I would like to talk about the inherently subjective element in Astrology and Temperament Theory (of which Myers-Briggs is one example). A good part of the reason this site exists is to redress some of the imbalances caused by looking for one’s personality or temperament in the astrological chart. There has always been an x-factor in astrology, which is the problem of level. On what level will any given birth chart manifest? In an astrology chart, there is no one right answer to the interpretation. It is probably similar to the meaning of a piece of music or any piece of art. However, there are definite standards and definitions in the system of astrology. But, it depends on the subject how these factors manifest, which in large part is to say it depends on their inherent temperament. That may be the most important answer to astrology’s x-factor. So, in a certain sense it is like saying: This-Given-Birth-Chart + x = ?, where x = one of the sixteen Myers-Briggs temperaments. The birth chart and the temp type are independent entities, yet related by sharing the same language, which is the language of astrology.
However, both of these independent entities – the birth chart and the temperament type – are markedly subjective in nature. There is no ultimate authority for whether one’s birth chart means x, y, or z or whether one’s temperament type has been correctly assessed, either by the person or by a test instrument. This being said, there is still a reasonable range of answers to these two entities. A birth chart more or less means one thing. It can be expressed in many different ways, but, at the end of the day, it is still pointing to a singular meaning, and indeed, that is the art of astrology, to distill all the vast ranges of meaning and symbolism present in a birth chart down to a singular meaning, an overriding meaning. It is kind of like asking who is in charge in this chart. What sign, planet, house, aspect etc. predominates and holds sway over all else? As I have said before, astrology is the art of seeing wholes. So is temperament theory (Myers-Briggs being one example). This faculty of whole-seeing comes from the intuitive function, which is the fire element in astrology. Intuition is subjective, which is to say that it can see the truth of self, or selves. Since in my theory all is undivided self in the beginning of things the art of seeing this singular whole is the most important endeavor of astrology and the art of the astrologer.
Every factor has an individual meaning in both the system of astrology and Myers-Briggs. The cool thing about both systems is that they both have very few defining factors. In this way it is a lot harder to get lost then if we are wading in the ocean of natural language. Think of the English language for example. There are over a million words in the English language. The number of possibilities for the ways these words can be combined to yield a meaning of some sort is a number so high that it might as well be infinite. Add to this that the English language is only one of many natural languages on the planet. But, my point is that if we confine ourselves to the range of meanings that we are able to express in the English language we will get such a range of meanings that we might not be able to easily unify them into a whole. And this is fine because these variations lead to artistic expression.
Science tries to strictly define its terms and so this variation of the natural languages such as English is deleterious to their aims. At the heart of science is mathematics as a language. Math has very strict rules about expressions. In a natural language, such as English, this is not nearly as true.
Anyway, astrology has much less than a million terms and the most important ones can be expressed as based on a principle of twelve. So at the heart of astrology the number twelve is important. And twelve is arrived at as a principle of the expression that 3 x 4 = 12. There are three modalities in astrology (cardinal, fixed, mutable) and four elements (fire, air, water, earth). Each of the twelve astrological signs are an expression of a one of these modes and elements. Each one of these twelve signs is distinct from every other one by virtue of the fact that no one signs shares both the same mode and element as any other sign.
The same is true in the Myers-Briggs type system. Each type is different from every other type. In that system there are sixteen types but it is really the same as astrology once we realize that the mutable signs of astrology, of which there are four, are really two-in-one signs.
But, the subjective element is inescapable. We are still using language to define these terms and the range of meanings for each astrological sign or Myers-Briggs type is numerous. For example, we could say that the astrological sign of Aries is headstrong, brash, initiatory, tactless, honest, courageous and so on. Astrologers never, for example, describe Aries as wishy-washy, polite, diplomatic, a follower and so on. However, what is headstrong? In relation to what? How headstrong? There are degrees and gradations of headstrongness. Have you noticed that you might describe one person a certain way relative to your experience of them but then another person meets that person and describes them differently based on their experience of them? This is all subjectivity at play. Also, a person might have arrived at their own particular definition of headstrong and there is no one there to tell that person that they are wrong for doing that. Besides, who knows if they are or aren’t. Any word from a natural language comes into that language subjectively. Someone had to originally coin the word, or come up with it, and how did this happen? Is it not an act of creation to come up with a new word to reference some objective or subjective entity? Also, words evolve over time such that their meanings are not completely stable. The same is not true for example in mathematics. The number one denotes one thing. The number two denotes two things and so on. If you have one thing and add two things to it, you have three things. That is always true by definition. This is how computers, for example, are able to perform their operations. There is no arguing with a computer. 2 + 2 = 4 all the time.
