The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki
Forms of Introverted Perception:
| • | Introverted Sensation |
| • | Introverted Intuition. |
See Truth-and-Language Exegesis.
In Lenore's view, Extraverted Judgement and Introverted Perception are opposed enough to cause some internal conflict, but compatible enough that they generate synergy and intelligent adaptation and individuation pretty quickly and easily.
p. 270: "Introverted Perception ... suggests that outer reality has no fixed reference points."
Perhaps "no fixed reference points" explains a peculiarity in the way that some types, especially INFJs, often respond to the rhetoric of INTPs.
Here's the phenomenon: The INTP presents an idea, developed by comparing and contrasting various things to "bring out" some possible causal factor at work--the Holistic Spiraling style. The INFJ responds by accusing the INTP of trying to set him- or herself up as an authority that everyone else must obey, and announcing that the INFJ refuses to do so. Other types do this, too, of course: FJs of all stripes, and ISPs.
This would be explained by the "no fixed reference points" of Introverted Perception because the INTP is concerned primarily with establishing deeper and deeper reference points in reality. From the INTP's standpoint, the choice to settle on these reference points rather than others must grow out of the concrete reality itself. The INTP tries to be helpful by pointing them out: "Look over here, now look over there, do you see the pattern yet?"
The INFJ, however, understands choice of shared reference points to be a matter of negotiation: a choice of reference points always serves some interests rather than others. "Why should I use reference points that serve your purposes rather than mine?" From the perspective of dominant Introverted Perception, choice of shared reference points is really something to decide collectively, so that everyone's interests are served fairly.
The INTP refuses to negotiate, because from the Introverted Thinking perspective, understanding things is not a matter of authority or negotiation, it's just between you and the concrete reality. The INFJ perceives the refusal to negotiate as an attempt to bully, or negotiate heavy-handedly--an attempt with no force behind it, therefore easy to ignore.
But what exactly are these "reference points"?
Evidence from which the INTP draws his patterns and conclusions from, perhaps.
Also, an observation re: INTJ's - instead of rejecting the NTP's hypotheses, they argue why these hypotheses are wrong, but using an inflexible stand that the NTP can't grapple with.
Alternate hypothesis: it's not an inflexible stand, it's a sense of being in a Yawning Void, where you are presented with nothing but signs and no reality. Instead of following the Holistic Spiraling rhetoric of an NP, perhaps most INJs insist on first understanding exactly what the signs are that are being interpreted, and what the rules are for interpreting them. NPs don't give you that, since they don't look at reality by referring it to some known set of interpretations; they go the other way around, letting concrete reality be their guide. The INJ argument often boils down to: "Why should I believe your interpretation and not some other one?" The NP answer is: "Weren't you paying attention to all the neat stuff I just pointed out?"
Lenore also says:
p. 67: "Introverted Perception dictates an interest in represented experience--words, facts, numbers, signs, and symbols: the kind of data that can be acquired or explored in the mind."
I don't understand how this relates to the sense that reality has no fixed reference points--the sense that reality, or experience, is a "jumble". Maybe because there are endlessly many ways to represent the same experience?
Does anyone have any other ideas?
Perhaps this is somewhat on the right track. The INJ says to the NP: How can you even begin to draw conjectures from these particular representations of reality when you don't even know if they're representing reality correctly? Don't you know that they don't reveal reality, they reveal the author's bias?
So "no fixed reference points" doesn't mean that experience is a jumble. It means that there aren't any objectively true assumptions you can make, like the NP uses to build his hypothesising upon. They look at the mental model the NPs are getting into such an excited tizzy over and see a house built on sand.
Perhaps INJs dread ever falling prey to bias. Consequently they reject anything that smells of it in the slightest.
This exegesis is perhaps tainted because it grows out of my frustrations with IJs, but it might shed some light on the above conundrum:
Perhaps from the standpoint of Introverted Perception, you try to look at things as if they were being told to you over the phone, without your having any other access to them than that.
Being given only representations of things, not the things-in-themselves (echoes of Immanuel Kant here), naturally you suspect their veracity. The source of the representations no doubt skews them in some way, so they reflect more than just what they describe. For all you know, the representations are a complete fiction.
I sense, in IJs, a need to "stabilize" things before making any judgements about them. That stabilization would take the form of casting the facts and criteria of the matter into some kind of representation. The reality itself seems too complex to address directly; the representation can be held in the mind and explored systematically.
Is there a reason why ENJs aren't half as aggravating as INJs to NTP's? (Apologies to any INJs reading) Sure they have Extraverted Judging first ... but why does that make such a huge difference? There doesn't seem to be that wide a gap between INTPs and ENTPs, for example.
Well, let's see...perhaps from a rational attitude, one would expect a reason, and from an irrational attitude one wouldn't! ;) Seriously, this is an interesting observation, one that this INTP has also made. One possible explanation is that switching between Extraverted and Introverted forms of the same function might be easy, if it's your Dominant Function. Another possible explanation is that the real common "language" might be determined more by function than by attitude. I'd love to see more observations and ideas about this. --Ben Kovitz
I'm an ENTP, so I don't think the Domninant Function switching theory holds. But I do agree with your joke! Last week I watched Bowling for Columbine with an INTJ. When the film ended I was all ready to discuss all the connections Michael Moore had made, evaluate them, expand upon them. Before I could get a word out, however, the INTJ started an angry tirade about how the whole thing was a huge fakery, crawling with bias, Moore a liar, etc.
I've seen ENTJs in similar situations, where they don't agree with something presented. They might get similarly worked up, but when pressed they have a line of reasoning ready which you can be persuaded to or argue against. INTJs cross their arms and say they know something's not right. They don't know how nor what exactly isn't right, but they KNOW it! My response to that is, how do you expect me to believe you if you can't explain yourself?
Also from pure observation, I'd say that ENJs don't stay with an argument long enough to be annoying. ;) If I get sick of the argument, I bring up lunch or pool and they forget about the whole debate like that. INTJs are a much more stubborn breed!
Perhaps what Lenore means by Introverted Perception is an attitude of putting things you experience into categories, where the categories are chosen on the basis of whatever seems to you to fit the things, without serving a predefined purpose or criterion.
Taking an Si perspective, then, you simply find categories to put things in, and use these categories to build a rich network of mental associations that guide you to attend to the things that matter to you--to find those things in the midst of a predominantly overwhelming perceptual field.
Taking an Ni perspective, you attend to the nature of whatever categories you come across: what they contain and what they leave out, what they assume about the context where they're applied, what (probably unstated) purposes are served by those categories, what cannot be said in terms of those categories (and that, if said, might unravel their power to seem real and meaningful).
Si leads you to gradually accumulate a factual map of the world, or at least the parts of it that are of interest to you. Ni leads you to gradually accumulate an understanding of how different maps operate and to be able to compare the assumptions of different maps against each other.
See also: Truth-and-Language Exegesis.