Myth of the "T"?

[CosmicDust]

If a Myers-Briggs Thinker is someone who makes decisions primarily by logic rather than emotions, I kind of wonder if such a thing exists.

Recent introspection has revealed to me that at a fundamental level, I am ruled by emotions. They influence whether I'm willing to make decisions as well as what decisions I make - I will hold off from fear of committing to an idea lest my investment in it be a losing one, for instance. Fear, desire, angst, shame...I blow around like a leaf in the wind at the mercy of these forces of nature called emotions. Thought, on the other hand, often feels impotent and inconclusive...analyze some stuff and one idea makes sense, analyze more stuff and another idea makes sense, and which one resonates more with me and how it resonates may depend on my mood. I can construct and deconstruct at will. Whatever.

And this actually seems consistent with the research of Antonio Damasio, which indicates that at least subconscious emotional or feeling (including "sub-emotional" stuff like pleasure and pain) biases are vital to real-life, real-time decision making. Some brain-damaged patients whose emotional circuits were cut off from their logical ones performed perfectly well in standardized tests of reasoning ability - they could analyze hypothetical situations just fine (but didn't necessarily have a sense that they'd know what to do). Yet, in their real lives and in a fake gambling test, they made tons of losing investments, not having their emoiton and feeling biases working properly to keep a running log of what's good or bad for them to sway them in the wiser direction. Instead, they have a very short-sighted view, where they can't see much beyond the promise of immediate gratification, hence taking the foolish risks.

The sense I get from Damasio's research and my personal experience is that logic can inform decisions, but may not be able to actually make them. What, then, is the difference between a T and an F, if both ultimately make their decisions emotionally? Am I just a very thinky F, whose chief value is (usually) to try to get above matters of value? Or are Fs people whose emotional biases tend not to turn against themselves so that they trust their feelings? (To not trust my feelings plays out in me as an emotional bias, with close ties to my typical strong negative emotional reactions to "incompetence.") While this T-F scale doesn't seem like total junk, the notion that people who fall on the T side truly make decisions based on thinking seems suspect.

[CoHo]

chicken egg

The way I see it: A Feeler builds their thinking patterns around their emotions, a Thinker builds their emotional patterns around their thinking. This does not necessarily have an impact in the 'now' but in the 'future you'.

Thinking and Feeling are not concrete, they are concepts that you build into yourself; by watching movies, hanging out with friends, reading books, masturbating and listening to shitty emo music.

Your decisions from earlier in life determine your thoughts and emotions (getting a masters in science vs. a masters in liberal Nancy arts).

Aside from that, emotion is just a quick-reflex of stored reactions that are commonplace. It is like compressing files on a hard drive, or indexing a database: Happy, Sad, Fearful are common actions, just like flinching and blinking. You hardwire these reactions just like you hardwire your thinking patterns: through time and repetition. You become who you are, or at least how you want yourself to be perceived.



BONG

[Lee]

Yeah, that dichotomy is broken and people are wrong to use it.

Logic can't make a decision, it can only anlayze it. For example, take Spock, Tuvok or T'pol, all are supposed to be unemotional, or to have suppressed them sufficiently, they are ruled by logic, right? well no.

When Tuvok is confronted by a borg trying to assimilate him, he has to have some reason not to stand their and do some trigonometry, when Spock looks out upon the universe, why does he seek to explore and learn and not measure the exact dimensions of his bedroom closet for the rest of his life? Or T'pol, why does she follow orders from Vulcan high command rather than sit in a dark room calculating prime numbers for eternity?

So, people turn around and say "well of course Tuvok doesn't stand there and do trigonometry! becuase the logical decision is to run, of course Spock wants to explore the universe, because it's the logical thing to do, and of course T'pol doesn't sit there in her quaters calculating prime numbers for the rest of her life, it would be illogical!" But these arguments are all flawed, because there is nothing illogical about the alternatives, the only reason these Vulcans have for doing what they do is because they want to, and that "want" cannot be derived through logic, logic can only help us in the pursuit of that "want."

Motivations i.e. emotional desires are necessary in life, not optional or possible to be dismissed for a logical alternative, indeed how do you decide to use logic? it can only be an emotional decisions since it can't be a logical one.

