Quasi-defining statements

p. 222: "...draws our attention to immediate sensory phenomena. ... It prompts an interest in perception itself--the process of recognizing and interpreting what we take in."

p. 223: "Introverted Intuition would prompt us to liberate our sense impressions from their larger context, thereby creating new options for perception itself."

p. 229: "Introverted Intuitions are not really ideas. They're like trains at the edge of articulated knowledge. You can't claim them or advocate them. You put on a hat, grab hold of a boxcar door, and see where they go."

p. 153: "Introverted Intuition suggests that absolute meaning is an illusion--the result of having incomplete information."

As a dominant function:

p. 225: "For INJs, patterns aren't 'out there' in the world, waiting to be discovered. They're part of us--the way we make sense of the riot of energy and information impinging on our systems. A disease syndrome is a useful construct, but that's all it is--an aggregate of observations attached to a label, telling us what to see and how to deal with it."

p. 225: "Where Extraverted Intuitives see many behavioral options, INJs acknowledge many conceptual standpoints. They experience no need to declare one inherently better than another. Indeed, these types have the disconcerting habit of solving a problem by shifting their perspective and defining the situation some other way."

p. 234: "For INJs, truth isn't about logic. Truth is a frame of reference, a way of organizing information, which serves one set of needs or another."

A proposed definition

Introverted Intuition (Ni) is the attitude that whatever is manifest (apparent, observable, described) is only the tiniest fraction of the total reality and all of its potential, and it is manifest only because it serves a purpose--a purpose that it achieves by exploiting a certain way of interpreting or navigating by signs. Ni is attunement to what lurks in the shadow of that manifestation. What is that assumed way of interpreting or navigating? What could we see if we were free of it?

As a language of Ego Orientation

As a Dominant Function, Ni leads INJs to anchor themselves primarily in discovery of and attunement to that "what else"--to seek communion with it for its own sake. INJs are typically concerned with finding an independent and all-encompassing perspective on whatever interests them, so they can see it without bias, without being fooled or led along by ways in which other interests have set things up, and without a merely partial understanding.

As a Secondary Function, Ni typically leads ENJs to be aware of alternative ways of negotiating the social world, that exploit the assumptions that people make in order for there to be a social world. One might use this awareness to be on guard against cheaters, to prevail by setting knots and traps for others to fall into, to commit to a vision that might currently seem impossible, or a thousand other ways to serve or create an Extraverted goal.

As a Tertiary Function, Ni typically leads ISPs to suspect others of hypocrisy and cheating and putting on appearances aimed at exploiting people's credulity--especially hypocrisy inherent in social institutions. Sometimes ISPs draw upon Ni to find ways to throw a monkey wrench into social systems that call them into some kind of obligation: to respond in ways that don't make sense within the system's explicitly stated ways of interpreting behavior as cooperative or hostile (but are indeed hostile).

As an Inferior Function, Ni typically leads ESPs to either self-doubt or claim to a mystic vision--to see themselves as an oracle of transcendent truth, bypassing the need for finding things out through observation, reasoning, and putting ideas to a test.

Naturally, you can see plenty of dominant-style Ni in ENJs, secondary-style Ni in INJs, and so on--even inferior-style Ni in INJs.

What do ant pheromones mean?

The following might illustrate Introverted Intuition as a Semiotic Attitude [Use of the term "Semiotic Attitude", and consequent defining of multiple semiotic attitudes, is an illustration of introverted intuition -- I think I've made this point enough that I can stop making it. -- Robert Evans].

There are certain organisms that live as parasites on ant colonies. They live nearly motionless most of their lives, inside an ant colony. Ants bring them food. Ants just keep on bringing them more and more food, which the parasites eat and eat and eat.

Why do the ants do that? Because the parasite emits the same pheromones that ant larvae emit to signal that they need to be fed. It doesn't matter that the parasite grows to 20 times the size of an ant larva and never seems to take a break from eating. The ants receive the pheromone that means "I'm a larva and I'm hungry" and they obey.

What, then, do those pheromones really mean? From the standpoint of Introverted Intuition, the pheromones do not mean "I'm a larva and I'm hungry." Clearly they don't mean that, because they can be sent by non-larvae. What they mean is the way the ants respond.

More generally, the meaning of a sign is whatever an interpreter of the sign does with it, not something external to the interpreter.

Heuristically, Introverted Intuition can lead you to use signals in ways that have nothing to do with or go directly against their built-in or "intended" interpretations. Hence the common INJ fondness for irony.

--Ben Kovitz