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Redefining "S"

Home 2023 Forums Model 1 Discussions Redefining "S"

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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  • #23950
    Juan E. Sandoval
    Keymaster
    • Type: TiNe
    • Development: l--l
    • Attitude: Adaptive

    Hello guys!
    As with the Redefining F article that was addressed to newcomers with an MBTI background, here is one made for Redefining S: 🙂

    Redefining "Sensing"


    This has been one of the most typical confusion points for newcomers to CT who don't resonate with "S" as described in most other Myers-Briggs literature. I hope this can be a quick resource to get people up to speed on the differences in CT. 🙂
    I've also made it more accessible by putting these articles in the menu like so:

    The other articles on N and T will follow next, so we can have a mini-course on transitioning over from MBTI to CT.
    Let me know your thoughts! Feedback is always welcome. I'm especially hoping to hear from our high Se/Si members. Thanks!

    #23957
    Hrafn
    Participant
    • Type: SiTe
    • Development: l-ll
    • Attitude: Seelie

    Hey @auburn, been a while. I’ve been too busy the past year or so to contribute much to the discussions, but I've been following it more lately & some of the new content has been piquing my interest.
    So, I’m not sure how much I relate to the notion of every object having boundaries, as I’ll explain below. What I do relate to is the implicit idea of considering each object more as a localized phenomenon with its own unique attributes (rather than as a collection of archetypal themes that occur & recur throughout the universe).
    As for boundaries. I’ll happily use natural boundaries when I perceive them there, but the problem is that most objects don’t actually have neat boundaries around them. For example, the scientific notion of a “species” is sort of based on a natural boundary, as I understand it—the point at which two populations become separate enough that reintegration is no longer possible (because they can’t interbreed). On paper, this sounds very neat & tidy, but in reality there are all kinds of contingencies, exceptions & hairsplitting that go into delimiting & maintaining these boundaries. For example, brown bear (Ursus arctos) & polar bear (U. maritimus) are considered two separate species for one reason or another, but they are perfectly capable of interbreeding & producing fertile offspring. (In fact, there's some evidence that populations of the two are beginning to re-merge as melting sea-ice forces polar bears onto land for more of the year).
    "Seeing" boundaries where there are no obvious ones—or relying on preexisting socially-constructed boundaries—can sometimes cause me discomfort & fretting because of how arbitrary such boundaries seem. Something bugs me about the idea of chopping up a fluid whole into disembodied chunks, and thereafter, accepting that hatchet-job as if it were the natural order of things. I tend to be pretty cognizant of how our perception of reality is distorted in all sorts of ways by arbitrary legacy boundaries & categories that (originally) had no naturalistic bases whatsoever.
    As I said, the part that I do relate to is the notion that if I’m perceiving an object, I won’t instantly place it within a web of far-flung or widespread connections (unless it really excites my Ne, of course). But as I spend time considering the object, I do tend to gradually inch further & further out toward the its margins, explore the context around it, and only then, maybe, decide that I’ve gotten sidetracked from my original purpose.
    Ultimately, my view of the world is more nodular than modular—the nodes each tend to have clear centers & unique attributes, but at the margins, they intersect/overlap heavily with their nearest neighbors. As much as I can understand my Si as a distinct part of my experience (which is probably not much), it feels like it’s more concerned with recognizing these nodes, or centerpoints, than in the more futile exercise of trying to draw edges & boundaries onto the gradients between them.
    Rather than viewing the world as a bunch of neatly-bounded patches on a quilt, a better analogy might be a pile of down stuffing that you pulled out from inside the quilt. It’s not all uniform—there are different clumps & clusters, suggesting different objects, but at the end there’s no single, definitive way to bound & define these objects.
    There’s even a bit of sadness in being forced (for practical reasons) to break things down into discrete categories: in doing so, I’m seeking more granular clarity, but I’m also flattening down my perception of the object, in a sense. In committing to a particular typology or set of categories, there’s often an anxiety that these lines will become burned into my perception; that I’ll never be able to break out of this particular, arbitrary, way of seeing this part of reality.
    Of course, I’m sure some of my attitudes toward this are influenced by my other functions, especially Ti (the concern with arbitrariness) & Ne (feeling reluctant to commit to one definitive way of breaking things down).

    #23971
    Supah Protist
    Participant
    • Type: SeTi
    • Development: ll-l
    • Attitude: Directive

    @auburn, what’s the difference between “Registering mental objects as discontinuous and discrete” (S) and “Definitional processing” (J-)?

    #23974
    Juan E. Sandoval
    Keymaster
    • Type: TiNe
    • Development: l--l
    • Attitude: Adaptive

    what’s the difference between “Registering mental objects as discontinuous and discrete” (S) and “Definitional processing” (J-)?