This of course provokes the more interesting question of Data, who necessarily has to have motivations, otherwise he would have no reason for selecting between alternative actions. If he has motivations, then he has emotions, right? sure they may not be excactly like human emotions, but he has got to have them (presuming actual consciousness of course).

[CosmicDust]

On the question of Data, I would say that he has the equivalent of certain vital subconscious emotions in his basic programming, but he doesn't have conscious ones. He was programmed with a moral code, for instance, and that can serve the place of the subconscious emotions that prevent us from all being psychopaths.

[AllThingsConsidered]

I can see what you are saying and it's very interesting.
If you are going on Meyer's, T and F are judging funtions.
Of course all healthy people have emotion and all people use some form of thought and feeling to make their choices.
It isn't whether or not it is used that makes you primarily one over another. It is the amount you incorporate before making your choice.

If you separate what the T/F does it is something like this:
The T simply means True or false, positive/negative decisions.
The F would choose which is better or worse (for blank) decisions.

Now an extraverted T/F decision would lean more to a choice made from observation of the external world and what is accepted or not.
Introverted choice would be weighed against subjective internal T/F and compared.

So I guess we have all experienced any of these according to situation, but you then have to say what one you most adhere to. That is why it is a T/F preference. I don't think it's dismissing that emotion is involved in any way.
It's not thought 100% vs. emotion 100% or we would be as robots.

[Lee]

On the question of Data, I would say that he has the equivalent of certain vital subconscious emotions in his basic programming, but he doesn't have conscious ones. He was programmed with a moral code, for instance and that can serve the place of the subconscious emotions that prevent us from all being psychopaths.That doesn't follow, whether he has an innate structure to his mind has no bearing on whether he is conscious, you and I are the proof, since you and I also have innate stucture or basic programming, yet we both are conscious

The subconscious emotions (i.e. motivations) are simply our basic programming that stop most of us from being psychopaths (or is that stops psychopaths from being normal?). There is fundamentally no reason why Data should not be conscious (unless we assume consciousness needs biological tissue, but we have no evidence to support that assumption), and it is necessary that Data has some form of emotion, since all emotion is really a motivation, that is a method for discriminating among alternative options, the only reason why no organism has the motivation to calculate pi forever is because such an organism would have been selected out of the gene pool.

[CosmicDust]

Obviously Data is conscious in general...a sentient being...but perhaps he is not conscious of his emotions - or at least not conscious of them as emotions. Remember, Data is a machine, not a biological entity. The way his consciousness works could be different from the way ours works due to the different way in which he was built, enough that some kind of filtration could be built in that prevents his emotions/emotion substitutes from entering his field of awareness. They may enter his awareness, but be experienced simply as a programming command, not as a feeling as we know feelings. And even though it is not consciously experienced as a feeling, the ultimate behavioral result of the program - keeping him out of trouble - could be the same as that of a fear algorithm in humans.

Basically, something like this:

Threatening situation arises.
Fear circuits in my nervous system activate.
I run away. Possibly before I actually feel the fear.

vs.

Threatening situation arises.
Data's quick-and-dirty assessment algorithms assess a threat, and recommend a response.
Data runs away, having experienced some kind of internal voice from the assessment algorithm that, though serving the function of our feelings, registered in his consciousness as something closer to a thought.

Was Data scared? You could say yes - the command served the same basic function as our fears do, and there may have been a conscious experience associated with it...and fear, as we know it, is generally a pairing of automatic functions of our "machines" coupled with a conscious experience. But Data's conscious experience may have been nothing like pumping heart, pit in the stomach, and general "sense of unease" and displeasure along the lines of what I experienced.

My fear led to the subjective perception of unease in my body and displeasure as well as the behavior of running away. Data's "fear" led him to run away, but not to perceive unease and displeasure - instead, he perceived something that would have registered more like a thought for me, and was different from what he would have registered if his "emotion chip" were plugged in.

[Biff_Loman]

Lee's really hitting the nail on the head here. Even so, I'm not willing to concede, quite yet, that the T/F dichotomy is broken.

