Two Functions for Perceiving Reality in Time
In the proposed model of consciousness, the two irrational psychic functions are defined as perception of invariants and perception of changes.
This definition differs substantially from the traditional understanding of sensation and intuition in psychological typology. The distinction is not between what is directly sensed and what is merely inferred, nor between the concrete and the possible, nor between fact and premonition. Both irrational functions deal with the same independent reality acting upon the organism through the sensory organs. Both perceive what is happening in time. The difference lies not in the source of knowledge, but in what each function extracts from the flow of events.
Perception of invariants detects what remains stable through change.
Perception of changes detects what ceases to remain the same and the direction in which it changes.
The world with which a living organism interacts is at once stable and changing. An object moves and yet remains the same object. A living being changes posture, lighting conditions and distance from the observer may vary, and yet it may still be recognized as the same individual. Effective interaction with the environment therefore requires both operations: detecting what remains and detecting what changes.
Both functions are also involved in prediction. Perception of an invariant allows its persistence to be extrapolated into the future. Perception of change allows the direction of change to be extrapolated forward in time.
Prediction, therefore, is not an exclusive property of the perception of change. What differs is the basis of the prediction:
An invariant has persisted → its continued persistence is likely.
A change has proceeded in a certain direction → continuation of that change in the same direction is likely.
A Dog Recognizes Its Owner
A simple example of the perception of invariants can be found in the behavior of a dog.
A dog recognizes its owner under widely varying conditions. The owner may be near or far away, sitting or walking, wearing different clothes, speaking or remaining silent. Lighting, background, posture, facial expression, sounds, and many other features may change.
Moreover, a person gradually changes over time.
And yet the dog recognizes the same person.
Such recognition requires something relatively stable to be extracted from a stream of changing sensory input. The total configuration of perceived features is never reproduced in exactly the same way, and yet the object is identified as the same object.
This is precisely what the perception of invariants does: it detects what remains the same through change.
This does not mean that the dog possesses a concept of invariance or consciously distinguishes essential from non-essential characteristics. On the contrary, the example is important precisely because the perception of invariants does not require such reflection.
A Dog Catches a Ball
The other irrational function can be illustrated especially clearly by a dog running after a thrown ball.
If the dog perceived only the position of the ball at each individual moment, it would constantly have to move toward the place where the ball is now. Successful interception of a moving object, however, requires the animal to take into account not merely the object’s current position, but the change of its position over time.
The ball was here, then farther away, then farther still. From the sequence of these changes, a direction of movement emerges.
A dog can run ahead of the ball and turn its head toward the point from which the ball will arrive. It therefore interacts not only with the object’s present position, but also with a future position that is not yet directly given to perception.
This requires extrapolation:
If the change has proceeded in this way, then after a certain interval the object will probably be approximately there.
This is an example of the perception of changes and of prediction based on it.
Such an ability is by no means limited to dogs. A predator must predict the movement of its prey, while the prey must predict the movement of the predator. A bird in flight must take into account changes in the positions of other birds and of obstacles. An animal jumping from one branch to another must coordinate its own movement with the changing spatial relation between its body and the landing point.
Life in a changing environment would be impossible without the perception of changes.
But it would be equally impossible without the perception of invariants. An animal must recognize members of its own species, offspring, sources of food, shelters, dangerous predators, and familiar places. Perception of invariants and perception of changes are therefore two fundamental and complementary forms of interaction between a living organism and reality.
What We Cannot Infer About Animal Psyche
At this point an important boundary must be drawn.
The fact that animals can perceive invariants and changes does not imply that their psychic reality is structured in the same way as human psychic reality.
We can observe animal behavior and investigate their ability to discriminate objects, recognize them, learn, orient themselves, predict movement, and adapt their actions to changes in the environment. But we have no direct access to their psychic reality.
In particular, we do not possess data that would allow us, within the terms of the proposed model, to determine whether animals possess the fundamental psychic distinction:
subject – environment.
The model therefore does not attempt to answer a question that cannot be resolved by the model itself. It does not claim as an empirically established fact that animals fail to distinguish between subject and environment. Nor does it automatically project the structure of human psychic reality onto animals.
Instead, the model adopts a more limited assumption: psychic reality organized as a system of interconnected dichotomies is treated as specifically human.
Four Dichotomies of Human Psychic Reality
In the proposed model, human psychic reality emerges as a structure formed by four fundamental dichotomies:
subject – environment;
conscious – unconscious;
perception of invariants – perception of changes;
significance for the subject – significance for the non-subject.
The latter two dichotomies constitute the four psychic functions.
The irrational functions are:
S – perception of invariants;
N – perception of changes.
The rational functions are:
F – generation of the significance of knowledge for the subject;
T – generation of the significance of knowledge for the non-subject.
At this point, however, a fundamental distinction appears between animal perception of invariants and changes and the irrational functions as they exist within the structure of the human psyche.
We may assume that animals possess processes of perceiving invariants and changes. But S and N as poles of a human functional dichotomy emerge within a psychic reality that is already organized by other fundamental distinctions.
It would therefore be misleading to regard human S and N simply as two ancient perceptual mechanisms to which F and T were later mechanically added.
Within the human psyche, perception of invariants and perception of changes acquire a new structural position.
A Function Arises Together With Its Opposite
In the model of consciousness, a psychic function does not arise in isolation.
When one pole of a functional dichotomy emerges, the other emerges simultaneously.
For example, if perception of invariants in the extraverted attitude — Se — arises in consciousness, then at the same time perception of changes in the introverted attitude — Ni — arises in the unconscious as the opposite pole of the same dichotomy.
