Truth-and-Language

An attempt to describe Lenore's ideas about J-vs.-P attitudes in terms of the way a person understands what it means for a statement to be true and how language refers to things.

Left-brain attitudes

The left-brain (J) attitudes view the world as overwhelmingly complicated, and language a means to navigating through it. Language enables you to navigate by directing your attention to only one or a very small number of things at once, and making one discrete decision at a time, always on the basis of clearly articulated criteria.

Extraverted Judgement

From the standpoint of , truth is strictly a matter of management. Statements and rules lead people to make decisions that lead to certain kinds of results, and that's the end of it. Language exists as a shared medium for people to propose agreements and indicate where they stand in relation to proposals made by others.

From the Extraverted Thinking standpoint, a statement is something that draws an empirically verifiable distinction, and truth is the empirically verifiable claim that if you do something that falls within distinction A, then things will proceed to a state that ends up within distinction B. To be empirically verifiable--that is, to serve as a tool of agreement and management--statements must be defined independently of the things they are about. There must be an empirical test to determine whether the claim was true: the test must be defined before it is carried out; it must produce a result that falls into one distinction or another, which is plain for all to see; and it must produce the same result each time. Language and statements are things that we create and define in order to direct matters to produce desired results: as long as our affairs end up in the desired state (our goal), that is all that matters, and we need feign no hypotheses about how or why it happens. Most importantly of all, language provides a vocabulary so that when one person says something, someone else understands the same thing. In this way, we can make promises (contracts) and determine fairly when one person has failed to meet their obligations as defined in the agreement. It would be total chaos if different people understood the same words to mean different things--just each person trying to impose their subjective opinion onto others, and no objective standard for resolving the dispute.
From the Extraverted Feeling standpoint, a statement is something that defines a relationship of friendliness or hostility. From the Fe standpoint, there is no such thing as a neutral statement: everything is a declaration of where you stand in regard to particular people. Truth is somewhat irrelevant from this point of view; what matters is the relationship that your statements and behavior create. As long as people's relationship needs get met, then nothing could possibly be wrong with a statement. Language is the shared medium that provides the kinds of relationships that people can define and the forms in which they can express those relationships. Language is ultimately the form in which relationships exist--and relationships are the principal form in which we ourselves exist as human beings. Every statement in some way defines both you and the person you say it to.

Introverted Perception

From the standpoint of , truth and language reflect a choice: a choice of what you consider worth focusing on, or where your values, concerns, and cognitive capabilities lie.

From the Introverted Sensation standpoint, a statement puts something into your internal mental map: it converts raw, amorphous experience into a definite fact. It gives you a representation that you can carry around with you so you can know where you are. A true statement is simply one that puts things into your mental map exactly where it belongs. Given the overwhelming complexity and variability of the real world, no two people ever form the exact same mental map. So language is always ambiguous in some way. Reality is complicated but language is simple (relatively speaking). We do our best to find some stable reference points in a world that is mostly complexity and flux. The world itself doesn't determine our reference points for us. We have to find what matters to us and choose what, for us, will serve as the reference points to which we attach meaning. Your reference points and the meanings they have for you might not be the same as mine, so when we meet, we might have to take some time to establish them, seeing what I'm attached to and seeing what you're attached to. These meanings might be very personal and idiosyncratic, so we might even not want to share them, and certainly not interfere with them. Your attachments are truly yours; they're what you are. And thus our ultimate reference points for truth are probably not expressible in the public realm.
From the Introverted Intuition standpoint, a true statement would be one that included everything: it would be applicable in all possible contexts. As a practical matter, no such statement is ever possible. The reality is always more than can be said, and what you say can never fully express your meaning. "The table is brown" might be "true" in some narrow sense pertaining to color, but what expectations attach to the word "brown"? Do you perhaps expect that brown means dull, or lower-class? Why did you say "brown" instead of "woodgrain"? Were you trying to separate yourself from the owner of the table, perhaps put yourself above that person? But couldn't someone from a different culture think that "brown" implies good and woodgrain implies ostentation and therefore cheapness? The full meaning of "the table is brown" could never be completely articulated or described. Each word is entangled with an unfathomable complexity of associations and assumptions. A really true statement would be one that could stand completely on its own, independent of any particular material or cultural context. And that's not possible. Since there is no one correct interpretation of a statement, each person has the right to interpret the words in his or her own way. It would be the worst possible violation of a person's autonomy to insist that they understand a word your way and not their own way. Ultimately, words are just words, with no meanings of their own; interpretations exist in another universe, one created by the interpreter.