So we have essentially this:

Both Data and we humans would have something like desired end-states. It so happens that, for thinking creatures, emotion is the process that has evolved to define the desired end-state. Either you are "happy" and "satisfied," or "unhappy" and "dis-satisfied" with your situation, and one will either work to either gain or maintain the happy state. Mazlow's hierarchy* of needs probably comes into play here, and Lee is right: any humans that screwed around with their needs hierarchy would have died.

This is fine and good, but how do we reach our desired end-state? I think there might be room for a T and F difference here. I think that most people try to arrive at their happy states via a process of meliorization: create conditions that are steadily better until one's conditions sufficiently resemble one's happy state.

I think that Thinkers might have a mental image of this happy state, and then take logical steps to get there, whereas Feelers might have a much more visceral understanding. Thinkers might want to examine which way is uphill and then proceed in that direction, creating a cognitive mental map before proceeding and then essentially ignoring emotive inputs - i.e., whether it "feels" like one is going up or downhill. Feelers might be more sensitive, like a blind-folded person walking on the hill, constantly taking readings on whether they are travelling up or down-hill.

This might be a poor illustration and is unflattering to Feelers or overly flattering to Thinkers, but I think we must be talking about two different optimization techniques, and that's all I've come up with so far.

*I don't mean to suggest that Mazlow's hierarchy is definitive. I also think I'm missing an "s" in his name somewhere, but dammit I care not.

[Biff_Loman]

Obviously Data is conscious in general...

I'm not sure if visceral responses, such as fear, anger and elation have much to do with type. To the extent that there is variation between humans, I would expect to find variation among people of the same type.

I think type theory would have more to do with how we assimilate our visceral emotional responses into a larger worldview. I'm a little fuzzy on this idea so far, though.

Edit: I can flesh it out a bit more, though. Expose me to a dangerous predator and I will feel fear; this is pretty basic and universal. I'd call this visceral. But the thoughts that I develop later about my behaviour in the state of "being afraid" might have everything to do with type.

[Lee]

Lee's really hitting the nail on the head here. Even so, I'm not willing to concede, quite yet, that the T/F dichotomy is broken.Well, it is broken if you use it in the sense of "logical decisions vs. emotional decisions," redefining the definitions is the only correct way of not running into an infinite regress of logical justifications for every decision.

You come pretty close to how I would make the distinction, which is more about which "end-states" are desired. Feelers desire more socially derived end-states, people and relationships, they tend to employ intuitive "emotional logic" to interact with others as a social group, whether up on a stage in front of thousands or with that special someone cuddled up to watch a movie. Feelers tend to employ instinctive decision making systems, what Paul Ekman refers to as emotional autoappraisers, the tendancy of these autoappraisers to misfire (i.e. activate innapropriately) is why we often consider Feelers to be irrational, though their activiation is perfectly rational in the correct context, after all they evolved to solve adaptive problems.

Thinkers tend to have different desired "end-states," more focused on things (or treating other people as things), they are distrusting of the emotional autoapproisers (or they are not as strong) and they tend to employ rational analysis before action.

Could probably be explained much better, but most importantly it avoids the "logical decisions vs. emotional decisions" mistake.

Edit: emotional autoappraisers are a quick and dirty way of making decisions, when they misfire they can lead to all kinds of nonsense, but likewise, logical analysis is slow and cumbersome, so in a way Thinkers tend to misfire with their logical analysis, when an instinctive emotive decision would be more appropriate.

[Lee]

My fear led to the subjective perception of unease in my body and displeasure as well as the behavior of running away. Data's "fear" led him to run away, but not to perceive unease and displeasure - instead, he perceived something that would have registered more like a thought for me, and was different from what he would have registered if his "emotion chip" were plugged in.There is no doubt, the feelings Data experienced would have to be different, but there is nothing different about the principle of them, he would still have feelings and emotions/motivations in response to those feelings.

The machine-organism divide is a non-starter unless we could somehow know that only certain combinations of elements could experience consciousness, because unless such a thing could be established, we are just as much a machine as Data, just made out of different stuff.