So, that is part of the inescapable subjectivity in astrology and temperament theory is the problem of natural language (I have called this “the problem of the descriptive” before). This problem is greater in the interpretation of an astrological chart rather than in the ground definitions. The ground definitions in astrology are actually taken from mathematical and physical realities. Someone didn’t just arbitrarily decide that Aries was initiatory. It evolved organically out of the fact that Aries is the first zodiac sign and so leads the procession. The reason it leads the procession is that Aries is the sign that denotes the beginning of Spring and Spring is the first of the seasons. The start of Spring is determined mathematically by the plane of the earth’s equator passing the center of the sun and is based on a physical phenomenon. Astronomers use these measurements as well. They simply do not attribute any meaning to them. So, one could say the basis of astrology lies in attributing meaning to the physical motions of the planets and luminaries in relation to the earth. However, these meanings are subjective in nature. Or rather it requires a belief that the universe (or our solar system to be more particular) works in this way.
Or actually, no, it requires a belief that it works on subjects this way, that is, people. People with all their incalculable desires and actions. It is a matter of record that when certain celestial events happen it causes objective realities to be effected in a physical and/or measurable way. Motions of the planets can effect stock market behavior, radio transmission, weather, crop yields and the like. But, when we use astrology to predict an individual person’s actions, it is a matter of considerable more difficulty because people are not objective realities. They are not math formulas or fields of wheat. Humans are comparatively complex and have free will. They can act against the tides of the times. They can act against their own best interests. Plants, or even animals, generally are much more fated to the external conditions of their environment such that astrological prediction for how they will respond in given conditions will be much more accurate. It is also easier to predict general classes than for a particular member of that class. We could say that statistically speaking there will be more emergency room visits when the moon is full and this is statistically true but whether any one person will be visiting the emergency room is much more difficult to predict.
Having fun yet?
Featured Photo Credit: Deborah Houlding (Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Hi Blake,
I understand that your article was pointing out the inescapable subjectivity of astrology. But what of cognitive functions? It is of my opinion that the difference between Ni and Si, and the difference between Se and Si, are as clear as day. There was no subjectivity involved. It is seen by the naked eye. That is why this is the easiest function to type for me, and what I try to distinguish first when I encounter an individual. And people are, without exception, one or the other. Si is just so plainly and objectively visible to me that I don’t really see how Si could be subjectively construed as Se.
As for astrology, perhaps the subjectivity arises because it is a trait theory (correct me if I’m wrong, I have no knowledge of astrology). And thus, if we don’t rely on written descriptors for Si, then it wouldn’t fall prey to subjectivity. Si is, plainly and simply, seen, not interpreted.
Also, how might I go about determining my astrology? And, would you be able to predict my astrology from how I come across in writing? This would convince me of the inherent validity of astrology, if one is able to independently corroborate what another’s astrology is. I take it that my type is self-evident.
I understand that your article was pointing out the inescapable subjectivity of astrology. But what of cognitive functions? It is of my opinion that the difference between Ni and Si, and the difference between Se and Si, are as clear as day. There was no subjectivity involved. It is seen by the naked eye.
Astrology is actually less subjective than Myers-Briggs because there are actual entities to point to that an astrologer is basing their interpretation off of. There are planets and their motions in relation to each other and the earth. These motions are calculable and predictable.
The cognitive functions of Myers-Briggs in comparison are not affixed to any material entities. They are also not mathematically defined such that we could say Ne = 0, Ni = 1, Ti = 2 and so on. It has been my overwhelming experience that there is so much difficulty at establishing consensual agreement at the semantic level for the cognitive functions, that when one person is talking about Ni, I’m convinced they’re talking about Fi. And there is no way to say who is right or wrong. Objectively.
