The Future of Jungian Models is in Cognitive Science

The formation of CT's Computational domain has been met with some criticisms. For some, it seems to diverge too far away from Jung's original concepts and risk falling into a reductionistic philosophy; turning the mind into a mere computer. However, this is not the intent of the Computational domension of CT, which is chiefly meant to provide tools and analogies for better describing phenomenon in a rigorous language. The creation of Model 2 represents the natural evolution of CT into a formalized, scientific description, allowing for more targeted experimentation of the postulated cognitive operations. Without taking this step, no real progress can be made in the domain of Jungian Typology. As such, this marks a distinct point in the development of CT into a scientific hypothesis.

Example of a computational model.
Source: https://www.mi-research.net/en/article/doi/10.1007/s11633-020-1270-z

Cognitive Science

Model 2 falls squarely into the domain of cognitive science, being an architecture of how the mind processes information through a series of what Fodor calls "modules."^[1] These modules are innate, content-less circuits that each handle specific forms of information, to produce our canonical human brain functioning. Fodor explains that modular systems must—at least to "some interesting extent"—fulfill certain properties:

1. Domain specificity: modules only operate on certain kinds of inputs—they are specialized
2. Obligatory firing: modules process in a mandatory manner
3. Limited accessibility: what central processing can access from input system representations is limited
4. Fast speed: probably due to the fact that they are encapsulated (thereby needing only to consult a restricted database) and mandatory (time need not be wasted in determining whether or not to process incoming input)
5. Informational encapsulation: modules need not refer to other psychological systems in order to operate
6. Shallow outputs: the output of modules is very simple
7. Specific breakdown patterns
8. Characteristic ontogeny: there is a regularity of development
9. Fixed neural architecture.

Jung's functions as prototypes to modules

Those familiar with Jungian typology will immediately recognize a similarity between Fodor's "modules" and Jung's "cognitive functions." Jung likewise describes his functions as fixed, eternal elements of cognition and human nature. He described that a function is a psychic process that "remains theoretically the same under varying circumstances"^[2]) - able to process infinitely varied contents under one operation. He also understood these operations to be involuntary, rapid, simple, and to produce higher complexity over time.

It is clear that what Jung was describing, even if imperfectly, is what we now understand to be discrete neurological processes. However, Jung, belonging to the first generation of psychoanalysts , did not have the privilege of describing his concepts with any greater detail. Along with Freud and colleagues, his pioneering role was to illuminate society to the general reality of discrete, eternal, psychic functions - which was itself a profound and novel idea in his time. But unfortunately, pioneers often sketch out an rough first draft of a phenomenon, which lacks the polish and clarity they attain with subsequent refinement by later generations.

Thus, his definitions of typological functions are not standardized in meaning. They meander through a series of complementary meanings, making it challenging to understand what is the essential root of his concepts and what are emergent effects. Equivocations abound, and despite his efforts to be clear, the fragmentation of typological schools we see is evidence itself of his failure to be absolutely clear in articulating what he perceived.

A move away from ambiguous natural language

A great part of the trouble he faced was due to his use of natural language descriptors, such as "thinking", "intellect", "feeling" and so on. While these common dictionary words make it easy for all people to see and apply meanings to them, it is precisely this ease of meaning-projection that makes it so everyone has some idea of what they think it means, regardless of whether that meaning is identical to what others mean. This makes the concepts altogether unscientific and near impossible to study properly.

It is precisely these sorts of troubles with natural language based concepts that gave rise to the cognitive revolution^[3] of the 1950's, which sough to bring formal scientific methodologies into psychology to remedy these issues. Rather than relying on natural language alone to describe psychic phenomenon or concepts, cognitive science saw the introduction of computational models and formal semantic architectures, to represent psychic concepts with mathematical rigor.

This allowed for the proper testing of psychological concepts, and ushered in a new generation of thinkers on the mind. The movement was largely successful, and by the 1980's the majority of psychology research used a cognitive science line of inquiry. With a much more robust and articulate way of describing problems, as well as testing them, cognitive science is able to address challenges with greater clarity than any previous methods. In 2022, cognitive science is now in its adolescence, with the fruits of its labor producing such powerful models as DeepBlue, AlphaGo, DALLE-2, Imagen, Midjourney, Tesla Autopilot and Boston Dynamics.

The Future of Jungian Models

In the 21st century, any serious work on the mind is likely to be done through the lens of cognitive science. We now have abundant tools to model ideas about the psyche, as well as an intellectual obligation to make use of these new tools when choosing to present new hypotheses and test their reality. It is my belief that no function-based model inspired by Jung will ever gain any semblance of scientific respectability unless it is formulated in a language commensurate with cognitive science; allowing for its critical investigation and potential falsification.

Mental models that do not have such a language for what they describe, and which remain essentially as a system of adjectives, are eternally stuck in the problems of 1940's psychology, and will continue to experience equivocation problems indefinitely. They have no means of upward scientific mobility, until or unless they can articulate their ideas with the aide of scientific tools of description.

CT's mission is to present its particular case for type's existence to academia for peer reviewing. To do this, a computational model is not only valuable, but completely necessary. Fortunately, CT's anchoring to embodied cognition allows it to develop a keen understandings of what is essential across a given set of vultologies, and to articulate that in the appropriate language for academic review. This computational modeling also allows CT to bypass the gridlock of natural language, opening up wide new vistas for what it can describe, explore and express.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_of_mind[↩]
2. Psychological Types, pg 547 (Definitions, 22: Function[↩]
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_revolution[↩]