic. But if you consider it abstractly and view the tree as simply "tree", then you create an array of possibilities, like shapes and colors of leaves, heights, different barks, growth shapes, etc. Similarly, if you look at a leaf, recognize that it's shaped like a triangle, then you can say that the leaf is a triangle. From there you can exchange triangular associations with the leaf. Similar to Ni, Ne uses association in order to define its perceptions.

If you want to narrow down the difference, you could call Ni the experiencing and Ne labelling. While Ni focuses on a wide lens view of intuitive perception, Ne wants to zoom in on individual pieces.

I think Gilly's language analogy is perfect. Language consists of words which humanity gives meaning. These words are entirely constructed and built on abstract reasoning. This means that when you say "tree" it can mean different things to different people. Intuition is a recognition of those varied answers.

Well put and precisely the way in which I was thinking of its relevance to Ne. I hoped people would be able to pull as much from the first part of my initial post, but you have made it even clearer here.

[snegledmaca]

You're segment makes me think of optical illusions:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyALAuKiKug[/ame]

How do they fit in? How come we have ways in which our brain is set to interpret reality? Is that then not intuition?

[aestrivex]

If you want to narrow down the difference, you could call Ni the experiencing and Ne labelling. While Ni focuses on a wide lens view of intuitive perception, Ne wants to zoom in on individual pieces.

?

elaborate?

[Gilly]

?

elaborate?

I think this is an attempt to distinguish static and dynamic. Dynamic is "experiential" in that conscious experience is fluid, occurs over time, and has more to do with the interaction of the self and its observations as reality is experienced actively.

The "labels" she speaks of are the way that Ne "compartmentalizes" things, puts them into "categories" (well, we're talking about Ne with Ti now, unless we switch "things" for "people") according to their abstract pieces; ie, a specific tree belongs to the subset "tree" because it possesses bark, leaves, cylindrical structure with branches, etc. These are the static "qualities" that NeTi observes, and sorts things into categories based on which qualities fit and which don't.

This is the reason that any analogy can be picked apart logically when used as "proof": unless it is referencing a past example of the same occurance, it has degrees of dissimilarity that can be easily highlighted to point out the limited relevance of any non-identical occurance to a present example.

[aestrivex]

The "labels" she speaks of are the way that Ne "compartmentalizes" things, puts them into "categories" (well, we're talking about Ne with Ti now, unless we switch "things" for "people") according to their abstract pieces; ie, a specific tree belongs to the subset "tree" because it possesses bark, leaves, cylindrical structure with branches, etc. These are the static "qualities" that NeTi observes, and sorts things into categories based on which qualities fit and which don't.

i don't especially understand the distinction between this and the suggestion of intuition generally as the construct of mental associations between stimuli. why would Ni be less inclined to observe a tree and understand that it's a tree?


i think, much as that i think that Te and Ti can both be explained in terms of alternate perspectives and treatment of the same type of information (ie logical statements), that Ne and Ni are the same; simply different viewpoints on mental associations.

[Wynch]

Yes, as Gilly explained, I was trying to summarize the difference between static objects and dynamic fields.

The lens analogy was meant to capture a sense of fields versus objects. Ne requires something like macro imaging, where the focus is on individual pieces. The mind can process more than one piece at a time, but the idea is not to see the panoramic focus, which tells a story or combines details, rather it wants to process tiny snapshots. Fitting the pieces together and choosing the right pieces is the job of Ti/Fi.

With labeling versus experience I was trying to capture static versus dynamic in conjunction with objects and fields. While labeling isn't necessarily the best choice of words, I think it adequately captures the contrast that exists. Ultimately Ne requires that you categorize something and subsequently branch from there (as I think Gilly addressed). You build on your categorization. To use an Ne-Ti example if I want to go from the idea of a cowboy to a casino I need to create a bridge between the two using other ideas. I need to construct associations by defining and redefining individual articles. Cowboys and casinos are not directly related, but if I label cowboys as "hunters of indians" and I define casinos as "run by indians" (as is often the case), then I've created a bridge for my association by labeling my initial terms. Or I could make the bridge more distant by labeling cowboy as "rides a horse" then defining a horse as "wears horseshoes" then defining horseshoes as "producing luck" then define casino as "requires luck". So I go from cowboy to casino by continuously redefining my perception of an individual article. Yet all of this redefining and labeling happens subconsciously. If someone says to me Cowboy, Casino, Go! In a snap I say "Cowboy-Indian-Casino" or "Cowboy-Horse-Horseshoe-Lucky-Casino".

I would argue that this is Ne (with a focus on Ti at least) in it's purest form: simple singular association. From there its roles in different types differs depending on it's blocks and the temperament of an individual.

[Gilly]

i don't especially understand the distinction between this and the suggestion of intuition generally as the construct of mental associations between stimuli. why would Ni be less inclined to observe a tree and understand that it's a tree?