[CosmicDust]

I made the distinction between machines and organisms, which might as well have been a distinction between two different kinds of organisms, to suggest that the ways that emotions or their equivalent work in each may be different enough to create radically different subjective experiences associated with those emotions. Perhaps the machine could only be conscious of running away and not have any direct awareness of the internal command that caused that behavior. That would be the non-biological entity's equivalent of a "subconscious emotion." And maybe that machine could be programmed in such a way that all its emotions worked like that. Just because it isn't so with humans doesn't mean it can't be so with other kinds of beings.

[Lee]

Perhaps the machine could only be conscious of running away and not have any direct awareness of the internal command that caused that behavior. That would be the non-biological entity's equivalent of a "subconscious emotion." And maybe that machine could be programmed in such a way that all its emotions worked like that. Just because it isn't so with humans doesn't mean it can't be so with other kinds of beings.But what is conscious if not the act of feeling? that is feeling your emotions, feeling the computations in your head as thoughts, feeling the light that lands upon your retina. I would suggest consciousness that remains untouched to feeling is not consciousness at all, the only way Data would differ from humans only in the nature of those emotions, which in Data manifests itself in a fine control.

[Biff_Loman]

Edit: emotional autoappraisers are a quick and dirty way of making decisions, when they misfire they can lead to all kinds of nonsense, but likewise, logical analysis is slow and cumbersome, so in a way Thinkers tend to misfire with their logical analysis, when an instinctive emotive decision would be more appropriate.

Makes sense to me, and I can see that the different methods for determining end-states are critical for establishing the dichotomy.

About the auto-appraisers: that's very close to what I meant about a blind-folded person walking up and downhill. The way team is separated from the Enterprise, some crew members are killed, and Bones wants to take the bodies back to the ship and Spock wants to leave them to ensure they get back to the Enterprise. "It's inhuman!," the doctor cries, Spock appeals to logic, and Kirk makes the call. Bones can't walk downhill first in order to get uphill later. He's blindfolded and leaving the bodies behind only feels like walking downhill. The autoappraisers have misfired, or so it seems.

The interesting thing is that both Spock and Bones use heuristics to arrive at their decisions. Neither one probably has had time to think it through. Lee is right: it's too slow and cumbersome.

McCoy could probably deliver a good rationale for why he wants the bodies returned if pressed, citing crew morale. Retrieving bodies would make for a less stressed crew, as the crew members wouldn't worry about their bodies being abandoned on some alien world. This is in turn could lead to higher crew performance. But the fact is that the emotion would trigger this rationalization, not the other way around. "In the event of dead crew members, return bodies."

Spock might arrive at the conclusion that the bodies could be recovered and escape back to the Enterprise is possible, but he'd have to think things through. Spock is using a heuristic, too. "In the event of danger, avoid being encumbered by bodies."

I need to think on this more.

[last_caress]

I believe that all human motivations come from the primitive subconsicous like other animals.
The old animal brain is the originator, the conscious mind the executor.
I believe that what T represents, is the degree to which one consciously analyzes and modifies these directives.

[Biff_Loman]

Actually, I'm starting to wonder whether the T/F difference lies primarily in how we pre-load ourselves with heuristics in order to avoid making decisions. This is a subtle but important distinction, in my mind.

[Nadiar]

The T/F dichotomy isn't broken.

First, it is just a way of breaking apart Ti/Fe and Te/Fi.

Second, there is no such thing as someone who only has the Core dichotomy. Everyone has Ti, everyone has Te, everyone has Fe, and everyone has Fi. This is just a matter of degree's.

I feel that the Te/Fi vs. Ti/Fe poles are the only ones that are truly solid. Someone on a Ti/Fi pole is just experiencing wishful thinking, and more likely false understanding of MBTI.

[coffeezombie]

I believe that all human motivations come from the primitive subconsicous like other animals.
The old animal brain is the originator, the conscious mind the executor.
I believe that what T represents, is the degree to which one consciously analyzes and modifies these directives.
So Feelers are animals to you?

[Ferrus]

liberal Nancy arts
:rant: It may be a dos for those who are perpetually indolent, but there are some who do those subjects out of a natural aptitude.

[Lee]

The T/F dichotomy isn't broken.It is the way most people use it.


First, it is just a way of breaking apart Ti/Fe and Te/Fi.

Second, there is no such thing as someone who only has the Core dichotomy. Everyone has Ti, everyone has Te, everyone has Fe, and everyone has Fi. This is just a matter of degree's.No, nobody actually has any of those things, no more than they have an id, ego or super-ego. Nobody has an Fi, you cannot locate "Fi" in the brain, there are some areas that roughly correspond to Ti, Ne, Fe Fi etc but their ability to be selectively impaired to a far finer degree than 8 functions pretty much undermines the accuracy of the theory, it's like a rough approximation, kinda useful and vague enough to apply to pretty much everything if you push it a little.


I feel that the Te/Fi vs. Ti/Fe poles are the only ones that are truly solid. Someone on a Ti/Fi pole is just experiencing wishful thinking, and more likely false understanding of MBTI.That depends, we talking Keirsey's Temperament Sorter? MBTI? Socionics? Jung's Psychological types? they all have there own system, people tend to pick and choose and mix in a bit of their own stuff.

The nonsense of it all, and the arbitrariness of the categorizations just reinforces my view that it is of little use. I honestly have more confidence in my own abilities to make a better personality categorization system... hey, why not use one that already exists like the big five?

[last_caress]

So Feelers are animals to you?

We all are. Some just need more conscious analysis and guidance to make good choices.

I'm not saying that using feeling to make decisions automatically = a bad decision.
I'm theorizing that some of us have a harder time making good decisions that way and compensate with deliberation.

[Xenophon]

I think Thinking/Feeling has more to do with how you understand the world, rather than how you make decisions. How we make decisions comes from the sum total of our personality. I would say that the Enneagram has much more to do with this than MBTI.

I'm really well versed on actual MBTI theory, but I read psychological types by Jung a few summer ago, and he called thinking/feeling the apperceptive functions. IE, when you perceive something through your senses or intuition, it is up to your thinking/feeling functions to categorize and store this information in accordance with your the a priori structures in your mind. While this is an important step in decision making, it is my no means the sum total of it.

[Nadiar]

No, nobody actually has any of those things, no more than they have an id, ego or super-ego. Nobody has an Fi, you cannot locate "Fi" in the brain, there are some areas that roughly correspond to Ti, Ne, Fe Fi etc but their ability to be selectively impaired to a far finer degree than 8 functions pretty much undermines the accuracy of the theory, it's like a rough approximation, kinda useful and vague enough to apply to pretty much everything if you push it a little.

That is a uselessly pedantic response.

[INTrPosr]

If a Myers-Briggs Thinker is someone who makes decisions primarily by logic rather than emotions, I kind of wonder if such a thing exists.Not my understanding of how T works. MBTI does not measure emotions, it's purely a cognitive test. Thinkers are more apt to (not always) base their decisions of non-human factors, wherein Feelers will take the human factor into consideration.
(To not trust my feelings plays out in me as an emotional bias, with close ties to my typical strong negative emotional reactions to "incompetence.") While this T-F scale doesn't seem like total junk, the notion that people who fall on the T side truly make decisions based on thinking seems suspect.I would not argue that point, especially where circumstances calls for someone prefering feelings. Anytime, people or the human condition is the center of an issue, I would prefer to have someone who has a preference for Feelings. Along the same lines, the inability to react, subsequent to Hurricane Katrina, was based on those at Homeland Security being dominant Thinkers. It clearly needed someone who had well developed Sensing (preferably Se types). Thinkers are the worst (in particularly Te) when the circumstances surround the human condition or a need to make lightning quick decisions in an immediate situation.

[Ivy]

We all are. Some just need more conscious analysis and guidance to make good choices.

I'm not saying that using feeling to make decisions automatically = a bad decision.
I'm theorizing that some of us have a harder time making good decisions that way and compensate with deliberation.

I'm not sure that's the crystallization of the T/F dichotomy at all. I am most definitely an F. I am an F because, as someone explained in another thread, I will always consider the human factor (conditions and circumstances) when I make decisions. This does not always mean that I err on the side of sparing feelings (although I often do-- by no means always, or even most of the time, though), or that I make rash decisions based on emotion. I am a very slow decision-maker, actually, and deliberate thoroughly beforehand.