by
Mademoiselle Venus
Hey, you, I want to talk to you about something unsexy today. Cognitive functions. Why the heck should you care about cognitive functions? Because this is the one or one of personality typology. But it's not just that cognitive functions are the building blocks, the fundamental building blocks of one personality type. Again, why should you care? Because when you are out on that date, sweetie, the person sitting across you is not just their skin and bones.
They are a set of motivations and behaviors. And if you don't know how to identify or label these behaviors and motivations, you're in trouble because these motivations and behaviors can either nurture you or ruin you if you're blissfully unaware. And I think it's really stupid advice to go out on blind dates. So if you don't know who you're leading, let me help you.
So what is a cognitive function? It's cognition. What is cognition? It's awareness. What are you aware of? Your thoughts? What is thought? It is information? What type of information? When you touch something cold, you feel cold. That's the information you have picked up off of the object. That information becomes the physical characteristic of the object. Right. So how do you glean this information?
By touching the object, by sensing its temperature against your skin. And that's how you come to the conclusion that it is something cold. Let’s say you watch a sad movie and you suddenly break into tears. You're aware of your sadness. The cognitive function is basically just a thought. Okay, It's this awareness, this insight or these awarenesses of what the object feels like when you touch it, of your own sadness when you watch a sad movie.
Right. And so it's the thought that first pops in your head and develops into something more, something profound, something of import to us. According to Carl Gustav Jung, the father of type theory, each of us prefers a certain cognitive function or a certain type of thought or a certain flavor of thought. We prefer it. We pay a lot of attention to it to the point that it hijacks our psyche.
We feed it subsequently with more and more thoughts. We are married to this type of thought. Okay. And so how do we find out what type of thought we're married to since the moment we were born? Luckily for us, this information is not entirely a mystery. Carl Jung took a stab at this intangible mental morass, and he divided these thoughts into four parts.
Right. So there are four different types of thoughts. We call these the dichotomies. They are just opposites of each other. There's thinking and the opposite of that is feeling, which is a mental process in and of itself. Then there's intuition and the opposite or the dichotomy for that would be sensing. So then the question follows— Why do we have these mental processes, right?
Why do we indulge in these different types of thoughts? And to answer that, we explore the Myers-Briggs system, where we learn that we indulge in these thoughts primarily to gather information about ourselves and the world around us. And to make decisions based off of that information. Right. That's how we make movements, both in the mental world and the physical world.
To illustrate this, I'm going to give you a basic example. So let's say you were out shopping in a mall and you're at this clothing store. You spot a dress. What types of information do you gather about the dress? You use your eyes and you determine that the dress is black or pink, the color of the dress. And you try to understand what type of material it's made of.
So you touch it. You look at it. You feel it. You feel the texture of the dress. You try to examine how wide the dress is or how narrow, how it fits on you, how long it is, how short it is, the vertical lines and the width of the dress, those types of information. And you also get additional information from the salesperson who is standing next to you with your ears.
Right. So you are gathering all these pieces of information, using your senses. Right. So this entire process is called sensing where you're gathering factual information, observable information, information about an object that is right in front of you. So it's tangible, right? So this process is called sensing. And again, that can be no debate about what you see. If it's a black dress, I see a black dress.
Another person in the shop is also going to look at the dress and say it's black. Right. So there is no arguing over this fact because you have observed it with your senses. So this entire process is called sensing. Next, we try to understand the opposite of sensing, which is intuition. So what is intuition?
With the first example we were trying to glean tangible pieces of information about the dress. Okay, but what about the intangible pieces of information that the dress brings to your mind? Right. You look at the dress and suddenly you're reminded of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, right? Or you get a visual of your aunt. You see her trying to fit into the dress, but she can't because she just delivered a baby. And so her body has changed. And somehow you think you can see yourself five years down the line not being able to fit into the dress because you also delivered a baby. And so somehow that informs your decision to not buy the dress. So as you can see, the dress also stirs up your imagination, right?
You see a lot of things in the mind's eye, intangibles. And these ideas do exist. They float in your mind and they seem real enough to influence your decision to buy the dress. Okay. So this indulgence of the mind into intangible ideas, intangible pieces of information, Jung called this process intuition. To reiterate, intuition is an abstract process. It's an imaginative process.
Okay. The dress conjured up an image of Audrey Hepburn in your mind. Now, Audrey Hepburn doesn't exist in this in this shopping mall. And she's not right in front of you. Right? She's inside of your head. Okay, so that's how intuition differs from sensing. When you gather information through your senses, everybody else can attest to what you're seeing or what your are experiencing.
Lastly, we move on to the dichotomies of thinking and feeling. Keep in mind that all of these cognitive insights are thoughts but in the Jungverse or the Myers-Briggs verse thinking is not synonymous with thought. Thinking is a process, and I'm going to describe the process. But before that, it's kind of funny that Dictionary.com defines thinking as the use of thought.
And so then what is thought dictionary.com says thought is an idea which is produced by thinking. So you see how we keep going round in circles. Anyhoo in the Jungverse or the Myers-Briggsverse thinking is a fact. And I know I said the same about sensing, but I will explain the difference to you shortly. So let's go back to the dress.