At least in astrology, you always have this basis of actual entities to point to. You can disagree with the interpretation of a planetary position, but, you can’t really disagree that x planet was at this point in relation to the earth at y time.
Cognitive functions? Where are they? When are they? Etc.
But, isn’t that subjectivity more of a problem of using Ti to define functions? What I’m trying to say is, perhaps we’re running into this subjectivity because it is considered subjective by Ti standards. Not necessarily because it is subjective.
What even is subjectivity? What is objectivity? What is objectivity through the Ti and Te lenses?
These are the questions undoubtedly running through my mind and yours.
However, when the functions are arrived at through Ni, they are not limited to the same subjectivity as when the functions are arrived at with Ti. It’s hard to explain, but the basic premise is as follows:
1. I, being an Ni-dominant user, am perpetually studying my own psyche and the various qualities of Ni. I notice what my Ni does, where it takes me, and what it sees. I do not have a complete sense of what dominant Ni entails, because that would require a fourth-dimensional vantage point of this third-dimensional mental phenomenon. But I do have the closest perspective anyone will ever get to putting a finger on Ni, because no other type experiences Ni as intimately as the Ni-dom. And no other type save the INTJ has Ni-dom, and the INTJ doesn’t have the luxury of Ti logical refinement.
And, arriving at my own type did not have an ulterior motive. It was exhaustive, and perhaps required the perspective of a type that is even capable of arriving at an exhaustive perspective. So, this is the tautological point: I am grounded in my own type, and I know my own type. There is nobody who can tell me what my type is or isn’t, because I know what type I am. Though, I doubt anyone would type me as anything other than my own type.
My knowledge of my own psyche is the nugget of truth upon which everything else hinges.
Is that Ni? No. Then what is it? It certainly isn’t Ni.
But it definitely does share specific characteristics with these mental phenomena that I observe in others. And when you sufficiently zoom out, you see a pattern of patterns. I see a cohesive cognitive function that isn’t Ni. I’ll call it Si; one of the patterns of patterns. This isn’t the arbitrary demarcation of a continuous spectrum, where anything with X amount of Z is this function, and anything with Y amount of Z is another function. That’s where subjectivity becomes introduced – due to a reduction into some logical form. No. This is the experience of being proffered the undivided whole, without needing to break it down into any form whatsoever. It is the content before the form; the fire of intuition. I did not iterate the form in an attempt to arrive at the content. That would be completely backward. Rather, the content was offered as an undivided whole, and the form was invented as an approximation of the content – to be able to confer this knowledge to others who are unable to derive the content themselves, and as such must iterate the form in an attempt to understand the content.
When one zooms out enough, archetypes become self-evident.
Subjective? Only to Ti. The problem of trying to establish objectivity is that, when one even so much as attempts to define this standard, the truth is forever lost to a limit of resolution. That is, the resolution of logic. Logic is asymptotic and purely descriptive, quite often leading to tautologies. Just because the logic doesn’t add up does not mean that something is necessarily invalid; we may simply be encountering a limit of resolution for the particular type of logic we’re employing. Conversely, just because the logic adds up does not mean that something is necessarily valid; we may have only ensured the form but not the content, due to logic’s purely descriptive nature.
Disagreements in what constitutes a given cognitive function? We must recognize the pitfalls of each type’s approach of defining a cognitive function and typing others. The reason why your definition of a function might differ from someone else’s is because of reduction into Ti form, and because of the pitfalls of the person you’re disagreeing with. Would you trust an ESTP’s definition of a function? Probably not – their inferior Ni exists as a pitfall to deriving the undivided whole in the first place. Even more so for an ISTJ. Would you trust an ENFJ’s definition of a function? Maybe yes because of dominant Fe + auxiliary Ni, maybe not because of inferior Ti. What about an ISTP’s? Dominant Ti ensures perfect form, yet the content may be limited to asymptotic approximations because Ti takes precedence over Ni. These are the things we must be wary of. But we must also be mindful that these disagreements are caused not by inherent subjectivity, but rather by type-specific pitfalls.
Yet it is interesting how I’ve noticed that two different types, the ENTP and the INFJ, have converged at identical viewpoints, leading to at least some corroboration. I guess this is because ENTP and INFJ are the only two types with intuition preceding non-inferior Ti.
