Homological Composition; a Philosophical Perspective

By Nonen Titi

What do quantum physics, cosmology, biology and psychology have in common?

They’re all driven by information.

Modern philosophy is stuck in linear thinking. But how can we come to agree about philosophy if we all use a different psychology to experience the world?

In this challenging book, Nōnen Títi presents a philosophical perspective that accepts information as the driving force of nature and psychotypes as an expression of the way different people filter information differently. This is based on the psychological types first introduced by Carl Jung and today popularly known by their Myers-Briggs indicator letters. As each person experiences their own set of filters as reality, a comprehensive philosophical theory must include these psychological differences.

This change in perspective leads her to propose a new theory of consciousness, a new look at what information is, a new understanding of the role of philosophers, a fresh perspective on moral judgment, a different concept of time travel, a different look at sexual orientations and an evolutionary explanation of the necessity of psychological diversity.

And she offers a challenge: If intellectual progress depends on it, can we create a tolerant society that embraces our natural psychological type differences?

You’ll never look at philosophy the same way again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: N Titi Publishing
• Release date: Feb 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9780473384739

Nonen Titi

I started my career in physical and mental healthcare, tropical nursing and midwifery, including an assignment with Medecins sans Frontieres to Columbia and four summers in a camp for children with type one diabetes. Those experiences still provide a lot of the material for my books. More recently I added hypnotherapy to my healthcare training.After my children were born, I changed to education and worked a few years as a Montessori teacher before opting to educate my own children at home. That was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. In the meantime we had moved from Europe and the UK to the USA, Australia and now New Zealand.Nearly twenty years ago I became interested in the theory of psychological types of Carl Jung (and of Myers-Briggs and David Keirsey) which has changed my perspective on life completely and which I have made my special interest of study. When my children went off to university, I decided to join them and get a degree in philosophy. Since then I have been a writer of both fiction and non-fiction books inspired by the inborn differences that influence the beliefs, behavior and natural talents of every person on Earth.Although I enjoy writing non-fiction books, I believe that fiction is best suited to help bridge those natural differences. Hence, my books portray human nature to a depth where the study of psychology cannot reach, each character an easily recognizable personality and together in pursuit of a positive future.

Book preview

Preface

It has been twenty years since I was first introduced to the idea of personality type theory through the books of David Keirsey, which brought me back to the original theory of Carl Jung and eventually to Isabel Myers. Since then I have never stopped thinking about its possibilities and implications.

Like so many people, I had learned to believe that I was wrong for questioning authority and for wanting to write, since writing was for eccentrics. Normal people, my parents said, don’t make a spectacle of themselves. Today, I no longer accept that there is something wrong with me because I don’t see the world like others do, or because ‘everybody says so’. Today I understand why they believed that.

Since I learned about the psychotypes, I realized that ‘normal’ is a soap-bubble word – a word that is nothing but air, used for whatever purpose the sender wants to achieve; a word so ingrained in our daily language that we ‘know’ what it means until we are startled by the unexpected response of someone for whom ‘normal’ means something completely different. ‘Wrong’ is also a soap-bubble word, of course, as are most of the abstract words we use to express our beliefs and opinions. Yet we each interpret those words so automatically that we do not for one moment doubt that our interpretation is correct and, therefore, that others must be wrong, and most people don’t hesitate to say so.

However, life isn’t about being right – it is about living together, which is only possible if we share our differences rather than fight over them or pretend that they don’t exist. Psychotype theory is the door to sharing.

After becoming acquainted with the theory, I began writing about it. Because the MBTI® (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is designed for people to discover only their own type, yet most people are curious about the types of loved ones who cannot take such a test, I decided to use the format of directed reading, which allows the reader to discover the psychotype of a person they know relatively well. Additionally, to explain the why of type-specific behaviour without abstract terminology, I wrote a musical analogy to explain the psychology.

Those first two books were published in 2011, but I also wanted to include the underlying philosophy regarding the origin of our psychotype differences as well as the consequences for the way people live together, which became this book and which completes the series that is The Music of Life:

1. Playing with Natural Talents: The descriptive guide that allows readers to find their own psychotype or that of a parent, child, mate or colleague.

2. Concerto for Mankind: The psychological theory explained as a musical analogy.

3. Homological Composition: The philosophy that has the inborn psychotype differences as its premise.

HOMOLOGICAL COMPOSITION

This volume, subtitled A Philosophical Perspective, is a response to academic psychology and philosophy, but it is not written only for academics, and no prior knowledge of either philosophy or psychotype theory is required.

The book aims to put philosophy in a different light. Instead of looking at the propositions and ‘facts’ of life from a distance and arguing them with the objective of convincing others, it looks at philosophy itself from the point of view of our psychological differences.

The main premise of this book is that people have different personalities, that those can be grouped in types (psychological types or psychotypes), that those are inborn and that they influence everything a person believes, notices, feels and expresses – including their philosophical beliefs. This is a perspective that most philosophers will dismiss out of hand, because it appears to undermine their belief in rational argument and free will. Therefore, the book has two goals. The first is to present support for its premise from two angles: in light of epistemology, I discuss the psychotypes of a range of philosophers and how this is consistent throughout all their writing, and, from a metaphysical perspective, I find support for the evolutionary origin of the psychotype differences (and their necessity) in the latest ideas coming from physics, complexity theory and biology. The second goal is to look at the consequences that result from accepting these inborn differences in people for our ethical and moral beliefs and the way we structure our society.

It is not easy to type other people (a third-person viewpoint) and certainly not if that person wrote a long time ago and of whom the only resource is their written works or, if lucky, some personal correspondence. For some types that is sufficient, but other people are reluctant to express their own personal feelings and thoughts, even if they have grand-scale philosophical views. This means that I am at all times aware that what I present is my interpretation of the psychotypes of these writers and I explain how I came to my assessment throughout the book. Additionally, I have included a comprehensive summary of psychotype theory at the start of the book, so as to give the reader enough information to make up their own mind whether they agree with me or not.

