The introvert/extrovert (object/field) aspect of functions doesn't exist

[krieger]

I'm not sure of the full outlines of your system, so I suppose this could be consistent within it. It's just that as an irrational type, this P "object, thing or area" is such a volumonous part of my interaction with reality that it's hard to visualize it as something so discrete and ever so well-defined. J helps me find specific pockets of certainty within this "sea" if you will. I hope that didn't sound like metaphysical tripe, but I can't convey it without painting a mental image anyway, and some metaphysical stuff is to be expected here.

No, I understand exactly what you are saying and fully agree with it.

Whenever we speak of an object as something we understand, we generally assume that we know exactly how this object is separated from other objects. As such an object of our understanding is often little more than a collection or organization of facts. It can be difficult to see the object apart from the facts we express of it. It may even be non-sensical to do so in many cases...

What's really interesting is that we can turn the problem around it's axis and think of facts simply as collections or organizations of the objects of which they are true. The fact "is a member of team A" for example, means little more than "that which is true of all objects that are members of team A". We can not define the meaning of the fact in any other way than to simply state how it is an arbitrary grouping of objects. But in the same way any fact can be seen as an indivisable fundament.

Hence why it is so useful to think in terms of function blocks rather than functions... That way we simply consider the fact and the object simultaneously and say how the roles are distributed amongst them. Why say Ne+ when you can just say Alpha NT? The latter speaks mores strongly to the imagination.

(this is a slightly awkward example, because of that thing you mentioned about socionicists saying that one can use the opposite sign of a function.. do they mean one can use function blocks that are not favored in one's type the way smilexian socionics claims one can? this isn't really clear)