But the ENTP believes that he can only arrive a subjective interpretation of the cognitive functions, because he must Ti to logically universalize what his Ne sees. Because Ne is divergent, it does not produce complete nuggets of wisdom on its own. It must first be filtered through Ti to distill the Ne into useful knowledge. Without this distilling process, the ENTP would be stuck with a multitude of invalid abstractions produced by Ne-dom. And so, because Ti logic is asymptotic in nature, the ENTP feels that there is a subjectivity introduced to his knowledge of the cognitive functions.
On the other hand, the INFJ’s dominant Ni convergent in nature, as opposed to the ENTP’s divergent Ne. As such, the formation of knowledge is largely a one-step process for the INFJ, in contrast with the two-step process for the ENTP. For the INFJ, complete nuggets of wisdom are already formed at the Ni-level. The INFJ, however, also has the ability to logically verify his intuitions, with the emphasis being that his Ti is involved in knowledge verification, not knowledge formation. So, the INFJ has the ability for a 2-step verification of knowledge: the first step being verified by Ni, and the second step by Ti. Because the Ti is secondary to what dominant Ni sees, it does not reduce the content of knowledge to a logical form. Thus, it transcends the very notion of what is objective or subjective. It exists in a completely different realm altogether.
To recap, the ENTP must use Ti to converge at knowledge because Ne is divergent, and so the knowledge-verification process is 1-step. The INFJ’s knowledge is already fully converged at formation because of the nature of Ni. The INFJ also has the luxury of using Ti to verify this knowledge without reducing it to a logical form. The knowledge-verification process for the INFJ is thus 2-step.
It is astounding the sheer number of synonyms in the English language that we agree what the subtle differences. I wonder if people who have more nuanced language are better able to see the same and differences in people.
The whole time I was reading this I was thinking about freaking Trump and how this applies to him looking like an estp entj and estj.
Like in science. Are you reducing to components, making predictions, or seeing the whole.
Well, it is applicable to Trump’s type. How do we know objectively what Trump’s Myers-Briggs type is? Part of the problem is semantic. One person’s ESTP is another person’s ENTJ. One person’s ENTJ is another person’s ESTJ.
At a more basic level of the Myers-Briggs system, one person’s Si is another person’s Ni and so on.
At least in astrology, we can agree that Trump is a Gemini Sun if we can agree that he was born on the day that is listed for him. What having a Gemini Sun means is open to interpretation, but, generally you do find a reasonable range of interpretations.
However, when you multiply factors such as a Gemini Sun with a Leo Ascendant and a Sagittarius Moon you are going to be getting more and more possibilities in interpretation. And more subjectivity inevitably.
That wouldn’t be true if we said that a Gemini Sun = 3, a Leo Ascendant = 5 and a Sagittarius Moon = 9 and we could also agree on the mathematical operations between those positions.
But, with natural language being used to define these things we are left wide open to subjectivity and massive proliferation of interpretative factors and also the inevitable disagreement about what such a word as, say, “headstrong” means? With numbers, it’s simple: 1 = 1 thing. 2 = 2 two things.
Or with an object that exists physically, most people can agree that it exists and where it exists and what its superficial qualities are. Example: Dogs have four legs. Most of them have fur. Actually, that’s kind of abstract. I’m more talking about if you saw a dog, most people that saw the dog along with you would agree that is has 4 legs and fur. If it was brown then most people would agree that it was brown in color.
Ni? What the fuck is it? Where is it? When is it?
Who is the authority on Ni? Jung is because he came up with the term and the definition.
But, can we objectively tell what Ni is by itself, in a person and so on from Jung’s definition? No, I don’t think so. His definitions were too wide-open to interpretation, which I think he fully intended because he wasn’t a vivisectionist of the spirit like today’s inheritors of this system are.
Bottom line: Jung came up with this shit, but he didn’t really come up with most of it because all those terms had been around way before Jung: introversion, extraversion, intuition, thinking, feeling, sensation, perception, judgment, rational, irrational.
It wasn’t new to oppose introversion with extraversion. It wasn’t new to say that some people are introverted while others are extraverted.
But, I think it was new to say there is a thing called introversion + intuition = introverted intuition. Or extraversion + thinking = extraverted thinking. In other words, there is a thing called introverted intuition or extraverted thinking.