Due to the extent of the topic, it was necessary to assume a certain familiarity on the part of the reader with regard some existing scientific ideas.

If, after reading this book, you find yourself interested in learning more about the topic and you would like to find out your own psychotype, please use the reputable websites (those listed in the bibliography) and not the ‘popular’ quick assessments.

NOTES ON THE TEXT

As a self-published author, I am free to present the text as I like and I do not always follow the customary reference and writing style. Therefore, I have used the following stylistic adjustments:

• I have put in-text references in a smaller font which allows the reader to ignore them until needed.

• In the bibliography I use the Greek alpha sign (á) to indicate the original publication title, place and date of a work, so the reader can put the ideas in historical context.

• I use the type letters as pronouns – for example, when I speak of Ps, I mean all people with that letter in their typename – and to prevent confusion, the typenames and typename-letters are always in bold.

• Gender is unspecified, and where possible I use the third person plural, but occasionally the third person singular is required, in which case I use ‘he’ merely for ease.

• Speaking of gender, I use the word for both the cultural and physical distinction between male and female bodies.

• Of those philosophers whom I have included, I quoted their original work as much as possible and not sources by a third party, because different personalities interpret texts differently. Where I needed a third source or translator, I remained aware of their cultural influences.

• If I use language that suggests to some people that I argue for objectivity, then it is because that is how language is structured. I cannot say ‘it is my opinion that…’ with every statement, because that would make the book unreadable, but the relativist in me is always implicitly present in the words.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I don’t have enough words to credit Carl Jung for what he brought the world. When first presented with his work twenty years before I started personality type studies, the textbooks on human behaviour merely mentioned his four personality functions as one psychological description among many, and its importance never dawned on me. I will be forever grateful to Katherine Briggs, who managed to see the potential of these functions, and to Isabel Myers for making it accessible to the world. I am equally thankful to David Keirsey’s descriptions, and especially for the amount of work he has put into making a stand against the labelling of natural personalities as various syndromes in school children.

There are so many thinkers (ancient and modern) who helped me to formulate my philosophy – too many to mention here – but my all-time favourite must be Plato, who long ago wrote about inborn dispositions and their ethical and political implications, including the realization that a society can produce happy people if it allows each to follow their own natural gift.

Additionally, my thanks go to Suzanne North and all the people at The Copy Press for helping publish my work and for their support, to Jason Darwin for making it eBook accessible, to Madeleine Collinge for copy editing the book and to Neil Smith for the wonderful cover illustration.

Special thanks to Maria Genitsariou, Greek translator and illustrator, for helping me make sense of the Greek words and the subtleties in the works of Plato. Special thanks also to Djanko for the cover idea.

As proposed in Concerto for Mankind, all of us have a typename, and we may extend our personal identification without creating inequality. Therefore, all responses are welcome; I will remain open to suggestions and discussion, and I hope to have been clear.

Thank you for reading.

Nōnen Títi, INFP

www.nonentiti.com

INTRODUCTION

From Above and Beyond

FROM ABOVE AND BEYOND

Psychological differences in people are as old as are gender differences, and they have been described and disputed by philosophers throughout the ages, usually in relation to viewpoints about free will, individuality and moral agency.

The distinct inborn psychological types that are used here were first described by Carl Jung in 1921 and are known to millions of people all over the world today. They are used by employment agencies and businesses, and have become the focus of countless books and internet groups. But, although many people now know their four-letter ‘typename’, there is little discussion about the evolutionary need for these type differences or their implications for the way humans live together.

Not too long ago, psychology and philosophy belonged to the same academic discipline. The word ‘philosophy’, translated as ‘a love of wisdom’, originated in ancient Greece with thinkers who made it their occupation to speculate about the nature of things. Today it aims for an understanding of the fundamental problems of existence, knowledge and values, in which it relies on theoretical rather than empirical methods.

Outside of academia, ‘philosophy’ is used for a person’s basic outlook on life; their personal belief system that guides their actions. Even though most philosophies of life are claimed by institutions of religion or ethics, each person can make their own theory, since there are no boundaries that make having a philosophy inaccessible to any person. Additionally, there are countless philosophers in every corner of the world, but as they spring from cultural backgrounds not traditionally associated with western academic philosophy, they are not usually considered in the theories.

Psychology, originally ‘the study of human behaviour’, is today described as the ‘science of mind and behaviour’. The Greek meaning for ‘psyche’ was ‘breath of life’ or ‘soul’, though today we focus on mental processes and activities concerning the inclination to act purposely (Merriam-Webster). This move from observed behaviour to measuring mental processes, accompanied by the change in semantic definitions, indicates a focus change from observational to physical science, in line with the significance today attributed to the brain.

Along with the word ‘philosopher’, the word ‘physikos’ (natural scientist) originated in the fourth century BCE (Waterfield, 2000: xxx). Yet, until well into the nineteenth century, ‘science’ (from the Latin meaning ‘knowledge’) used to be called ‘natural philosophy’ and was discussed in terms of metaphysics. Science is today defined as knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena (Merriam-Webster).

The same cultural limitation applies here, for even if science is multicultural, the academic study of psychology has been largely focused on the western mind. However, the psychological type differences this book is based on have been found to be culturally neutral; they are consistent across cultures – although this research excludes isolated tribal peoples.

In the accompanying psychology book Concerto for Mankind, I distinguish natural-born philosophers from natural-born scientists – unrelated to any academic study. Natural-born philosophers tend to go with possibilities and speculations, while natural-born scientists primarily measure against an existing standard. The former ask why and accept the jump from instance to possible universal – philosophy is about what could be – while the latter ask how and want to do research and have repeated evidence before considering the universal (the law). The recent November 2016 earthquake in New Zealand, coinciding with the moon at perigee is a good example. Scientists, when asked, deny the correlation, because it cannot be used for prediction; philosophers want to understand, not predict, so they speculate a possible relation between tidal forces and magma. As Plato said, For this is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher, this wondering: this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else (Theaetetus: 155d).