Right-brain attitudes

The right-brain (P) attitudes address the complexity of real-world phenomena by capturing a "gestalt" in the totality of what is perceived. Instead of focusing on a few things and making one discrete decision at a time, they guide you to take in everything at once and respond continuously to the whole. Your situation changes, you change, the situation changes--not in discrete steps, but in a continuous flow. Instead of focusing on one or a few elements out of context as the basis for a series of decisions, every element in your experience simultaneously influences your ongoing response.

Thus right-brain attitudes lead to a "contextual" or "context-entangled" understanding of truth, where the meaning of a statement is defined by the real-world context in which the statement is made. Language is not something that you define prior to a given experience. Language is simply a refined way of pointing at things. To understand a statement is to look and see what the person who made the statement is trying to point out. The basic way to communicate is simply to point: to direct a person's attention so that the reality itself will then work on the person's mind and provide the ultimate definition of your meaning.

Extraverted Perception

From the standpoint of , truth and what statements refer to are capable of constant change as circumstances change or as more becomes revealed to you. A meaning is always temporary, or ad hoc, to be revised continuously, never a steady guide to interpretation. The fact that something was meant yesterday is of no consequence today, if circumstances have changed. To put that another way, a statement made in the past is never a reason to do anything less than exploit present circumstances fully. It was just how things seemed yesterday.

From the standpoint of Extraverted Sensation, present circumstances always dictate an immediate response which does not require thought, cannot be predicted in advance, and is not necessarily related to circumstances at any other moment. What there is to talk about is always immediately apparent, and all meaningful statements are just ways of pointing out what is immediately apparent. A statement is true iff it says what's right there, otherwise it's not true, end of story. Language is itself just more stuff to observe and react to. Language is less a medium for making true statements than a medium for grabbing attention and producing an immediate, visceral effect. What a statement means is not intrinsic to the statement: rather, it's the reaction that it really produces in real people in this culture right now.
From the standpoint of Extraverted Intuition, when you frame a statement, you are relating it to some part of its real-world context. You will understand the same thing in a different way by relating it to some other part of its context. Every time you relate a thing or a statement to more of the real-world context in which it arose, you understand it differently. Thus there is no one right way to frame a statement, and indeed no one right interpretation of a statement. Virtually any statement can be "true" if interpreted in relation to some appropriate aspect of its context. Statements do not mean anything except in relation to their real-world context--which is always changing, and always mostly unknown. A statement or term defined with perfect stability, so that expanding its context couldn't change its meaning, would be meaningless because it wouldn't relate to anything.

Introverted Judgement

From the standpoint of , language is a way of describing or pointing out a "gestalt" found in the world--some persistent, "essential" aspect of things that might take a different form in each moment but nevertheless remains the same and has continuity from moment to moment. Truth is having your mind attuned to reality--attuned to some "essence" that gives things unity and continuity.

