Re: On introverted intuition
They're not vague at all and have been clearly stated, sorry but you're being lazy, if you had carefully read, thought about and understood what was already said you'd instead be asking a pertinent question, rather than asking for a second restatement.
I taught college physics for too many years not to get fooled by those shenanigans! Usually used by somebody who doesn't really want to learn the material, so I found it's best to stop there, because otherwise it'll just eat up my time. Which is cool, you're not in class here and neither am I.
Drat! I am foiled. To think that I could fool you into expounding upon, and possibly defending, your assertions was surely a slight to your profound intellect. How arrogant was I, to think that I could converse with you as a peer, and equal? I offer my most sincere apologies for my insolence, and my appreciation for at least allowing me a glimpse of your glory with this masterpiece in evasion and insult. You have put this lazy, stupid child in her place, sir, and I thank you.
Now, to be serious, your claims need to be addressed because they appear to fall into the "not even wrong" category. If left unchallenged, they run the risk of miseducating people who would run across this now, or in the future. For the record, you could have chosen to just say something like "no, I don't feel like putting in the effort to expand on this right now". Lord knows other people have said this to me when I was looking for more details. Or, you could have ignored my request altogether, which I would have completely accepted, seeing as there are those who clearly want to get this thread back on track.
But no. You take the time to address my request, and then show very bad form by avoiding the question, and clumsily insulting me instead.
By the way, I'm sorry, Sly-Fy. I'm hoping that the mods will clean up the mess I've made, and throw this derail somewhere more appropriate.
So let's dive in, shall we?
Yes, but I don't think the functions actually function. In my view we'll find they are low level cortex motivations which the neocortex then has to interpret.
I define type as low level motivations which the personality tries to please, and by this ends up imitating.
Okay, so from this, I have to guess that you mean that Types = Jungian functions, which you claim are "low-level cortex motivations". I can start with this.
If we were to break down what the functions do, and compare them to the brain functions required to do them, only one function could be considered "low-level" (Se), and a strong awareness of the physical world in itself is hardly a motivation. However, since the occipital lobe in the neocortex contains the primary visual cortex, and the temporal lobe contains the primary auditory cortex, that can be argued as a neocortical "type" as well.
In fact, quite literally, the pre/frontal lobes of the neocortex are almost exclusively dedicated to "specific cognitive functions". I realize that now, I'm comparing Polish and polish. Jung's cognitive functions are not the same as the cognitive functions of the brain.
To clarify, the majority of the cortex is the neocortex. There are then three allocortical structures. The archiocortex, which pretty much just has to with smelling things, and the paleocortex, which houses our emotional instincts (as they come before executive processing in the neocortex). I guess there's also the periallocortex, but that's just a transitional zone.
So let's explore the paleocortex. It houses the gyrus cinguli, the parahippocampal gyrus (not to be confused with the hippocampus, which is obviously subcortical), and the amygdala.
The gyrus cinguli receives inputs from the thalamus and the neocortex, and projects to the entorhinal cortex via the cingulum. The combination of these three functions makes the cingulate gyrus highly influential in linking behavioral outcomes to motivation (e.g. a certain action induced a positive emotional response, which results in learning).
At least this helps as a relay to connect motivation to behavior. That's like half a point, right? Nope! because "low-level motivation" as you describe it, and
actual low-level motivation are completely different things, which I will pause to address a little further down.
The parahippocampal gyrus plays an important role in the encoding and recognition of environmental scenes (rather than faces). There are also some preliminary studies that suggest the lobe may play a crucial role in identifying social context, including paralinguistic elements of verbal communication. For example, research suggests that the right parahippocampal gyrus enables people to detect sarcasm.
That's hardly a hub for your "low-level motivation" at all.
The amygdala has a strong connection with emotional learning. It's involved in the modulation of memory consolidation, the function by which we stabilize a memory trace after its initial acquisition. There are also a lot of studies in the works to try to figure out correlations between differences in individual's amygdalas and how they affect all kinds social and emotional preferences.
Who knows, maybe you'll be redeemed in 5-10 years. Except, in the absence of any expansion on your hypothesis, I am stuck using only what you said. The example you gave was,
"...an INTP has a motivation to think deeply - that's Ti. The poor neocortex then is left with the job if learning to think deeply, which it increasingly does, but this is not the core function."
There is nothing here to suggest that these cortices house anything fall both under the criteria of Jung's Ti, nor do they appear to house something that would drive a stronger "motivation to think deeply" in just a small bubble of the population.
Nevertheless, I'd like to pause and think about that for a second. The substantia nigra is a part of the midbrain. It is in charge of low-level motivation. It does the reward-seeking, learning, addiction, etc. It distributes the dopamine, and it is very old. This is the part of the brain that we train directly, and/or teach people to control with better executive function. The desire to "think deeply" absolutely is not a "mow-level motivation".
In this way the actual functions do act in isolation as motivations, but as they manifest in the psyche they then work together as you describe.
...I redefine the totality as the Psyche, and divide that into Type and Personality. Type (probably) is down in the cortex (which does perform some higher level thinking, to the best of our knowledge) with the personality being the malleable neocortex.
You say "down in the cortex", and in this context, I can only assume you've left the cerebral cortex (most commonly called the "cortex"), and you're referring instead to the cortical layers of the cerebellum, which are associated with motor function and does the work of "higher thinking".
However, the desire/motivation to think deeply (now being redefined as "high-level motivation" because that's what the desire to "think deeply" would be) remains far more likely controlled by the pre/frontal lobes of the neocortex, as are concentration, abstract thought, planning, judgement, emotional expression (and modifying them to fit social norms), creativity, abstract morality, inhibition, problem solving, selective attention, fluent speech, reasoning, humor, utility of one's environment, general application of intelligence, control of voluntary muscles, I can go on.
These cognitive functions (in the true sense of the word) encompass all of the cognitive functions (in the Jungian sense). They interact and drive one another.
Even from a conjectural point of view, their being housed together best matches what we see and what we've found in study.
After all, there is no physical evidence to support personality differences as explained by Jung's 8 types. There's not even any legitimate empirical evidence, despite decades of effort.
If they are all housed together in our [mostly orbito]pre/frontal lobes, it makes some sense why empirical study, and our own experiences, show that some people exhibit archetypes, most are ambi-typal in at least some way, and some appear to change over time. It could similarly support the more rigid idea that we're all dominantly one base "type", as opined by MBTI/Jung fanatics.
It would imply that your "types" have literally commandeered more resources in the frontal lobe. It further fits our evidence that personality is largely acquired, as well as the idea that we must mature and grow into our personalities over time.
The bottom line is, you can still separate "personalities" from "types", and place "types" as being more fundamental categories, with "personalities" being their interpretation, if you really want to; but looking at things are they are structurally, it's clear that these are all still the work of the higher functions as found in the frontal lobes of the neocortex.
If perchance, you were misinterpreted, you had your chance to clarify. Call me "lazy", but this took like an hour all-told, and I'm tired now.