This is a subtle yet very important difference between natural philosophers and natural scientists and between the purpose of philosophy and that of science. Wisdom, after all, is not knowledge, since knowledge applies to facts or ideas acquired by study, investigation, observation, or experience (empirical or logical methods), which are objective and bound to the accepted views and actualities of their society, while ‘wisdom’ requires an understanding of how people and ‘knowledge’ are interrelated. Thus, the tribal shaman without access to current-day science can be said to have very little knowledge about the world, but can nevertheless be wise, while there are plenty of modern people who are ‘stuffed’ with knowledge they cannot put in perspective or use to compose new theories, inventions or ideas.

This, of course, does not mean that individuals cannot engage in both philosophy and psychology. Jung’s theory is as much philosophy as it is based on psychological research and Aristotle’s works are distinctly researched and scientific, but each person has a tendency toward one or the other. What are today called ‘scientists’ are often natural-born philosophers working in an academic setting, since ‘science’ is generalized to mean all academic study aimed at knowledge. Hence, current day psychology, largely because of its neuroscientific focus, is considered academic science, while academic philosophy, which (at least in the English speaking world) for a great part relies on propositional argument, is classified under arts.

Both philosophy and science experienced a T-shift recently – T stands for one of the psychological functions – which came with a change in entrée requirements for tertiary education. Up until 1950, university study was reserved for the average rich kid, regardless of their intelligence or natural talents, resulting in a number of bored sensory inclined young people being forced into theoretical topics they had no interest in, while those who were interested did not get the chance (apart from some private scholarships). In the fifties and sixties most western countries signed acts that were to guarantee the right to education (as a human right), creating the opportunity for high-scoring secondary students to gain access to universities based on the belief that all people, regardless of their economical background, have an identical capacity for theoretical study.

However, this access was based on average grades – often including a grade of general behaviour – in which high school mathematics (algebra and geometry) was considered a continuation of primary school arithmetic, and thus a measure of general intelligence, which, from the viewpoint of psychological type differences, means favouring those types whose natural gift includes formulaic thinking: Ts. They got higher average scores, went to university, became the teachers who considered (and graded) deductive logic and truth-based thinking as more rational, and slowly the entire academic establishment (including the arts) shifted toward an analytic and formulaic thinking system.

As a consequence of this shift, academic philosophy today aims for critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs and although logic is a separate branch of philosophy, an argument in any of the other fields is expected to be logically valid and is often presented with modal formulae.

In light of this shift and of its claim to question the most fundamental assumptions, this book takes a stance above and beyond (western) philosophy – the way philosophy itself steps above and beyond the fields it studies – and questions its assumptions in light of human psychology, while simultaneously taking a step above and beyond psychological type theory to assess its ontology and philosophical merit.

Beginning with a brief overview of the theory of psychological types, the five chapters that comprise the main body of this work present a philosophy that is based upon personality (psychological) type differences in humans. Not only will I explain how and why these differences lead to different philosophical beliefs and justifications, but also propose that we are physical expressions of how we deal with information and that it is information itself that shapes who we are. I hope therefore to demonstrate that the psychotype differences are not arbitrary categories, but a requirement for taking advantage of the information available to a group or species, and thus that they must be inborn. In the process, the book can explain why the same philosophical viewpoints keep reappearing throughout history and why no scientific evidence, no educational approach, no political ideology, no ethical hypothesis, no medical intervention, no self-help remedy and no rational argument has ever worked for all people or solved our problems once and for all. It also explains why some people insist on objective evidence and others allow for relativism. In doing so, the book can explain why there has never been and never will be agreement between all people about anything and why this is a necessary evolutionary situation without which we would have no civilization at all.

The objection that this creates a circular argument or that the theory promotes determinism is noted and addressed in the text, but I am not arguing my theory; rather I am presenting my justified personal belief without the requirement that you give up yours. As such I challenge the first of many academic assumptions: that argument with an appeal to truth is the only way of discussing philosophy. This assumption is spoon-fed to first-year philosophy students and underlies widespread misinterpretation of some of the greatest philosophers of the past. I want to see justified personal beliefs acknowledged as an acceptable manner of presenting philosophical viewpoints, so that we can get away from theorists who assume the lone right to tell others ‘how to think’. Consequently, this book is not intended as an argument in favour of any existing theory, but as an exploration of psychological types in relation to a range of philosophical beliefs.

Regarding ‘determinism’, psychotype theory allows both for prediction and freedom of agency because it deals with tendencies. A tendency is never a determinant – it is about what is probable rather than what is certain. Therefore, the theory itself prohibits presenting this as determinate. Additionally, the theory sees free will as a prerequisite for philosophy itself.

Due to the limitations of language I have previously used the term ‘typology’ for this specific psychological theory – without any relation to either religion-based typology, philosophical type theory, or the psychosomatic (A and B) types – but from here on I will use ‘psychotype theory’ or ‘the theory of psychological types’ and refer to the differences as our ‘personality types’, ‘psychological types’, ‘psychotypes’ or simply ‘type differences’, and I use the typename-letters as group nouns that include all people who have that letter in their typename.

I have divided the book into three parts: the ideas that form its psychological background and their relationship to the philosophy of mind (Essence), their explanation in terms of epistemology and metaphysics (Support), and their importance for our ethical, moral and political beliefs (Significance).

Chapter One: Typeminded is concerned with what makes us people. An introduction to psychotype theory and a discussion about contemporary psychology from a philosophical perspective set the stage for a discussion about person, personality, identity, free will, consciousness, the mind-body problem and the role of the collective.

Chapter Two: Typological discusses how the theory relates to the perspectives of some of the most influential philosophers of the past with regard to knowledge and justification, simultaneously reviewing their theories in light of their personality type and finding support for the way different personality types deal with these topics.

