Rhetorical Stances

When people take advantage of different function attitudes, they consequently take different Rhetorical Stances.

Rhetorical Stances

This page attempts to describes the common rhetorical stances that people take. These rhetorical stances are not necessarily valid or invalid. Nevertheless, because so many people rely on their dominant function without developing the secondary, some rhetorical stances are both very common and very narrow-minded. They seem narrow-minded, because they exemplify the use of a certain dominant function, but without the perspective of a secondary function. Consequently, they can be frustrating to individuals of other types (or even frustrating to individuals of the same type who have succeeded in developing the secondary), so they lead to the feeling: "I know that this person's position is somehow B.S., but I can't figure out a way to argue with them."

Examples of Rhetorical Stances

• King on the Mountain: a dogmatic Te stance

• You can't make me look: a dogmatic Ni stance

Other possibilities

• A dogmatic Si stance which denies the use of any metaphysical questions

• A dogmatic Fi stance which refuses to judge people at all, or take any side in an argument because the IFP can empathize with both sides

• A Fe stance that sees someone's opinion as a consequence of their social role

• A Ni stance claiming that because someone's values and preferences are relative to that person's way of looking at the world:

  • (a) those values can never be judged or questioned according to any objective criteria (e.g. cultural relativism), OR

  • (b) those preferences or values can always be judged as lacking.

Why do both these arguments have the same premise but different conclusions? Are they both Ni? Or are they just applied differently somehow, such as "defensively" vs. "offensively"? Or does one represent a higher development of Ni than the other?

-It seems like (a) is the stance that shows up when Ni is presiding over an introverted judgment position, Ti/Fi , and (b) is what shows up when Ni is presiding over an extroverted judgment position, Te/Fe -Jacquie Scherer

A dogmatic Ti stance claiming that because someone's values depend on their firsthand experience of the world, those values:

• (a) cannot be questioned, because an individual is justified in holding any values that follow from firsthand experience, OR

• (b) should make sense, and individuals who's values aren't consistent with the causal order of the universe need some sense knocked into them

An example of (a) would look like: "I'm justified in believing Y because it follows from my firsthand experience. If you don't agree, you are just naive." Such an argument may be a "defensive" use of Ti (usually used to defend oneself, but not always).

An example of (b) would be something like: "You should believe X rather than what you believe now, because X follows from firsthand interaction and observation of the world. If you can't see this, then you just aren't looking hard enough." Arguments such as this seem like an "offensive" use of Ti.

Both of these arguments exemplify Ti because they are based on the principle that the correct argument is the one that best conforms to the underlying principles of the world as observed through firsthand experience.

Again, it seems like these two arguments illustrate the two stances an introverted function can take when paired with its opposite function category (P or J): (a) is the stance that shows up when Ti is presiding over an introverted perceiving position, Si/Ni, and (b) is what shows up when Ti is presiding over an extroverted perceiving position, Se/Ne. -Jacquie Scherer

Note: as mentioned above, these rhetorical stances are not necessarily invalid. Sometimes it is perfectly fair to empathize with both people in an argument without siding with either one (Fi). Sometimes is fair to see people's values as justified by their point of view (Ni), firsthand experience (Ti), or social role (Fe). Sometimes it is perfectly fair to call people naive because they lack certain experiences that you have had (for instance, if you have been burned touching a hot stove, you are justified in warning someone about to touch a hot stove that they will be burned, and that they are naive to believe otherwise).

The problem is that these stances are often used as cop-outs by people who are trying to maintain an over-extraverted or over-introverted view of the world. It's easy to reduce any area of inquiry to differences in points of view, firsthand experience, social roles, etc., but not every area of inquiry can be understood through such a limited heuristic.

I'm not sure whether I'm on to something or not on this page, so any clarifying or re-organizing is welcome... --James