From the standpoint of Introverted Thinking, a statement puts things into an abstract "space": a way in which specific things are related, including unrealized potentialities that the things might have. For example, there is a "space" of how far you can bend a piece of wood before it breaks. In this respect, Ti is no different than Te. The difference is that, from the Ti standpoint, the meaning of a statement is not defined prior to the subject matter. It's defined by the real properties of the specific things that you're talking about, and it's known only by interacting with those things yourself in some way. To understand how far you can bend the wood, you need to bend it--until it breaks, or almost breaks. Then you will know how far the wood can be bent. You won't know with numbers, you'll know with your hands. From the Ti standpoint, communication is possible only between people who share some common experience of the things that they're talking about. To say something that you can understand, I need to relate it logically to things in your own experience. To show you how far a piece of wood bends, instead of giving a numerical measure (Te), I'd either encourage you to bend a piece of wood yourself, or find some mathematically similar thing that you know about and relate wood-bending to that. Words cannot be defined prior to the reality that they're about; words and criteria defined independently of the reality would be meaningless. The world itself provides a natural set of reference points, arising from the real, causal structure of things. Ultimately, to talk is to say, "I mean that."
From the standpoint of Introverted Feeling, what does it matter what words mean? What matters is that we are in touch with the life of things in each moment. If saying or hearing words helps you do that, great; if not, don't worry about it. Language is certainly valuable for serving life by enabling us to communicate knowledge and make plans and agreements, but what is really wonderful about language is that we can share our experience of the living soul within us, especially what is unique about each of us. Poetic language, such as songs, excites people to experience the sense of the life within each of them. Poetic language provides a way in which you can share with me your own experience of joy, sadness, your own personal calling, or whatever your unique, living soul created at a certain time. Then I can know something of that, too. Words simply express the person. The specific word choices are not necessarily important. The way in which a person says his words can express as much or more than the words themselves. Even silence can be meaningful. What matters is not the words, but the meaning, and the meaning probably can't be reduced to words. It's something you have to understand by directly experiencing the moment and the person saying them. All understanding of what people say must come through empathy: your personal experience with life, and being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes.

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Last updated 23 days ago

Left-brain attitudes

From the Extraverted Thinking standpoint, a statement is something that draws an empirically verifiable distinction, and truth is the empirically verifiable claim that if you do something that falls within distinction A, then things will proceed to a state that ends up within distinction B. To be empirically verifiable--that is, to serve as a tool of agreement and management--statements must be defined independently of the things they are about. There must be an empirical test to determine whether the claim was true: the test must be defined before it is carried out; it must produce a result that falls into one distinction or another, which is plain for all to see; and it must produce the same result each time. Language and statements are things that we create and define in order to direct matters to produce desired results: as long as our affairs end up in the desired state (our goal), that is all that matters, and we need feign no hypotheses about how or why it happens. Most importantly of all, language provides a vocabulary so that when one person says something, someone else understands the same thing. In this way, we can make promises (contracts) and determine fairly when one person has failed to meet their obligations as defined in the agreement. It would be total chaos if different people understood the same words to mean different things--just each person trying to impose their subjective opinion onto others, and no objective standard for resolving the dispute.

From the Extraverted Feeling standpoint, a statement is something that defines a relationship of friendliness or hostility. From the Fe standpoint, there is no such thing as a neutral statement: everything is a declaration of where you stand in regard to particular people. Truth is somewhat irrelevant from this point of view; what matters is the relationship that your statements and behavior create. As long as people's relationship needs get met, then nothing could possibly be wrong with a statement. Language is the shared medium that provides the kinds of relationships that people can define and the forms in which they can express those relationships. Language is ultimately the form in which relationships exist--and relationships are the principal form in which we ourselves exist as human beings. Every statement in some way defines both you and the person you say it to.

From the standpoint of , truth and language reflect a choice: a choice of what you consider worth focusing on, or where your values, concerns, and cognitive capabilities lie.

From the Introverted Sensation standpoint, a statement puts something into your internal mental map: it converts raw, amorphous experience into a definite fact. It gives you a representation that you can carry around with you so you can know where you are. A true statement is simply one that puts things into your mental map exactly where it belongs. Given the overwhelming complexity and variability of the real world, no two people ever form the exact same mental map. So language is always ambiguous in some way. Reality is complicated but language is simple (relatively speaking). We do our best to find some stable reference points in a world that is mostly complexity and flux. The world itself doesn't determine our reference points for us. We have to find what matters to us and choose what, for us, will serve as the reference points to which we attach meaning. Your reference points and the meanings they have for you might not be the same as mine, so when we meet, we might have to take some time to establish them, seeing what I'm attached to and seeing what you're attached to. These meanings might be very personal and idiosyncratic, so we might even not want to share them, and certainly not interfere with them. Your attachments are truly yours; they're what you are. And thus our ultimate reference points for truth are probably not expressible in the public realm.