Chapter Three: Typontology takes the psychotype differences beyond the human psyche, exploring reality, biogenesis, the anthropic principle, information, complexity and metaphysical entities, so as to put humanity in its existential place.

Chapter Four: Typotopia looks at the needs of individuals and what accepting that people are essentially different means for the development of a healthy self-identity and a person’s freedom, obligation and expression in the social group.

Chapter Five: Typocracy then takes this ethical viewpoint to look at how a typocratic (as opposed to democratic) society would be able to function, ending with the enormous challenge this poses for the future: that of establishing a peaceful society tolerant to natural differences in people.

As I finish with a general conclusion (The Music of Life), I hope to have inspired new speculations about the way in which we might deal with this challenge, as well as new insights about our relationships with each other and our place in the larger cosmos.

PART ONE

ESSENCE

Chapter 1

Typeminded

CHAPTER 1

1.1 Beyond the Persona

1.1.1 Psychotypes

Person, Personality, Persona

Personality: Functions

Person: Attitude

Four Distinct Attitude Patterns

Natural Accords

Dominance

Conclusion

1.1.2 Stirring the Timbral

Pure Constants

1.1.3 Shared Meaning

Perceptual

Emotional

Intertype Communication

Conclusion

1.2 The Black and White of Grey Matter

1.2.1 Intelligence

1.2.2 Mind or Brain

Plasticity and Electricity

1.2.3 Collective Intellectual Databank

1.3 A Philosophical Person

1.3.1 Being Me: Identity and Individuality

1.3.2 Aesthetically Beautiful

1.3.3 Swinging In Trees: Free Will

Akrasia and Self-deception

1.3.4 Aware About

Consciousness

1.3.5 The Mind-Body Problem

1.4 Universal Being

1.4.1 Collective Entity

Desires and Emotions

1.4.2 Self-Identity and Belief

1.4.3 History Repeats

Predominant Views

Prehistory Today

Logos or Mythos

1.4.4 Connecting the Dots

1 TYPEMINDED

The innkeeper, like his father before him, has always provided his guests with a clean, warm bed and an honest meal: a stew made from the recipe of his father’s father. And he always tells them to keep their doors locked in case one of them cannot be trusted.

When a luxury resort opens across the road, offering a hot spa, satin sheets and a variety of exotic foods, the innkeeper scorns the idea: nothing like that will be sustainable in these lands. Nevertheless, he checks in, posing as a foreigner, to assess the competition.

When the foods make him sick and he doesn’t sleep well, he concludes that he was right; the resort is just a fancy and it won’t last; travellers want simplicity and food they can count on – but he cannot resist taking a set of those luxurious sheets when he leaves.

After a year, when the resort is still in business, its owner explains its success to the innkeeper. He simply offered an alternative. Stew may fill all people’s stomachs, but not all travellers are alike and he trusts that they each know their own needs.

The innkeeper argues that the travellers rely on what they know, and since it has happened that things got stolen, you cannot trust them on their word; the resort owner is way too credulous; one day he will find his hospitality abused.

No, I won’t, the resort owner replies. After all, the way the innkeeper is, so he trusts his patrons.

The distinction between psychotype theory and the currently-held ‘brainstory’ theory needs to be understood before I go into philosophy, since everything that follows depends on it.

According to the latter, we are born with human bodies (our phenotype); that is, we are born with certain properties and organs that are specific to the human animal, expressed in different physical variations (such as gender, skin colour and bone structure) due to a genetic memory (genotype) that is handed down directly from our biological parents. These organs include the brain, which can be subdivided into neurologically measurable activity clusters that all have a specific function. Recently it has been accepted that environmental influences (mental exercise and healthy food) can improve these mental functions (Flynn, 2007: 68), so that every person is an individual with their own brainstory.

In this view, the activity of the brain causes the mental functions that are expressed in a person’s behaviour, which is studied in neuroscience and can be measured in psychometric tests. In other words, each person is a different expression of a physical human brain, in which behaviour equals personality, and ‘mind’ (or psyche) equals ‘the workings of the brain’.

Psychotype theory accepts that we are born with human properties, bodies and organs, but also with a psychological predisposition (psychotype) that influences how an individual communicates with their environment. That means that the psyche is not merely genetically and environmentally moulded grey matter, but an aspect of the human form that develops with the embryo – similar to how gender does – and which has the ability to influence the physical body; the functions develop accordingly, which is why some people are better at logic, some are better at sensing, some are more intuitive and some more empathic. Because the number of mental functions is limited, we can subdivide humans into a limited number of fundamentally different people who perform differently on mental tests and who respond differently in every way. These differences are our personalities, our inborn psychological types. In this view, behaviour is not equivalent to personality and mind is not equivalent to brain activity.

In short, the first view argues that all of us (all seven billion of us) are unique individual expressions of developmentally identical brains. The second view says that we are sixteen human types with developmentally different brains. Consequently, in the last view, what neuroscientists measure in the brain (including neuroplasticity) constitutes not the cause of a personality, but an effect of it.

‘Homology’ is a term used in biology and refers to a correspondence in structure and evolutionary origin, but not necessarily in function (Merriam-Webster). The psychotype differences are therefore functional differences, differences in expression, and not structural or morphological differences in the brain. When I speak about ‘our differences’, I am talking about these predisposed fundamental psychological type differences.

I must note that, although the theory originates with Jung, as far as I know, he never gave an evolutionary or biological explanation. Many people who accept his theory believe that the type differences develop in early childhood, so that the primacy of psychotype over phenotype is my take on it, which I will explain later.

So far, there is no known genetic inheritance for the type differences – which doesn’t mean there is none, but it is not as simple as saying that children inherit their type from their parents – yet each person subconsciously assumes that all people are (or ought to be) like them, and, just like the innkeeper above, they base all their beliefs, perceptions, actions and justifications on this assumption. This has implications for how we educate and raise our children, for how we create and assess tests of psychology and intelligence, what we consider moral or rational behaviour and how we deal with different points of view.