But, what is this thing? We today call them cognitive functions, but what does that mean? In other words, we are trying to make a hard science out of something that doesn’t have the adequate prerequisites for hard science – stable and irrefutable ground definitions.
If one person says Trump is an ESTP while another says he’s an ENTJ while another says he’s an ESTJ this doesn’t tell us much in of itself.
Another subjective problem that enters the picture is at the attributive level of seeing, measuring, assigning these cognitive functions and full-scale Myers-Briggs types to a person.
For example, we might agree on what Ni is more or less. We might agree on what Ni in the auxiliary position looks like more or less. But, then one person sees a sensation preference in Trump over intuition.
To me, that is where the rubber meets the road, at this attributive level. Because in the world of description there can be so much ambiguity and abstract agreement, but, when it comes time to take the leap into the world of the actual, I see many people faltering and disagreeing over what the qualities of x person are.
For example, many people think Trump is a liar who will say whatever comes into his head that will win him the seat of power. Others see Trump as essentially honest and candid and really just lacking in diplomacy and political correctness. Others see Trump as strategic and having thought out his essential positions over long periods of time and experience.
So, which is truer and how can we know objectively?
Is he a liar? Is he direct? Is he honest? Is he all those things? In what contexts?
Which functions does that go with? In what positions? How do we know this?
Is Ni honest? What is honesty? How do we know what honesty looks like in a person?
You see how this gets into very essential traits about human nature (which is why I love this system). It kind of forces a discussion about what people think honesty is? And what they think honesty looks like in a person.
Or what a person means when they say a person like Obama is well-spoken and articulate.
Many of these same people who feel that way about Obama likely feel that Trump is not articulate.
What is articulate?
Obviously, it has some subjective qualities to it such that we can’t come to a universal consensus over what constitutes an articulate person.
Anyway, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.
It’s not as important as what Trump’s type is as to why a person thinks that is Trump’s type. You know like in math where a teacher will say “Show your work”, which means it doesn’t matter so much if you got the right answer or not, but, how did you arrive there?
Hi Blake,
Can you elaborate on astrology and temperament theory being arts of whole-seeing? Seeing the whole of the many selves? Are you just saying that astrology and temperament theory are subjective which is understood and “defined” by intuition?
If people are more complex than plants and animals and can act against the tides of the times, why pay too much attention to where the planets are and in what direction they’re moving? Do you think this could cause unnecessary paranoia?
Can you elaborate on astrology and temperament theory being arts of whole-seeing?
No.
Seeing the whole of the many selves?
Yes.
Are you just saying that astrology and temperament theory are subjective which is understood and “defined” by intuition?
They are not wholly subjective, no, but there is an inescapably subjective element to them of which I allude to in the article. I could not claim that either system is wholly subjective and I actually think the intuitive function is one of the reasons for this. Because intuition is not wholly subjective and in some senses intuition is the only objective thing there is.
It’s kind of like intuition is the irrefutable objectivity of existence, which however cannot be adequately translated into so-called objective terms, such as any of the aspects of language or mathematics which are only approximations and human-created.
If people are more complex than plants and animals and can act against the tides of the times, why pay too much attention to where the planets are and in what direction they’re moving?
I don’t know. Why pay attention to anything? I don’t think that’s the right question. You don’t have to ignore astrology because it isn’t absolutely deterministic and fatalistic. It really depends what your motivation is for wanting to pay attention to such things. For example, I study astrology because I’m interested in how the universe works, not necessarily whether it can predict whether x person will win the lottery at y time.
You could also use an analogy of weather. Why pay too much attention to what the weather will be if you can act against it? Well, because you might want to know if it’s going to be cloudy if you’re planning a sunny Sunday picnic in the park. You can still have the picnic in the rain and leave it up to fate to determine that or you can inform yourself of the general trends and patterns going on weather-wise.
Or maybe you are just very interested in weather patterns. What causes clouds? What causes high-pressure systems? What causes lightning?
In other words, it’s fascinating to study for its own sake.
A picnic in the rain sounds kind of fun!
Okay, I understand your thoughts, Blake.