    The finality of information provided by S's boundary is not organized according to a monistic/platonic definition. It's simply the measurable limits of the dataset at hand, independent of how that data fits or doesn't fit principles of essential definition.
    In a sense, J-'s definitional processing is not contingent on any data, but is a kind of "ideal form" registration that is extracted from observing many objects. S, on the other hand, is not idealistic about the perfect limits of forms of objects. The discontinuity of objects is spatio-temporal (space, location, time) and quantitative (amount, size) -- even if those properties are abstract. For example, if there is a [quantity] of something, and the quantity is 50, that is a registration of finality without any necessary investigation into the essence of 50. So S understands informational limits, but those are contextual limits, not the limits of ideal forms (Ji).
    ~
    ^ But this is a good question. I know there's some proximity between these two concepts, and I'm still trying to find the best phrasing for them, so as to not overlap. I debated on whether to use the word 'discrete' the most, as it seemed applicable to both in various ways. This is a first draft, so it may refine over time. I hope this helps clarify a little.
    But let me know if it's still unclear, and I'll see if I can refine the terms more, as I don't yet feel 100% happy with it either.

    #23991
    Hrafn
    Participant
    • Type: SiTe
    • Development: l-ll
    • Attitude: Seelie

    I wanted to try & clarify the comment I made above. After thinking about it some more, I feel like I veered into the realm of "what is my overall attitude toward the topic of drawing boundaries around mental objects"--which gets into all sorts of other things beyond S's functioning and my direct experience of it. I understand that Si's purported recognition of things as bounded units or "particles" happens as an automatic effect of perception, not out of any conscious volition. In the case of Si, this bounding takes the form of indexing the information it's accumulated as discrete, static datasets.
    The main point I wanted to make is that it's in no way obvious or apparent to me--as an Si user--where one dataset ends and another begins. Here's an example to show what I mean:

    My Si function has indexed these two mountains as Mountain A and Mountain B, and presumably recognizes each one as a discrete object. But anytime I recall Mountain A in my mind, one of the characteristic features I remember is that it's connected to Mountain B by a ridgeline. It's not obvious to me where the dividing line is between the two mountains, or even where my Si reflexively places this boundary. From my internal experience, it feels more like a gradient. The quintessence of Mountain A is at its summit: this is probably the single point that most encapsulates its unique characteristics as an object. If I go down the ridgeline to Point Z, I guess I might still recognize that as part of Mountain A. But it's a part of Mountain A that's thoroughly infused with the flavor of Mountain B. If I go any farther, it really feels like I'm in a mixing zone between the two objects.
    I wonder whether what I'm describing might be associated with "IN": perhaps the activity of my Ne makes it difficult to recognize the boundaries between adjoining datasets, to the point where I perceive my own worldview as fairly continuous/gradiated. (Again, I can easily see how my Si differs from Ni based on how much I tend to focus on local particularity). Or perhaps the boundaries between Si's discrete datasets simply aren't usually that obvious or apparent to the Si user themself?

    #24027
    Juan E. Sandoval
    Keymaster
    • Type: TiNe
    • Development: l--l
    • Attitude: Adaptive

    Ultimately, my view of the world is more nodular than modular—the nodes each tend to have clear centers & unique attributes, but at the margins, they intersect/overlap heavily with their nearest neighbors. As much as I can understand my Si as a distinct part of my experience (which is probably not much), it feels like it’s more concerned with recognizing these nodes, or centerpoints, than in the more futile exercise of trying to draw edges & boundaries onto the gradients between them.
    Rather than viewing the world as a bunch of neatly-bounded patches on a quilt, a better analogy might be a pile of down stuffing that you pulled out from inside the quilt. It’s not all uniform—there are different clumps & clusters, suggesting different objects, but at the end there’s no single, definitive way to bound & define these objects.

    Right!
    This conjunction between fuzzy, multi-meanings ("superposition") at the level of object detection (Ne), while having that reside within a landscape of "clear, nodular information" (Si), really reflects what I recently wrote about in this thread -- curious to hear your thoughts on it?

    #24076
    Hrafn
    Participant
    • Type: SiTe
    • Development: l-ll
    • Attitude: Seelie

    I'll have to digest the information in that thread some more, as it's fairly technical, but from what I understand on first read through it seems like it explains things pretty well.

    So you can think of the Ne-Si oscillation as having definite dimensions, but indefinite object ranges within them.
    Si-Ne: The dimensions are fixed in their local parameters, but your current location is a superposition across them.

    --Yes, if I understand right this seems to account for what I was raising in my earlier posts. But like I say it will probably take me a few more read-throughs to fully process this (stuff it into my Si quilt, so-to-speak).
    I suppose one way to look at it is that any time I'm using Si, I'm surely also engaging Ne at least peripherally, since the two are closely connected. So if I'm at the margins of two closely-related datasets--near where they intersect or overlap with each other--then Ne would probably be superposing information from both of these at once, blurring their edges and making the perceptual experience one of fluid continuity.

    #24679
    Rua
    Moderator
    • Type: NeTi
    • Development: ll-l
    • Attitude: Adaptive

    My love of language is intimately connected with Ne-Si's operational profile as described here and in the Model 2 Articles. There are words with histories which contain discrete allusions and definitions (Si) which are drawn upon and recombined to choose one path among the infinite possibilities of the present-tense expression of life (Ne).

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