The brainstory theory assumes that all people potentially have an identical psychology and so bases its entire philosophy on trying to objectively convince others of the correctness of their own viewpoint. Psychotype theory asserts that our basic psychology is different and so necessarily assumes a relative stance, as Jung puts it, Every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative (Jung, 1995: 234).

Millennia of dichotomous arguments have brought us no closer to an answer we can all be happy with, for how can we come to agree about philosophy if we all use a different psychology to assess the world with, unless we acknowledge the existing differences and make them part of our philosophy?

In this chapter I will begin with an overview of psychotype theory (Beyond the Persona), followed by a brief look at contemporary psychology and the brainstory (The Black and White of Grey Matter), after which I will discuss the most fundamental problems of the philosophy of mind (A Philosophical Person), and finish with a discussion about communication, group behaviour and the collective (Universal Being).

1.1 BEYOND THE PERSONA

One of the great conundrums of philosophy concerns the understanding that human beings can be aware or themselves, think about events and existence, have memories of the past and concerns about the future, and especially that they can influence their body with their mind and their mind with their body.

There are heated debates about what constitutes a mind – whether it is a substance separate from the body, a spirit, or a function of the physical brain – and how this mind can come to reasoning, perceiving and awareness. Current-day science measures people’s neurology in order to find answers to their behaviour, while the physical sciences are equally hard at work trying to construct computers that can mimic a human brain in order to create ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘robots that can think and feel like humans’. Science fiction stories feature androids that have computing abilities way beyond those of people, but who tend to struggle with the emotional and motivational aspects of being human. Star Trek devotes an episode (The Measure of a Man) to the question of whether the android named Data is a person or a machine, and thus whether he can be used to be experimented on. This emphasizes one of the key issues that deal with ‘personhood’: the idea that we have certain ethical responsibilities with regard to a person (especially a human person), as well as that a ‘person’ is generally expected to behave with intention and can therefore be held responsible for their actions.

Now we need to distinguish between psychology and philosophy.

When psychology talks about being ‘a person’, it is concerned with the psyche and its sense of feeling happy, self-actualized or enlightened. It tries to figure out why people behave, think and feel the way they do, what motivates them and how that can be influenced, but ‘person’ as an individual being is accepted.

Philosophy asks how we can know that a being is a person. How do I know that I am the same person as that child I still recognize in the photo? Is memory enough to know this? Am I a person because of my body or because of my awareness of who I am? Am I a separate being or part of a collective?

So, psychology deals with how the psyche of a person works, while philosophy discusses what makes a person and how it can continue over time. I will get back to this philosophical concept of personhood, but first I want to discuss what makes a person from a psychological viewpoint and in doing so provide a basic overview of psychotype theory.

1.1.1 PSYCHOTYPES

Descriptions of types of people, in which a type represents a number of personality traits that appear together in one person, have been made since the beginning of written history – and probably longer – for one obvious reason: we recognize that we are not all alike, yet alike in some aspects more than in others.

This recognition has led to many theories of human personalities over the ages, for example, the four humours (melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic and choleric) by Galen, which focused on the general ‘humour’, or psychological outlook, of a person. Some people were more melancholic, others were ‘hot-blooded’ – we still use such phrases.

Others who have discussed and described personalities are Plato, Aristotle, Paracelsus, Spränger, Fromm and, of course, Carl Jung. Today we have The Big Five, the Enneagram and birth order theories, while Homeopathy and Ayurveda put a strong emphasis on the body type, on habitual behaviour and on the emotional make-up of a person in diagnosing and healing them.

Each of the above concentrates on a different aspect of human behaviour and thus do not completely agree with each other. That does not mean that one of them is right and the others wrong; it means that they are all right, because our differences are more profound than what we observe. What they have in common is that they are descriptive; they describe observed behaviour in specific circumstances, but this behaviour is a result of deeper inclinations – which is what Jung recognized.

The currently accepted view (as stated above) is that we are all unique individuals because we inherit different brains from our parents and have different experiences. Yet at the same time, most people believe it correct to teach and raise all those different individuals in the exact same manner – that all people have the same abilities and therefore the same chances if you treat them the same – and to compare those brains to one standard of functioning so as to determine whether a person is ‘normal’.

I believe that it is vital for people to not all have the same abilities and that this difference has to lie deeper than mere learned behaviour or direct genetic inheritance, as this book will explain.

PERSON, PERSONALITY, PERSONA

So what is a person? And what exactly comprises a personality and a persona?

To begin with, all three are concepts that come from the same Greek root, but their meanings have changed (and keep changing) over time so that different people use them differently, and dictionaries, as works of contemporary thinking, tend to accept the popular view, which today equates the inner person with their outward behaviour.

In light of psychotype theory, a person is an individual member of the collective we call ‘people’. You and I, and every human being are persons. This person needs to function in different environments. Nobody behaves at work as they do at home; you can’t afford to shout at your boss as you would at your kids, so that a persona is a social mask, our outward behaviour, and all people have a whole series of personas. It’s like the clothes you wear; you don’t dress for sports as you would at the opera.

But we also all have an ‘I’, a ‘me’, a Self, an inner person. Everybody recognizes this Self as different from the Other, from other people. This is one of the first things babies learn. As we play peek-a-boo with them, they experience that that ‘other’ can disappear and reappear, but ‘me’ or ‘Self’ is always there. Babies start calling for attention to make Mummy reappear and two year olds are known to thrive on this newly gained understanding of a Self that can communicate and so get things they need. Each person’s inner Self has a set of predisposed tendencies – inclinations that direct their Self to responding in a certain manner to their environment. This set of predisposed inclinations is one’s personality. Although it has different aspects (both conscious and unconscious), it is a constant; a perceptual awareness that seems eternal and unchanging within a changing environment and even within a changing body. It is what you refer to using your name, but while the name can change, the personality remains.