But my point with paranoia…Let’s say there’s someone who knows a lot more about astrology than someone else. This educated person on the subject tells the other less educated person that they were born in November on a specific date which make them a Scorpio. According to numerous sources, Scorpios are passionate people. They are distrusting. They sometimes dig their own graves, by causing unnecessary problems for themselves and others by passionate reactions towards others’ actions. They are very misunderstood. And in my honest opinion, they almost never get second chances. Which causes their never-ending circle of death and rebirth.
So, uneducated person starts to think. Hmmm, am I trusting? Do I hurt myself? In a lot of ways learning about this sphere is beneficial. It could make those who are uneducated a little more aware. However, there negatives as well.
For instance, when Mercury was in retrograde. Mercury is the planet of communication. When it was in retrograde, people either blamed their actions on that fact, or missed out on some opportunities in caution of that fact.
And, full circle, I’m sure you could make the same weather comparison again. A rainy picnic sounds unpleasant to most. But, there could have been something magical that could have happened had you planned to take a picnic just because.
The questions like “what causes clouds” are comparatively childish. At some point someone dives deeper into a subject because there is a connection. An answer that needs to be found for the sake of the individual’s soul.
So, uneducated person starts to think. Hmmm, am I trusting? Do I hurt myself? In a lot of ways learning about this sphere is beneficial. It could make those who are uneducated a little more aware. However, there negatives as well.
For instance, when Mercury was in retrograde. Mercury is the planet of communication. When it was in retrograde, people either blamed their actions on that fact, or missed out on some opportunities in caution of that fact.
Yeah, I suppose that is the danger of any system. It biases and predisposes. I say pick your systems well and take them with a grain of salt. The map is not the territory. The stars incline they do not compel. Etc.
And some people don’t even think there is anything to astrology at all. And for them, that may be true.
I think I would say it like this: Your psychological setup predisposes you to certain observable and predictable behaviors, tendencies, inclinations, beliefs, likes, dislikes, Achilles Heels’, and so on. But, some people either don’t see this, don’t believe this, don’t think it’s important, don’t think it can be measured, think it’s damaging and along that continuum.
Others see it so clearly that they map all human behavior to the system and can become blind to new information occurring in reality. Or they don’t care about the territory, only the map. They care for the system itself.
You are right about the possibility of missed opportunities due to heeding the astrological weather. But, the same is true in actual weather. Maybe you want to go on a picnic next Sunday but see that it’s likely to rain that day so you cancel it because you don’t like the rain. Or maybe you think you don’t like it, but, have never actually had a picnic in the rain. So, now your system is predisposing you to not have a picnic when there is high likelihood of rain.
If you didn’t have the system that was predicting the high likelihood of rain, then, maybe you would go on the picnic without knowing if it would rain or not and then when it did rain, you would EXPERIENCE what it’s like to picnic in the rain.
And maybe then you would discover that green eggs and ham is really good.
Or if you decided to start some really important project when Mercury is Rx. Maybe you would learn things you couldn’t learn otherwise. Maybe it would be a really neat and offbeat magical venture that couldn’t have begun at any other time.
It wouldn’t be likely to run smooth or take off quickly but then again that could be good.
Plus, astrology is only giving you the likely weather for the time. Many things that are done on Mercury Rx turn out fine. But, the chances of them turning out fine were less likely during that time.
And if you were the sort of person that wanted to favorably predispose themselves and their enterprises towards clear skies with not a lot of turbulence. Clear communications. No wires getting crossed. Etc. Then you’d not start something important when Mercury was Rx.
Or maybe you would if you wanted to tempt the fates.
Or maybe you would if you didn’t believe in any of that stuff in the first place.
And sometimes you have to do things when conditions aren’t pitch perfect favorable.
And sometimes you’re in love with disaster so you start your voyage when the storm is at it’s height.
And sometimes.
Whatever.
“At the heart of science is mathematics as a language. Math has very strict rules about expressions. In a natural language, such as English, this is not nearly as true.”
True…
I’d say how people choose to define the cognitive functions has a subjective element to it, because you’re defining something that is a *function*… like y=mx + b. You can attempt to define what the function is *used for*, but then you’re limited by your own subjective understanding of what YOU would use that function for. So then in order to find some commonality with the definition, you use broad, vague terms within it that easily overlap with some of the definitions of other cognitive functions and so things start getting really confused when you try to use the terms in any meaningful conversation.