These are not two independently formed capacities that later enter into a relationship with one another. They arise from the beginning as opposites:
Se ↔ Ni.
The emergence of the human dichotomy “perception of invariants – perception of changes” therefore already presupposes another fundamental distinction:
conscious ↔ unconscious.
One pole of the dichotomy emerges in consciousness; the other emerges in the unconscious.
At the same time, a further distinction is present:
extraverted ↔ introverted attitude.
If one pole emerges in the extraverted attitude, the opposite pole emerges in the introverted attitude.
The human functional dichotomy S–N therefore cannot be understood independently of the dichotomy conscious–unconscious and of the opposition between the two attitudes.
Why the Attitudes Presuppose the Distinction Between Subject and Environment
The extraverted and introverted attitudes, however, cannot arise independently either.
They presuppose a more fundamental distinction:
subject – environment.
As long as subject and environment are not psychically distinguished from one another, two different relations to the object cannot be opposed to each other.
In the extraverted attitude, the object is posited as independent of the subject.
In the introverted attitude, abstraction occurs from those characteristics of an object in the environment that are irrelevant to the subject.
The concept of relevance is crucial here. For a characteristic to be relevant or irrelevant to the subject, there must first be a subject as one pole of psychic reality.
The introverted attitude therefore logically presupposes the distinction between subject and environment.
It presupposes the possibility of perceiving an object not merely in the totality of its available characteristics, but of selecting in relation to the subject: of abstracting from what is irrelevant to the subject.
This is why abstraction, in the present model, is not simply associated with intellectual complexity or with the development of thinking. Its structural precondition is the emergence of the dichotomy:
subject – environment.
Without a subject, it is impossible to determine what is relevant to the subject. Without the distinction between subject and environment, it is impossible to oppose the introverted and extraverted attitudes.
The Simultaneous Emergence of the Four Dichotomies
The four fundamental dichotomies of human psychic reality therefore cannot be understood as four independent acquisitions appearing one after another.
They form a unified structure.
The emergence of the dichotomy
subject – environment
makes possible the opposition
extraverted – introverted attitude,
because only after subject and environment have been distinguished can two different relations to the object arise.
A functional dichotomy, however, presupposes at the same time both the opposition between the attitudes and the opposition between consciousness and the unconscious.
If, for example,
Se — conscious perception of invariants in the extraverted attitude
arises, then at the same time
Ni — unconscious perception of changes in the introverted attitude
arises.
Thus, within the human psyche, the emergence of perception of invariants and perception of changes as poles of a functional dichotomy is possible only within a unified structure that simultaneously includes the distinction between subject and environment, the distinction between conscious and unconscious, and the opposition between attitudes.
The same applies to the rational dichotomy.
For significance for the subject to arise, the subject must already be distinguished.
For significance for the non-subject to arise, there must be a distinction between the subject and that which is not the subject.
F and T therefore also presuppose the dichotomy “subject – environment.”
What is involved, then, is not the successive addition of new psychic capacities, but the emergence of an integrated human psychic reality.
From Animal Perception to Human Functional Structure
This makes it possible to draw a boundary between what we can observe in animals and what the model defines as human psychic reality without either denying animals subjectivity or attributing it to them in the absence of sufficient knowledge.
A dog recognizes its owner — therefore it is capable of perceiving invariants.
A dog intercepts a moving ball — therefore it is capable of perceiving changes and of using the direction of change for prediction.
But from these observations we cannot conclude that, in the dog’s psyche, perception of invariants and perception of changes exist as opposite poles of a functional dichotomy, one conscious and the other unconscious, each possessing the opposite attitude.
Still less can we conclude that the dog possesses a psychic reality structured into subject and environment in the sense presupposed by the proposed model of consciousness.
Similarity between humans and animals at the level of perception therefore does not imply identity of psychic organization.
The hypothesis of the proposed model is instead that what is specifically human is not the perception of invariants and changes as such, but the integration of these modes of perception into a system of interconnected dichotomies.
What Distinguishes the Human Being Is Not Perception Itself
This distinction is fundamental.
If we search for the boundary between human beings and animals in the capacity for perception, the boundary disappears: animals perceive their environment highly effectively.
If we search for it in the capacity for prediction, the boundary again becomes doubtful: animal behavior continuously requires anticipation of future events.
If we search for it merely in the ability to distinguish what remains stable from what changes, we again find both capacities in animals.
The proposed model therefore draws the boundary elsewhere.
What distinguishes the human being is not the emergence of perception as such, but the emergence of psychic reality as a system of dichotomies.
Within this reality, the environment is opposed to the subject.
Consciousness and the unconscious arise.
Perception of invariants and perception of changes become opposing psychic functions that emerge simultaneously in opposite attitudes and with an opposite relation to consciousness and the unconscious.
The rational functions arise: generation of significance for the subject and generation of significance for the non-subject.
And the possibility of abstraction arises because the introverted attitude makes it possible to abstract from those features of objects in the environment that are irrelevant to the subject.
The transition to the human psyche can therefore be understood, within the proposed model, not as a mere increase in cognitive capacities, but as a change in the architecture of psychic reality itself.
A living organism may perceive what remains stable and what changes, recognize and predict, without — as far as we know — possessing the structure of psychic reality that the model describes for human beings.
Human perception of invariants and changes is already integrated into a different system. It exists simultaneously with the distinction between subject and environment, the distinction between conscious and unconscious, the opposition between attitudes, and the rational dichotomy between significance for the subject and significance for the non-subject.
Perception of invariants and perception of changes in the human being are therefore not merely two ways of acquiring knowledge about the world. They are the two poles of one of the fundamental dichotomies of human psychic reality.