So a person consists of their body, their inner Self (or personality) and their habitual personas.

Now, the vital thing about communication is that it has to be understandable. Every one of us receives and sends information continuously. If we were to be aware of every bit of it all of the time, we’d go mad. When you are in a restaurant with a friend, you can only have a conversation because you block out the noises that are not relevant to you. You only become conscious of using your nose when a smell alerts you to something needing your attention, like smelling smoke that may indicate a fire. Similarly, we cannot make decisions about every action we undertake; most of it has to be pre-programmed (by our previous experiences and beliefs), which is a function of our memory. If you start thinking about typing in a password, it goes wrong, but if you let your body do the remembering, you type the word in flawlessly. The same is true of putting on the indicator when you drive a car or simply walking around obstacles. We cannot be conscious of every perception and every action, because being conscious of something takes effort and time, so we all have an unconscious, which is nothing scary or supernatural, but simply that part of our mental functioning we do not pay conscious attention to. It is the interface between conscious and unconscious that filters information, not just according to personal experiences, but also through a set of predisposed functions and attitudes (personality).

Information is everywhere, all the time, and if we didn’t have a filter system, we would not be able to communicate. If our Self cannot communicate with our environment, it won’t get what it needs and it cannot understand the world. This is what happens in autistic people, because their filter system doesn’t work properly. Obviously, in a world where everybody was a Self without communication, people could not work or live together and civilization would not have happened. However, the opposite is also true, if we all experienced the Other (the object or environment around us) as all powerful and we had no sense of Self, we would not be able to communicate either. Instead of autistic we’d be psychotic, like people who hear voices that tell them what to do and they cannot refuse; their sense of Self is (temporarily) absent or weak, and this also explains the need for this filter system to be inborn, or else an oppressive environment could create a population of drones without a Self.

So we need to be aware of a Self and an Other, and, except from the above psychiatric cases, everybody has this awareness that they are a person among other people and that they have to communicate with them to get what they need to survive – thus we have a relationship between subject and object, between Self and Other. Most of this has been stated before by continental philosophers and developmental psychologists.

Nevertheless, as Jung described, we do not all relate or filter in the exact same fashion. Some people naturally give more power to the object and others to the subject, because a relationship is never static. Just like your relationship with sound; unless you are deaf, in which case sound is absent, you can be a musical maestro or a person who is tone deaf, but either way you have a relationship with sound that allows you to function. Furthermore, people have different relationships with different aspects of life, so some people give more power to their sensory perceptions and others to their imagination; some give more power to their logical reasoning and others to their empathic understanding; some people give more power to the importance of the community they live in and others to the autonomous individual. A personality type then, refers to the personalities that give a little more power to one or another aspect.

What I call a typename – because it is like a name, an identification, similar to gender – are the four letters (out of a possible eight) that each represent one style of relating. The first and the last letters refer to the attitude of a person and the middle two letters refer to the functions of their personality. The difference between functions and attitudes is like the difference between music and musician.

Different ‘functions’, like rhythm, melody, instruments (that set the mood), and technical qualities (key and meter), together make the music. All music needs all four of these functions, yet jazz puts more emphasis on the rhythm than opera does, and a trumpet sets a different mood than an oboe. A musician who plays jazz has a different attitude – they behave differently – than an opera singer; they have a different relationship with the audience. If a person always plays jazz, this attitude becomes habitual and that is how you recognize them.

The exact same is true of our four psychological functions. We use all four functions, but only two of them in each person are strong and reliable, and so cause our perspective on life, which is reflected in our attitude. A person’s inborn psychological type is distinctly different from other types because their relationship with their environment is different, which influences how they communicate and interact with the world.

In short, the underlying permanent Self that you experience as the ‘me’ in every relationship is your personality, but it may put on a different persona depending on the environment. A personality is not the mask you wear in public (the behaviour we observe) but the creator of those masks. By learning to recognize the relationship between person and environment we can start to recognize the different makers – we can actually see beyond the persona, beyond the observable traits, and recognize the personality type that motivates the behaviour – just as by learning about music we can start to recognize a certain style even if every piece of music is different.

PERSONALITY: FUNCTIONS

To be able to function, each individual needs to be aware of their inner Self as a permanent identity (a subject) in an ever-changing external environment (the object) to which they need to be able to respond. To make that possible, each inborn personality has four functions:

Sensory perception (S): the ability to make observations of all objects and events that are presented to the sensory organs, both external (vision, sound, smell, taste and touch) and internal (motion, spatial orientation, temperature, pain). This requires a focus on the here and now, with a good sense for detail, form, shape, time, impressions, action, representative memory and non-verbal language.

Intuitive perception (N): the ability to see similarities, relations and connections between objects and events; to see with ‘the mind’s eye’ or the imagination. For example, if you see a man holding the hand of a little girl, you may notice that they look alike; you see the relation. This requires a focus on context, on spatial and temporal distances, with a good sense for patterns and symbolism.

Truth-based justification (T): reasoning with data and logical systems (formulae, tables, graphs, coordinates), using analysis, deduction and elimination in search of a definitive answer: a truth (or knowledge). This requires a focus on particulars, on either-or propositions, and works best with categories, principles and criteria.

Value-based justification (F): holistic reasoning using generalizations and empathic recognition in search of intrinsic value. This requires a focus on collectives and a subliminal understanding of mood and motivation, and works best with limits, gradations and intentions.

As Jung explained it, "sensation (i.e. sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going" (Jung, 1968: 49).

Jung referred to the perception functions as irrational functions, as in, they do not reason but simply perceive and to the justification functions – which he called ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ – as rational functions; they provide reason.

Two of these functions, one perception and one justification, are predisposed to be favoured in any one individual and so develop into an inseparable pair – which is Myers-Briggs’ addition to the theory. This is necessarily so, because the related functions are opposites: sensory perception needs to be up close (like a zoomed-in camera) and so misses the larger context, while intuition needs to be zoomed-out and so misses the details. You cannot have your camera zoomed-in and zoomed-out simultaneously. The same with T and F: you either deduce and eliminate (reduce your possibilities to be left with one) or you induce and generalize (collect all possibilities to create a whole).

