The need for understanding.
OK, I want to continue a discussion that took over a "Type" thread...
... how is type related to trying to "understand" things (if at all)?
The discussion started with Thomson...
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Introverted Thinking (Ti) is the attitude that beneath the complexity of what is manifest (apparent, observed, experienced) there is an underlying unity: a source or essence that emerges and takes form in different ways depending on circumstances. What is manifest is seen as a manifestation of something. From a Ti standpoint, the way to respond to things is in a way that is faithful to that underlying cause or source and helps it emerge fully and complete, without interference from any notion of self. The way to understand that underlying essence is to learn to simultaneously see many relationships within what is manifest, to see every element in relation to every other element, the relationships being the "signature" of the underlying unity. This can only be experienced directly, not second-hand.
Introverted Thinking leads you to relate whatever you are doing to some larger principles that you have identified. Hence, Ti is like having some kind of book in your head, which describes the inner workings of things. When interacting with reality, you are constantly writing and re-writing your book. To deal with anything, you have to be able to understand in terms of the observations in your book. Whenever you are dealing with any new system, you start writing a new chapter on it in order to attain complete understanding of it.
This approach may seem very cumbersome from an extraverted standpoint. Youd don't really need to understand how a bicycle works in order to ride one. You don't have to actually understand a subject in school if you simply cram and memorize. You don't have to understand computers to check your mail. Yet Ti leads you to desire complete understanding of whatever you are doing, instead of looking up the correct procedure, or asking your friends for help, or kicking it when it's not working. With Ti, you don't simply try to understand a system well enough to manipulate it. You try to become such an expert on how it works that you could write a book about it if you had to, even if your expertise is unusable or useless to everybody (sometimes even to yourself).
Hence, Ti is a kind of high-bandwidth understanding, because it leads you to try to understand the entire causal, aestethic, or logical mechanism of any system of interest. This kind of understanding takes much more time and effort to develop, but it is more flexible once attained, because it allows you to deal with aspects of reality that cannot be described through social norms or sets of discrete procedures.
... and phaedrus and I both said that this sounded like us...
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Originally Posted by Rocky
That sounds like me, too, and the third paragraph especially resonates with me. If I'm learning something (such as math) I feel uneasy if I don't understand the principles behind it. I always think that if I don't take the effort to understand it, then I won't be flexable enough to solve problems, especially when I (of course) don't know exactly what will be asked, or what problems will come up.
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Originally Posted by Phaedrus
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That sounds like me, too, and the third paragraph especially resonates with me.
I don't know if this is really Ti or anything.
Neither do I, but this is very interesting, at least for me. How should we explain the fact that we seem to identify with the same descriptions of a way of thinking if we are ISTp and INTp? We could discuss it in another thread. Which is the best place for such a discussion, and how should we do it?
BTW, there were also other 'tangents' in that thread, such as...
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Originally Posted by FDG
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Originally Posted by Rocky
I don't think Sensors are materialistic. I'm not. I think ENxx types are more likely to be materialistic than ISxx types. The thought of being ostentatious out right disgusts me.
Another crappy inference, rocky?
(linkage)
So...
@Phaedrus: I don't think this need for "understanding" things is really related to Ti. For one thing, it sounds very pop psychology-ish.
I can still see other differences in the INTP and ISTP line of thinking, however. Basically, INTPs seem to like to "predict" what will happen based on past experiences, whereas ISTPs pretty much say things like "It doesn't always work out that way".
Also, before you start to think that IxTPs are really also Ti, than consider how they differ from ExTPs. Remember the PoLR discusion? Fi PoLR versus Fe PoLR? You said Fe PoLR sounded like you (and it's the opposite of someone like Herzy with Fi). There would be no explanation for these types of differences if the MBTI were "right" in their ordering.
@FDG: What's with you? You always seem way too extreme. It's either you agree with what I (and other people) say, or you give a definative "no" or claim things are out right stupid. It would help more if you explained your line of thinking first. I gave my opinion about one specific quality, maybe you could at least give your opposing opinion so people can see why you disagree.
@everyone else: comments on the original topic are welcome.