I think I have found a pretty convincing example to show the differences between Ti and Te. Actually, it now seems almost obvious to me and I wonder why I have never thought about this possibility before. However, the example I’m thinking about are the two ethical systems Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative.
Both are designed to help people to choose the morally right option out of the various possibilities they have. But they work in quite different ways.
I’d say that the Utilitarianism closely matches the Te approach.
First off, a short explanation of the Utilitarianism: “Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "good" of the greatest number of individuals. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its resulting outcome. Utilitarianism was described by Bentham as "the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle".” (taken from Wikipedia)
That means Utilitarianism is focused on the object and depends on the circumstances. Not your intention is important if you do something, but the result instead. This can also be translated into “The end justifies the means.” Te is often (but not exclusive of course) connected with efficiency, you can find this in the “utility calculus”, which is necessary to find out which option brings the most benefit to the greatest amount of people. Utilitarians try to encompass every consequence of your actions, it’s clearly outwardly focused.
In practice, there might be situations in which you have to do a morally questionable action in order to do a greater good. You can see this as example: Shoot the planes if they’re hijacked by terrorists kill innocent people to save many more innocent people? Or let it be and let the terrorist reach their goal because you’re never allowed to kill people? But from a utilitarian perspective, you can shoot it (given the right circumstances). The loss of the passengers is unfortunate, but if they fly into the building, not only they are dead, but hundreds of other people too. (Another example: Can I torture a criminal to find out where he placed a bomb?)
On the other side, the Categorical Imperative would be connected to Ti, imho.
“According to Kant, human beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in one ultimate commandment of reason, or imperative, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary.” […] “A categorical imperative, on the other hand, denotes an absolute, unconditional requirement that asserts its authority in all circumstances, both required and justified as an end in itself. It is best known in its first formulation:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." (Wikipedia again)
Immanuel Kant criticizes the Utilitarianism because it can easily go wrong. All your goals and motivations you take as a basis for your decisions are basically hypothetical. (e.g: It’s not at all sure that you’ll be promoted of you work very hard.) Kant allows the so called “hypothetical Imperative” but only if your actions to reach this goal are good in itself. As I said, for an Utilitarian, it is sometimes okay to do a wrong thing if many people have a clear benefit from that. But Kant never allows anything which is bad in itself. As you can see, the CI is much more concerned with the internal, logical consistency of your actions and not how much good you do in reality. You can almost say it disregards the overall implications of your actions and focuses only on you not doing anything wrong (inwardly oriented).
Of course, in an ideal world, in which everyone acts according to the law written above, nobody would do anything bad on purpose and the problem would be solved.
What do you think about this idea?