Which function is dominant, and whether it is extraverted (e) or introverted (i), influences how a personality deals with information (their value-relation with the object), and thus how a person interacts and communicates with the external environment – their attitude to life. Each person, depending on the combination of their natural functions, has different value-relations with different aspects of life.

As the brain is an organ that responds to usage, when measured it will show the effect of a person’s habitual function behaviour, not its cause. And although I speak of a habit, this is not a habit subject to the will; it is a habit we have had from the day we were born and possibly before that.

PERSON: ATTITUDE

In short, our psychotype is an expression of our value-relation with the world around us, in which the two dominant functions (the inseparable pair) of our personality and the resulting attitude of the person are represented in a four letter ‘typename’:

Awareness attitude; where we focus our attention: E or I.

For example, if we tend to focus on a corner we perceive our environment differently than when we habitually look out a window.

Perception function (information intake); what we notice: S or N.

We can perceive a dark shape in the corner regardless of whether it is really there or in our imagination.

Justification function (information processing); what worth we give it: T or F.

We decide whether the dark shape in the corner is dangerous or friendly, and whether or not it is real.

Implementation attitude (information output); to whom or how we express this: J or P.

We can shoo the dark shape away or we can see it as an opportunity for adventure.

Each of those pairs of letters represents one aspect of information: attention, input, processing, output. There is nothing else we can do with information and therefore we need only four filters to help us relate to our environment.

As the extraversion or introversion of the functions within us (which I will explain in more detail later) is directly responsible for our attitude as a person, the first letter indicates how each of us perceives our Self in relation to the physical universe; how we experience reality (focus: E or I), and the last letter indicates the way we experience our Self in the social world; our relation to the norms and values of the group (orientation: J or P).

The extraverted attitude (E) experiences itself as being in a larger whole that is comprised of the totality of objective existence. For Es, the object exists independently of any observer; it possesses qualities (properties) that can be observed and which determine its place in a natural hierarchy; each encounter is between separate entities and the power starts with the object. Extraverts (objectivists) give importance to their persona as part of their identity and they internalize impressions and information from observable reality and use these as their standards.

The introverted attitude (I) experiences itself as part of a larger whole, like a web where each object is connected to others. For Is, the power starts with the subject; the inner person defines the individual and has a unique place with a unique point of view, but is as dependent on others as they are on them; every move affects the whole. Introverts (subjectivists) give their own meaning to ‘actual’, ‘true’, ‘good’ and ‘possible’, and measure the environment accordingly, so that reality depends on the perspective of the observer.

The judicious attitude (J) experiences the social group as an entity in its own right (a thriving community, an organism). Js are inclined to judge; judgment evolved as a result of the need to justify action (fight or flight) and to protect the Self. This same judgment is used to oust from the social group any person who doesn’t contribute or poses a threat – though how easily something is considered a threat changes with time and location. These nurturers are the heart and mind of civilization, providing love and lessons for the children, passing on the group’s traditions (cultural or social), who consider obligation and duty above pleasure, and who value the needs of the group above their own, and will insist on preserving the traditions.

The persuasive attitude (P) experiences the social group as a conceptual entity, a collection of autonomous individuals that share a location. Ps can react impulsively to new situations or inspirations and they take a playful attitude toward life, valuing pleasure above duty. They forage away to spread their ideas and their genes, but do not always stay to raise the offspring. Because they lack the protection of the group, these independents resort to persuasion (to get tribes to welcome them) and manipulation of their environment (for food), which are evolutionary developments for the individual, which also makes them adaptable and able to see the need for change.

So, if my typename is INFP, it indicates that my attitude (IP) is introverted and persuasive, while my two dominant functions (NF) are intuitive perception and value-based justification. An ESTJ has an extraverted judicious attitude (EJ) and their dominant function pair is sensory perception with truth based justification (ST). And so it follows for all sixteen types.

FOUR DISTINCT ATTITUDE PATTERNS

Based on the above, we can recognize a person’s attitude according to their perspective of reality or with regard to their sense of obligation to the group, and so we acknowledge four human ‘subspecies’, which I have called sentries, strangers, saints and savages. They are distinguished according to the manner in which they accept or reject their environment as objectively binding. This is similar to how we distinguish blood groups, in which there are only two substances, A and B; people either have one or both of the substances or they reject them by means of antibodies, resulting in four blood types: A, B, AB and O.

Thus, in psychotype theory, substance A is the ‘normative justifications’ (the collective normative beliefs and accepted notions) of the living community, which for the saints (IJs) is the objective and binding centre of civilized social life – that is, the rules are binding not in their exact content but in their normative nature and they seek in them an authority or purpose. Thus, they experience moral duties as indispensible objective constructs (even if they disagree about their content) and community as a higher aspect of human existence.

But obviously man is a political animal … the state has priority over the household and over any individual among us. For the whole must be prior to the part … It is clear then that the state is both natural and prior to the individual. For if an individual is not fully self-sufficient after separation, he will stand in the same relationship to the whole … Among all men, then, there is a natural impulse towards this kind of association (Aristotle, 1253a).

They reject the objectivity of the physical universe (substance B), however, but insist on their own subjective perspective of reality and they see laws of nature as human fabrications. The strangers (EPs) experience these ‘objective perceptions’ as unchangeable and binding; they consider what is observable (including laws of nature) to be reality – these laws have been discovered, not created, and exist independently of people – though they reject the idea of social norms or moral values as necessary, binding or real. For the sentries (EJs), both the objective perceptions and the normative justifications are real and binding, while the savages (IPs) reject both and insist on their own perspective.

But remember that psychotypes indicate tendencies, so nobody is totally immune to outside opinions and nobody can ignore their Self.