So whenever people try to attempt to describe how the cognitive function PRESENTS or LOOKS like, you’re entering a different territory; that is, you’re no longer staying within the confines of the definition on its own but venturing into how that function is USED which is pretty unpredictable and unavoidably subjective in any conclusions made concerning that.
But I think it’s fair to say that Introverted Feeling, for example, the function can be defined as the organization (judging) of subjective personal information. And when you encounter someone of this type, it’s a pretty objective observation of someone who uses that function as the principal outlook on life.
“Is it not an act of creation to come up with a new word to reference some objective or subjective entity?”
Reminds me of the movie “Arrival” currently in theaters. Not my type of movie, too slow for me, but it brought up the theory that when you learn a different language, your brain gets “rewired”:
“There are two ways of thinking about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and scholars have argued over which of these two Sapir and/or Whorf actually intended. The weaker version is linguistic relativity, which is the notion that there’s a correlation between language and worldview. ‘Different language communities experience reality differently.’
The stronger view is called linguistic determinism, and that’s the view that language actually determines the way you see reality, the way you perceive it. That’s a much stronger claim.”
– Betty Birner, professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Northern Illinois University, from this interview: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/11/22/a_linguist_on_arrival_s_alien_language.html
Kind of weird how language influences how we view the world, and it’s all because those people along the way who defined the terms that we use defined them using their own subjective outlook on the world and of that particular thing that they’ve *chosen* to define. In some languages they have words for things that we (well, I) don’t even think about in English because English simply doesn’t have a word for it.
Yeah, I do suspect that language impacts our reality entirely. I think if you examine the words you’ve used or stopped using over time in your life you can see that there are things you say now / don’t say now that do in fact correspond to dramatic changes in your worldview; and that’s not even without changing languages. That’s the case for me, but perhaps especially so in part because of growing up believing God had a major opinion about whether or not I said bad words.
Once I was reading two translations of Dostoyevski’s Demon’s, titled The Possessed in the inferior/older translation; it was fascinating to suddenly realizing what a job it must be to translate. At what level of meaning does the translator translate? at the level of a word? When the sentence misses the meaning while the words are as accurately translated as is logically possible, does the translator intentionally manipulate the sentence, rewriting it to convey for the new language edition audience what it should be conveying as a whole? If the narrative voice is toying with the reader, if its leading them through a too-long sentence or paragraph, if it’s doing something stylistic that can’t quite be pinned down as intentional or even successful, does the translator have any hope of translating there? Does the translator translate the words written by the writer, or does she translate the effect on a readership in a new language and culture? That’s why I feel for whatever reason that Johnathon Franzen is a truly great writer; I think he feels like the contemporary translation (at not the word or sentence level but at the “Novel” level) of Dostoyevski.
I was talking to an engineering student and a semi-professional snow skier in Park City Utah. He grew up in Iran but left for I believe Switzerland as a young kid and ended up becoming fluent in several romantic languages in addition to Persian and Arabic. He said that when he skis with different groups of people internationally and thus speaks in different languages for weeks at a time, that he has always found it natural to think in other languages while on the mountains — since he learned to ski in those kind of terrains/on those hills while learning those languages as a young kid on a world-champion type circuit. he said that he skis totally differently depending on the language in which he thinks, and that he feels like a totally different person because of thinking in the different languages. I found his description really compelling and convincing.
“Does the translator translate the words written by the writer, or does she translate the effect on a readership in a new language and culture?”
Interesting, I wish I could speak fluently in different languages, and I guess language can be very telling of a culture, as well as in order to master the language you must be familiar with the culture. And to be a translator, you have to have multiple perspectives from knowing multiple languages and cultures, while knowing that essentially there is a commonality across all cultures in terms of ideas that are tying to be communicated, and that is what guides when translating…so you forego the word-by-word thing because different cultures express things in different ways. Super interesting anecdote about the skier …
I’d guess that he feels like a different person because our brains associate so many emotions/memories/culture with words, and if you’re multilingual, the word for the same thing in a different language will have different emotions and memories and cultural meaning attached to it (and perhaps with less depth and nuance than the word in your native language, hence feeling like a different person…?)