Quote Originally Posted by Bolt View Post
First of all, it's wrong to state that it's an IA/IE dichotomy, that it's justified by the three aspectonics primitives, while it's not. At least Wikisocion states that it is - I don't remember what Gulenko - or whoever invented it - said, if there's such thing. That is the first criterion, of course, what else? At a close analysis on the eight functions alone, it is totally unjustified, there is no aspectonical reasoning supporting for it.
Why would you need theoretical reasons for its existence, as long as it's descriptive power justifies it? The point is, SF and NT - as information aspects, not types or clubs - have distinguishing qualities which might be summed up as experiential and conceptual respectively. Would deriving SF from static/fields/external plus dynamic/bodies/external plus static/bodies/internal plus dynamic/fields/internal explain these? Seems like overcomplicating the issue.

The thing is, Augusta made an arbitrary categorization. And it is socionics canon, as you keep reminding us. It doesn't mean there's nothing more to it.

I find that supposing its existence from the model combinations of the eight functions as flawed, a post hoc Aiss, but correct me if I'm wrong. One can split the types according to certain observable type dichotomy (putting aside their theoretical emergence from Reinin), but when finding that the functions can be split into two halves by this, can we conclude that this is a property of information itself?
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. If we see observable differences between information aspects, it makes sense to consider it a property of information itself. There's no need to drag types and functions into it beyond the reality check, unless you dismiss information aspects and only consider elements, that is aspects as functions in types. For me, information aspects are a huge part of socionics, it's biggest advantage over Jung or MBTI, which only describe the effects of taking a certain perspective, effects which may vary, rather than the perspective itself.

It's easy to abstract and extrapolate it to a point where it no longer applies in any way to types or functions, which is why I mentioned reality checks, but working with the conceptualization itself might be useful, offer explanatory power beyond purely descriptive profiles.

In my opinion, the extended problems with these "element dichotomies" are:
- they can't be explained independently, as actual information properties;
- they're arbitrary choices, based on an erroneous reductionism and a conventional selection of premises;
- we don't have descriptions and names for the two second-tier dichotomies, besides Rationality, apart from my writings on the forum, which might also be inaccurate;
- people are inclined to - and do make use of - speculative combinatorics and fictional descriptions to mask their lack of understanding/explanations or apparent lack of coverage; especially the ones with authoritative and business goals;
- blind adoption and lack of what are professionally called "analysis" and "peer review".
This. Augusta's choice of three dichotomies was, in fact, arbitrary. That she chose them made them socionics canon, as you keep reminding us, but it didn't make them more real. In essence, the dichotomies might be defining for socionics elements, but they're only descriptive for what she took from Jung's works. Taking it as gospel and following to the point where they no longer resemble the original is an example of losing sight of a big picture, a stray from reality I mentioned earlier as a risk.

Consider this: if Augusta looked at distinguishing traits of SF vs NT (meaning aspects), and not those of ST and NF, would socionics be so different? We'd have, to paraphrase your beginning:

1: Bodies + Dynamic, Fields + Static = D1A (we find it as Rational/Judging)
-- Bodies + Static, Fields + Dynamic = D1B (Irrational/Perceiving)
2: Bodies + Abstract, Fields + Involved = D2A (Delta values)
-- Bodies + Involved, Fields + Abstract = D2B (Beta values)
3: Dynamic + Abstract, Static + Involved = D3A (Gamma values)
-- Dynamic + Involved, Static + Abstract = D3B (Alpha values)