I think Ni is much more likely to analyze the tree's significance in the "dynamic" situation rather than the tree itself.

i think, much as that i think that Te and Ti can both be explained in terms of alternate perspectives and treatment of the same type of information (ie logical statements), that Ne and Ni are the same; simply different viewpoints on mental associations.

I disagree. I think they can have different takes on similar things, which can appear as you say, but ultimately the emphasis in perception is on different aspects of reality.

[Expat]

As I said in the thread I started specifically to explain my views on it, I think the difference is:

- Ne: a "static snapshot" of an "alternate reality" deriving from the dynamic Si perception
- Ni: a dynamic perception of an "alternate reality" where the Se "static snapshots" bring it down to earth

[Gilly]

As I said in the thread I started specifically to explain my views on it, I think the difference is:

- Ne: a "static snapshot" of an "alternate reality" deriving from the dynamic Si perception
- Ni: a dynamic perception of an "alternate reality" where the Se "static snapshots" bring it down to earth

Sounds good to me. EP pauses IP to examine specific elements in the "flow" of things more closely. With Si/Ne, Ne pauses the Si physical flow to examine the potential and meaning of individual things/people; with Se/Ni, Se pauses the Ni greater flow of things to examine the significance and impact of individual things/people.

[redbaron]

great thread!

[strrrng]

Because looking out a plane window does not describe one particular concrete experience; it can describe many. It is a concrete association in the sense that physical factors are being compared in order to relate the situation to other situations, but by virtue of not being focused specifically on the at-hand experience, via association with past experiences, it is most definitely an abstraction.

Why couldn't Si do this? Many times I've heard ISFp's describe a similar thing, regarding past associations. I'm wondering where you make the distinction.

Well, it does to some, but there are others who seem to deny the very concept of Ni+Fe being significantly different from Ni+Te. Which to me makes no sense.

You know, you can say something directly if you want to reference me? I never denied that Ni+Fe is different from Ni+Te - give me a fucking break. That's blatantly obvious. I merely pointed out that Ni is the same function, regardless - has the same essence - so there will be some things that stay the same, regardless of which function it is blocked with.

This also explains why IEIs can be addicted too much to those fantasy roleplaying games, I think. Or maybe not as bad as other types because we understand our fantasy natures too well having been criticized for it more than others.

Or how we both weren't that good in sports when were younger because its too purely concrete and goal-objectivist (straight man powers eww) instead of all the possibilities that could happen. Even the 'game plans' were set with too many limited rules and structures for my liking, and the actual game itself makes for bad drama. We saw too many possibilities and stuff. It's associated with painfully bad memories because it really was as simple as 'putting the ball into the hole' and we didn't like that. We naturally see the connectiveness into other areas, that's where creativity comes into play. But the "manly" 'just do it' approach does not allow for true creativity and richness. So even though we were physically as capable, our makes us realistically poor warriors and assassins.

Stop generalizing, this is inaccurate. I was a very active athlete when I was younger and still am. I still understood my "fantasy nature" or w/e, yet I was still able to make nigz look like clowns on the basketball court. So, stop saying "we" just because you're looking for some mitigatory excuse for your ineptitudes.

Sounds good to me. EP pauses IP to examine specific elements in the "flow" of things more closely. With Si/Ne, Ne pauses the Si physical flow to examine the potential and meaning of individual things/people; with Se/Ni, Se pauses the Ni greater flow of things to examine the significance and impact of individual things/people.

This sounds good.

[Expat]

You know, you can say something directly if you want to reference me?

I wasn't referencing only you, and I did not feel it necessary to cite by name everyone I was thinking of. Nor shall I do it now. Eat an owl.

[Gilly]

Why couldn't Si do this? Many times I've heard ISFp's describe a similar thing, regarding past associations. I'm wondering where you make the distinction.

Well, when it's Si, the focus is more on the sensation itself in the present, rather than hearkening back to a past sensation. Obviously both can be experienced simultaneously, and it is necessary to take in Si sensory information to make an Ni "comparison;" the difference is where the emphasis is, what is being primarily appreciated or reveled in.

Stop generalizing, this is inaccurate. I was a very active athlete when I was younger and still am. I still understood my "fantasy nature" or w/e, yet I was still able to make nigz look like clowns on the basketball court. So, stop saying "we" just because you're looking for some mitigatory excuse for your ineptitudes.

You know you usually give something greater credence by responding to it than by ignoring it.

[strrrng]

You know you usually give something greater credence by responding to it than by ignoring it.

Sorry, but I just like to call out bullshit. I wasn't insulting him, I just thought it was wrong.

I wasn't referencing only you, and I did not feel it necessary to cite by name everyone I was thinking of. Nor shall I do it now. Eat an owl.

lmao...you really have gotten more "badass" lately.

[Gilly]

Sorry, but I just like to call out bullshit. I wasn't insulting him, I just thought it was wrong.

[redbaron]