Together, these four balance humanity, because is it vital for people to not all be identical or else some information would never be noticed, some tasks never done, while others would be fought over – without sentries, communities would dissolve into chaos, but without strangers their ideas would turn to dogma. Therefore, it is a dynamic system without which people could not evolve intellectually. The fact that humanity as a whole can influence life on a large scale is because different people accept and process information differently and, as discussed later, this is not a conscious choice.

These differences in how people experience their position in this ‘subject-object web’ also influence how they interpret language and what grammatical person they naturally use. Es tend to use (or imply) the third person and state things as facts, while Is are more inclined to use (or imply) the first person (stating points of view). Js tend to use the second person when trying to get their needs met, while Ps use the first person for the same purpose (see Appendix). Depending on type, entire sentence structures can change, since no type expresses what they consider self-evident. For example, introverts will not begin every sentence with ‘It is my opinion that …’, because that is implicit; everything they state refers to their own viewpoint, so they don’t repeat it, but extraverts will emphasize it when they are stating an opinion as opposed to a fact. The same is true of the interpretation of abstract words that have no substance or agreed upon meaning (soap-bubble words); different types of people attach them to a different inner experience. However, some types – EPs especially – have a tendency to take word definitions (like laws of nature) as objective; for them, words have ‘proper meaning’, which they will vehemently defend.

NATURAL ACCORDS

S is attuned to facts and experiences that appeal to the senses. T wants exact data, which it gets from analysis and logical deduction based on facts and objects that can be measured by the senses. J accepts authority or evidence, which can consist of logical data or sensory measurements. E experiences the object as having a power of its own that can be measured and counted as objective data. So, a focus on objects allows for the perception of sensory data, which can be compared and judged as real and true. I call this group of type letters (E, S, T, and J), the ‘objective accord group’.

On the other hand, I focuses on the subject, and so accepts everything as subjective (or relative). F deals with empathic values and N with intuitions, both of which are experienced within and cannot be measured, so they are much more easily understood in relative terms. P accepts the relative view, because it doesn’t need closure or an established standard. I call this group of type letters (I, N, F, and P) the ‘relative accord group’.

A person’s philosophical stance, their outlook on life, the way they express these and whether they experience dilemmas are all influenced by how many ‘objective’ or ‘relative’ letters they have in their typename.

In short, our typename reflects how we filter information, in which each letter-pair represents a value-relationship between Self and Other: a filter.

To put it in computer language, E-I and S-N deal with incoming information, in which E-I are websites (where you attend) and S-N are the information contained therein (the content).

J-P and T-F deal with outgoing information, in which T-F is the choice you make as to what is worth saving or printing, and J-P deals with whether you keep that information for yourself or forward it on to others. Thus, S-N are the functions of what is incoming, and T-F are the functions of what is outgoing (what and why), while E-I and J-P refer to the attitude; where a person looks, how much time they spend surfing, and to whom they send it (where and who).

A great number of our (western) biases come from beliefs that are never questioned; for example, that thinking is something that is always objective, so that all our thinking leads to knowledge, and that conceptual thinking or ‘reason’ constitutes a higher step on the evolutionary ladder than emotion, intuition and sensation. But those are mistaken assumptions: We use and need all of our functions and they all are (differently) important, not just for our personal self, but for humanity as a whole.

Consequently, we need to remember that we are not merely an accumulation of four different value relations with our environment, each signified with a letter, but that these relations influence each other, so that a personality is more than the sum of its typename-letters. For a quick overview see the appendix.

DOMINANCE

The dynamics of the personality functions, their order and attitude, make the attitude of the person and their relationship with the external world, so that understanding these dynamics can explain ‘how people and knowledge are interrelated’. This can get a little complicated and I will clarify more over the course of the book, but for now, we need to be aware that each personality function has one introverted and one extraverted aspect – Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe, Fi – so that a function is predominantly focused either outward or inward, and to use its opposite takes effort, while its natural focus comes effortlessly.

The introverted aspect of the functions is experienced by each person in the same manner as they experience their Self: as permanent, real, and unchanging, while the extraverted aspect communicates or interacts directly with the external environment. Each personality’s dominant pair consists of one justification and one perception function, one of which is introverted and the other extraverted. If the dominant function is introverted, it makes the decisions, but does not itself communicate or interact with the external world; its auxiliary does this. If the dominant function is extraverted, its auxiliary provides the information to support its interactions or communications. Together, dominance and attitude of the functions determines what people will accept and notice.

Additionally, it makes a difference whether that dominant function is a perception (passive) or a justification (active) function. The former (IJs and EPs) perceive first and seek reasons for their perceptions either in already existing beliefs or newly fabricated ideas of their own (justification serves perception). For example, IJs that are born in atheist families, but desperately need an explanation for their (extra sensory) perceptions may join an existing religious order or create their own spiritual belief. If those with dominant perception get into disagreements it tends to be over something that happened (events) and they experience internal dilemmas because either normative justifications or objective perceptions are considered binding.

Those with dominant justification (EJs and IPs) already know what they should experience (perception serves justification), so that they ‘see’ what they already believe and they want a say in the running of the world, so they voice their views. They experience little inner conflict (dilemmas) – because they either experience both objective perceptions and normative justifications as objective (binding) or both as relative (optional) – so that they tend to end up in quarrels and arguments with each other, in which EJs express the traditional, objective and normative views, while IPs object to those and create new ideas, new forms of art or new techniques.

All people (including philosophers) need to be open to an idea before being able to accept it; these need to be ‘actual possibilities’ (perception) or ‘live options’ (justification) for them – akin to William James’ living options (James: 1956: 3). Seeing ultraviolet light (as bees can) is not an actual possibility for humans; it is not part of our inborn perceptive possibilities, and flying to another country for a holiday was not a live option for medieval people; it was not an acceptable justification because airplanes did not yet exist.

The different personality types allow for different actual possibilities and live options, depending on how the functions are used, which puts