Okay. You end up buying the dress. Why do you buy the dress? It's simple. You buy the dress because the dress costs about ₹1,000. And your budget for this dress was ₹2,000. Right? So it was well within your budget. Also, it's a formal dress, and you needed a formal dress to go to a formal business event.
Right. So this, in fact, the second reason is, in fact, a rule that you are adhering to that at all formal events, formal clothing must be worn. Okay. So you are adhering or respecting this fact. So you come up with these reasons to make that purchase. Okay. These reasons influence your behavior so much so that you actually make that purchase, so this entire process where you employ reasons or rationale to buy the dress, this entire process, Jung called thinking.
Now this is the opposite of feeling. And what is the difference?
It's really simple. Let's say the dress costs about ₹2,000, and your budget for the dress was ₹1,000. And you end up buying the dress anyway. Why? Because. Because you like it, right? The color black looks good on you. Or you have some childhood memory associated with it. Let's say your teacher asked you when you were little and the teacher asked you in front of the whole class what your favorite color was.
And you said it was black. So you have this memory. It's a happy memory and so you buy this dress in memory of all the excitement or the joy you felt when you told the teacher what your favorite color was for the first time right in front of the whole class. So you buy this dress out of sentimental reasons?
Okay. They are reasons still, but they are not rational reasons. They are sentimental reasons. And these sentimental reasons which influenced your decision to buy the dress. You call this entire process feeling or the cognition of feeling. Okay. Moving onto the last part of this lecture, and this is where type theory gets really confusing. Now, according to type theory, you gather information about the world through your senses which is abbreviated as S OR through abstract thinking, which is abbreviated as N, and you make decisions based off of this information through rational thinking or logical thinking, which is called cold hard facts, which is abbreviated as T or through feeling. Right. Sentimental reasons abbreviated as F. Now according to type theory, according to the Myers-Briggs system, we have preferences right for gathering information and for making our decisions.
Right. So we can't both employ sensing and intuition at the same time to gather information. We have a preference. We have a preference for a particular process which becomes our dominant process of gathering information. Right. And we hone this process. So you can either get information through sensing S or through intuition N. And similarly, you can make decisions comfortably using one of the two dichotomies, thinking where you listen to cold, hard facts and feeling where you listen to the cockles of your heart.
So why must you choose one of the two dichotomies? Why can’t you buy the dress, both for rational reasons and sentimental reasons simply because they are opposites of each other. On the one hand, you're buying the dress because it fits your budget and on the other hand you're talking about whether you like the color of the dress or you don't like the color of the dress.
So with the first example, it doesn't really matter what the color of the dress is. So long as it fits your budget. And with the second example, it's simple. The dress doesn't fit your budget, but you buy it anyway because you like it, because you have a subjective value associated with it. Right. It's your personal preference. So these are opposites of each other and you can't listen to both your heart and your mind.
You would be perpetually stuck. This is a conflicting situation. And so you're going to be eternally stuck in this loop where you have all of these rational reasons for or against buying the dress. And you also have all of these sentimental reasons for or against buying that dress. So at the end of the day, how would you buy the dress?
Right? So you would have to prefer one process over the other one of the two dichotomies. You would have to prefer one of the two dichotomies to make that purchase, to influence your decision to buy that dress. Now, with sensing and intuition, which is a process of gathering information, it's not so straightforward, right? But according to type theory, intuition is a process of imagination where you seek or you find excitement by the ideas that are generated by an object.
And it is an indulgence into your imagination. And in order to be able to do that, you would have to be detached from the tangible reality. Right. Because that process is not as exciting to you as your imagination is. What I meant when I said tangible reality is the reality of the here and the now, what's happening in the moment, right?
So when you are imagining you have to take a step back, you have to retreat into your mind and think of all of these ideas and see them grow or see them populate into more ideas or more associations or more patterns. Right? So there would have to be some detachment from this moment that you're in, right, where you have to actively employ your senses to gather information.
Right. You can’t do both things simultaneously. Or you can. Right. And I will get into how nuanced this can be in further videos. But for now, just pay attention to this fact that according to Type theory, you would have to prefer one process over the other, because that particular process is more stimulating for you than the other process.
So I forgot to explain the difference between thinking and sensation, because on the surface, it seems both of these processes involve dealing with the facts. There's something slightly different here with Sensation, you use your eyes and you look at the price tag of the dress. Okay. And you also find out some additional information. The dress is non-iron.
Okay. And what do you do with that information? So you gather that information using a sensation or sensing. What do you do with that information? That's when you indulge in the process of thinking. Right. So you find out how much the dress costs. And then what do you do next? You check in with yourself. You want to know whether this dress fits into your budget.
Okay. There's no information label on the dress which says this dress fits into your budget, so you should buy it, right? That's the kind of processing that goes on inside of your head. Similarly, you found out through Sensation that the dress is non-iron. And also, what do you do with that information? You think to yourself, okay, this will save me time from ironing.
Or let's say the dress has pockets again. You want to save some money by not buying a handbag to go with it because the dress has pockets. That’s so cool. So this dress is functional. It serves its purpose. Hence, I must buy the dress. I hope that the example is clear enough for you to understand the difference between sensation and thinking.
Thank you. All right, folks, that's all I have for today. Until next time, don't get complacent. Love you. Love me. Love Mademoiselle Venus.
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