From the Introverted Intuition standpoint, a true statement would be one that included everything: it would be applicable in all possible contexts. As a practical matter, no such statement is ever possible. The reality is always more than can be said, and what you say can never fully express your meaning. "The table is brown" might be "true" in some narrow sense pertaining to color, but what expectations attach to the word "brown"? Do you perhaps expect that brown means dull, or lower-class? Why did you say "brown" instead of "woodgrain"? Were you trying to separate yourself from the owner of the table, perhaps put yourself above that person? But couldn't someone from a different culture think that "brown" implies good and woodgrain implies ostentation and therefore cheapness? The full meaning of "the table is brown" could never be completely articulated or described. Each word is entangled with an unfathomable complexity of associations and assumptions. A really true statement would be one that could stand completely on its own, independent of any particular material or cultural context. And that's not possible. Since there is no one correct interpretation of a statement, each person has the right to interpret the words in his or her own way. It would be the worst possible violation of a person's autonomy to insist that they understand a word your way and not their own way. Ultimately, words are just words, with no meanings of their own; interpretations exist in another universe, one created by the interpreter.

Right-brain attitudes

From the standpoint of Extraverted Sensation, present circumstances always dictate an immediate response which does not require thought, cannot be predicted in advance, and is not necessarily related to circumstances at any other moment. What there is to talk about is always immediately apparent, and all meaningful statements are just ways of pointing out what is immediately apparent. A statement is true iff it says what's right there, otherwise it's not true, end of story. Language is itself just more stuff to observe and react to. Language is less a medium for making true statements than a medium for grabbing attention and producing an immediate, visceral effect. What a statement means is not intrinsic to the statement: rather, it's the reaction that it really produces in real people in this culture right now.

From the standpoint of Extraverted Intuition, when you frame a statement, you are relating it to some part of its real-world context. You will understand the same thing in a different way by relating it to some other part of its context. Every time you relate a thing or a statement to more of the real-world context in which it arose, you understand it differently. Thus there is no one right way to frame a statement, and indeed no one right interpretation of a statement. Virtually any statement can be "true" if interpreted in relation to some appropriate aspect of its context. Statements do not mean anything except in relation to their real-world context--which is always changing, and always mostly unknown. A statement or term defined with perfect stability, so that expanding its context couldn't change its meaning, would be meaningless because it wouldn't relate to anything.

From the standpoint of Introverted Thinking, a statement puts things into an abstract "space": a way in which specific things are related, including unrealized potentialities that the things might have. For example, there is a "space" of how far you can bend a piece of wood before it breaks. In this respect, Ti is no different than Te. The difference is that, from the Ti standpoint, the meaning of a statement is not defined prior to the subject matter. It's defined by the real properties of the specific things that you're talking about, and it's known only by interacting with those things yourself in some way. To understand how far you can bend the wood, you need to bend it--until it breaks, or almost breaks. Then you will know how far the wood can be bent. You won't know with numbers, you'll know with your hands. From the Ti standpoint, communication is possible only between people who share some common experience of the things that they're talking about. To say something that you can understand, I need to relate it logically to things in your own experience. To show you how far a piece of wood bends, instead of giving a numerical measure (Te), I'd either encourage you to bend a piece of wood yourself, or find some mathematically similar thing that you know about and relate wood-bending to that. Words cannot be defined prior to the reality that they're about; words and criteria defined independently of the reality would be meaningless. The world itself provides a natural set of reference points, arising from the real, causal structure of things. Ultimately, to talk is to say, "I mean that."

From the standpoint of Introverted Feeling, what does it matter what words mean? What matters is that we are in touch with the life of things in each moment. If saying or hearing words helps you do that, great; if not, don't worry about it. Language is certainly valuable for serving life by enabling us to communicate knowledge and make plans and agreements, but what is really wonderful about language is that we can share our experience of the living soul within us, especially what is unique about each of us. Poetic language, such as songs, excites people to experience the sense of the life within each of them. Poetic language provides a way in which you can share with me your own experience of joy, sadness, your own personal calling, or whatever your unique, living soul created at a certain time. Then I can know something of that, too. Words simply express the person. The specific word choices are not necessarily important. The way in which a person says his words can express as much or more than the words themselves. Even silence can be meaningful. What matters is not the words, but the meaning, and the meaning probably can't be reduced to words. It's something you have to understand by directly experiencing the moment and the person saying them. All understanding of what people say must come through empathy: your personal experience with life, and being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes.