I've now read chapters 3, 4 and am on chapter 5 ("The path to monism"), and I wanted  to share my thoughts again while they're fresh:

Chapter 3: Vision and Vocation

Vision

I like the separation made between 'vision' as an explicit and particular long-term-goal, versus the cognitive inclination to exist in a perpetual state of daily prescience/foreknowledge. I generally find the term vision ambiguous, so it's good to have a precise use of the term.

Coming from CT's perspective, the root energetic Pi is associated with "anticipation and prediction" - which extends both to Si and Ni. In the case of Si, when a mapped territory is identified, "what comes next" is understood as a function of the understanding of the territory. One could say that what comes after spring ice melting is spring blossoms, and then hay fever, so better get that antihistamine at the pharmacy tomorrow. This gives Si users a concern and preparedness in life, because they can track what's likely to come next, based on literal knowledge and life experience.

With Ni, some of that also applies since Pi is ~80% the same in both functions. But for Ni the prediction is more pattern-based in nature, and more neglectful of literality. For example, the results of an election may be predicted not based on a review of similar past elections, but by "taking the temperature" of the collective's psychology as it goes through stages of (for example) Denial->Anger->Bargaining->Grief->Acceptance. A certain Ni user may sense the zeitgeist is moving from Anger to Bargaining in its sociological stages, and so will pick X candidate rather than Y candidate due to what X candidate offers in the way of that stage's psychic fulfillment at the collective level.

The "pattern" (the 5-stages of grief) is used as the tool for tracking the future, moreso than finding a historical analog to the present situation which can act as a factual reference. I'm using the 5-stages-of-grief here as an illustrative example, but these patterns may not be so formally defined, and can be privately constructed too. The main point is that "what comes next" relies on the next element in a (self-made) pattern, rather than literal precedent. And the world is approached with micro-anticipations of this sort at every turn, most being mundane in nature.

Vocation

I had a bit of trouble understanding the use of the word vocation (occupation?) for what was meant, but eventually got it, I think? It's the treatment of prescience as an ever-uncovering process, rather than a discrete clairvoyant prediction? I might have chosen a word like elucidation, which implies a continual process of ever-elucidating understandings, such that the vision itself is viewed with more lucidity as more people collaborate - even if the end looks a bit different from the beginning.

In any case, what came to mind when reading this section was Carl Jung. In my mind, the visions Carl Jung had are still being uncovered and CT is part of that tradition. I once called CT the physical realization of that very same essential intuition, which follows very much this sentiment:

The meaning that has been actualised was first a potential gestating inside his Ni. He is always the first link in the chain.

The confirmation or falsification of a vision comes much later than its inception. And sometimes it's confirmed in whole, but most of the time it's confirmed in part. And sometimes it's not confirmed at all, but the flaws are laid bare at last. Which of those it is, is indeed something that can be existentially stressful to a high-Ni user. I found your "collaborative" approach a very healthy one, as it can allow validation of Ni's essential function in the psyche, while also not falling into the trap of believing itself infallible - as all functions are inclined to believe. If it sees "something", then that something can be affirmed in meaningfulness while not necessarily needing to be represented in the literal world in unmodified form. I enjoyed this chapter.

Chapter 4: The Body Recovered

With this chapter, two different ideas of the inferior function were presented. One in which the fourth function cannot, by definition, enter consciousness directly because the definition of the type is tautologically defined by this very inability. The other idea proposed an indirect integration of the function (Se), by means of world-recovery more generally via Ni+Fe+Ti, thus preserving the tautology of the 'INFJ'.

From a CT perspective, I find myself in disagreement, and I see no necessary mechanism in place for Ni+Fe+Ti to bring Se into fruition. It seems a little farfetched, but I can understand why this might have been a tempting hypothesis or speculation, as you admitted it being.

Contrary to Carl Jung's view (and this is where the final elucidation of the phenomenon can differ somewhat from the original vision), we do see CT types utilizing their polar function with competence and agency, in both activities and in mental appreciations of them. Why then was there such an insistent belief against this possibility?

I think the trouble of writing a purely conceptual or psychological system is that you can run into circular pitfalls like this. The fear that the very definition of the type may vanish if X and Y traits are seen together, is understandable, but from a perspective of a biological definition of type, this is a non-problem. If the biology, and vultology, of the type remains the root anchor-point of the type, then the type is allowed to have within them contrary opinions: Ni and Se. It is only when the type is treated as little more than an abstract concept, suspended in a necessary antithetical symmetry to its opposite concept, that such co-existing viewpoints remain impossible.

Nevertheless, I think retaining this tautological purity in type-description is something of a crutch that typology hasn't been able to wean itself out of, until a physical instantiation can act as a replacement anchor, and allow freedom of thought and behavior to reign true in all types. I found this part of the chapter peculiar, especially in relation to the synthetic perspective articulated in the following chapter. But I did enjoy the little section about the functionalist view.

