Quasi-Defining Statements

p. 196: "Intuition draws our attention to context and we adapt to sensory events in terms of it."

p. 197: "Once we've grasped a whole pattern, we can envision options that don't yet exist. Indeed, one of the drawbacks of Intuition is that it conjures up a future before we know very much about the present. For example, given enough elements to suggest a star or a square, we have a hard time not filling in the blanks and seeing the complete image."

p. 198: "...to leap from a few immediate cues to a quick impression of the whole..."

p. 223: "Extraverted Intuition would move us to unify our sense impressions with their larger context, thereby creating new options for meaning and response."

p. 224: "Extraverted Intuitives are right-brain types who deal with their sense impressions by unifying them into larger outward patterns. An ENP physician, for example, may realize, with sudden insight, that several unexplained symptoms are actually part of a single disease. As an Extraverted type, the physician has no doubt that the disease syndrome really exists. The pattern was always there, waiting for someone to discover it."

Proposed definition #1

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) is the attitude that what is manifest (apparent, observable) is a reflection of a greater reality. The dinosaur bone hints at the dinosaur, the cloud hints at the coming thunderstorm, the thunderstorm is a reflection of the rotation of the Earth within its atmosphere. Whatever you find, there is something more to find: a broader context, a whole, which will change your understanding of the part.

Proposed definition #2

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) is the attitude that the unknown is filled with wonderful things. To make use of them, you must be flexible in your goals. If you try to set things up so that only something known to be good can happen, you close your eyes to the zillions of opportunities that you can't know or define in terms of what you know now. As more of the unknown becomes clear, the more it changes your understanding of the (currently) known.

To live, then, you need to continuously welcome the unknown, by always being ready to adjust in unanticipatable ways. What seems like a mistake is not a mistake when viewed in a larger pattern--and it's your job to find that larger pattern.

(Compare Introverted Sensation, which leads to the exact opposite attitude toward the unknown. Ne says to anchor yourself nowhere, so you can continuously adapt to exploit unknown opportunities; Si says to anchor yourself firmly to what matters regardless of change, in order to keep out the unknown and its attendant, unknowable risks.)

See Intuition, other Function Attitudes.