I think intuition is great for science and worse for philosophy. I think that the functions are how people generally work. But much of science is practical in it's pursuits.
My feeling side I do not use much. And that's not neccesarily bad. Except for dealing with living in a society that holds value to feeling, femininity, and social values. Because, it's how society glues it's herd together into common values norms and goals.
Society needs to work practically on different areas to work, it needs practical scientists, it needs a large work force, etc. For that reason, even thinkers must be doing practical neccesities, to be part of the working society.
I wouldn't call actual functions but the individual or herd mentality works in accordance with many of the MBTI functions. It's a model for the aspects of the human mind ofcourse. The functions however, are rather arbitrary, the tendencies though, match well. Because human's that use their mind in one way will be very similar to another human using his mind the very same way. That's because the human enviroments are quite alike, and the brains, too. so on examination on two humans, with the same methods, we can see how similar they behave.
The problem is that inferior functions don't neccesarily develop like you think they do. The brain does not have a system in which each function has a turn to develop:
It's about maturing you and your emotions in general. it's about becoming more aware of reality, about thinking things through, becoming wiser, etc. All those can and inevitably will develop your functions as is known in MBTI - but they aren't actually concrete functions, theyre models that explain behavior. and as such, that behavior will also be explained by certain brain activity, but not that there is an actual thinking department, etc. as you could be led to believe by the MBTI model. It explains the effects of largely unknown causes, and when the effects are similar, we have a certain 'type of person'.
Jenny. Things you say are true, most people are forced to create other personas, or masks, especially for society. obviously. I dislike trying to be turned into a pragmatic person by 'pragmatic people', as one of those.
The singular self is basically the true self, without the ego conflicting on your identity, there is nothing trying to tell you how to act, or that you should define yourself a certain way etc. Since all these cause emotions; pride, shame etc and are part of the ego, the ego is those false masks. The thing is, the ego is quite strong, and lie to it's own mind.
thats why I don't think losing that precious ego, and sense of identity, or self is living a lie, merely that the ego wants to tell you that you should get back to your sense of identity because that's whats real. But it's imaginary.
Also, ones ego or sense of existence, identity, is not about being conscious. Most people aren't conscious about all the things that ego cause - emotions, like fear, for losing identity and dying, for example. Is about a sense of identity that really isn't anymore real than identifying yourself as a speck of dust.