Functionalist view

As I mentioned in DMs, this is essentially the same viewpoint CT takes, in its CTA.

^ It also starts with Information Gathering (Pe), and indeed it also ends with Je (procedural processing)

The similarities between our articulations of the phenomenon are rather strong. Here for example:

^ I actually think our views are more similar than what even this shows, at a glance, by how we treat the concepts. Perhaps without putting it in these terms, I think you've essentially started to devise an Energetics-first view of cognition (Pe-Pi-Je-Ji dynamics), the same as in CT. This allows for a lot of room for future discussion about the specifics. I'd love to have followup conversations with you on the little nuances of how we define the energetics similarly or differently, and why that might be. But I'll move on to the next chapter for now.

Chapter 5: The Path to Monism

I'm not done with this chapter, but it's quite an interesting one! It's especially interesting in light of your recent vultology report, which demonstrated four-function consciousness in you. This is in quite the agreement with what you said about Jung's take on the synthetic development. What I see in this book is essentially a personal guide for four-function integration. As you navigate from chapter to chapter, you explicate how it is that you've gone about reconciling ontological conflicts between the various Beta functions. (Although in CT you appear as FeNi llll, much of what you share in the book would still apply. And we can talk about your type more in another thread, as I'm eager to discuss.)

But anyhow, your monistic viewpoint in this chapter is not only one which we might anticipate a fully-integrated individual to hold, but it's also at the very foundation of CT's philosophy; being a mind-matter theory. I see CT as being a radical embracing of the notion that mind and mater, mental and physical, are not separate. I found this particulate quote interesting:

Most people would be tempted to say that whatever there is must be made of the same stuff. However, when they are asked to explain how e.g. mental states can be shown to be substantially the same as physical states, they run into an impasse (not me! :'D). For the purposes of our life in society, it is incredibly useful to assume that there is a duality of mind and body, matter and spirit, as it allows us to dodge seemingly insoluble metaphysical questions.

[emphasis added]

People do indeed run into an impasse, even though at some level they know their division/dualism must be false. I talked about this at some length in the first video of my lecture series. Carl Jung acknowledge this illusion of separateness, but his position was to begrudgingly resign himself to focus on the phenomenological (metaphysical) element of things, not the physical, and he mostly retained the separation between the two aspects by his silence. Some people think Jung didn't really see the two as connected, because of this, but I just think he was overwhelmed by the problem and couldn't solve the divide. It's interesting to note that Carl Jung appears as NiFe ll-- in vultology, meaning recovery of Se did not happen for him.

As for Western culture; yes indeed. I am still baffled sometimes by how I'm met with individuals who are so skeptical of mind-body psychology, as if it's some heretical teaching. And they resist/reject it in a deeply personal way; a way that is emotional and which goes beyond a simple opinion. And I think the reason for this anxiety is because it is the harder view to hold, and it violate the more cognitively easy but dualistic view you describe.

If you allow the two domains to remain separate, you artificially allow your metaphysical self to have freedom from the physical. You excuse yourself from the criticism that might come from your objective appearance contradicting your self-perception. And you can justify a negation of vultology because the primacy of mind has "nothing to do with" physicality; the spirit and matter are separate. Therefore, the practice of vultology is itself metaphysically abominable to those whose cognitive balance has been formed around dualism.

This is also why I see the practice of vultology as world-redeeming, in the sense that it aims to bridge the metaphysical and physical, to honor that holism by not running away from the problem, but tackling it head-on. I don't think we can really solve the problem of human consciousness until and unless we understand what relationship our embodiment has to our minds, since from an evolutionary perspective it seems mind and body co-evolved and always co-exist.

Edit: also:

If my argument is correct so far, there must be an internal connection between a person’s worldview and their psychical makeup. (and their vultological makeup!) In the language of this book, a person’s worldview projects her first-person (existential) experience into a rational, representational, unified concept of world. In that way, she avoids cognitive dissonance.

[emphasis added]

The connection between function-integration and worldview is sensible to me, in general. But the 3-4-function-consciousness discord channel may prove a better case-study for how correct this is. But it's amazing to me that we also see vultological balance go hand-in-hand with this cognitive synthesis. It further supports the unification of mind and body, and the intimate tie.

When CT first started to discover that people could be integrated in multiple functions, and that this integration had a vultological analog that was consistent, it was a game-changer. It allows us to (roughly) trace the level of psychological integration a person has, based on their outward comportment, which is wild. I'm sure the correlation isn't 100%, but I would wager the percentage of llll individuals with a unified worldview/metaphysics will be much higher than the population average, if we ran a study on it.

(I'll stop here as I've already gone on way longer than I expected!)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.