# Fi is not about "likes" and "dislikes"



## Bumblyjack (Nov 18, 2011)

@JungyesMBTIno
I've been meaning to post my simplified definitions of judging functions for awhile now but I never got around to it, so I just started a new thread with them.
@Arrow
Fi is not the likes and dislikes themselves. It's not the collection of them either. Fi is a cognitive function that looks to your likes and dislikes as references for making judgments.


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## Kynx (Feb 6, 2012)

Everybody has feelings, values, wants, likes and dislikes. Fi has its own set of these which are similar, but not identical. Would probably be easier to imagine if you think of Fi users as having a set for the ego and a set for Fi.


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## LittleMissCurious (Jul 1, 2012)

Tenebrae said:


> I'm contradicting that idea. "Feeling" isn't a function at all. "Introverted judging" and "extroverted judging" are functions, while feeling is the attitude.
> 
> Ti and Fi work the same way, but are used for different purposes. Neurologically, the only way this makes sense is for the two of them to be the same process, but applied differently.


I agree and have been working out a theory that flushes it all out. I think the better way to speak of it is as you stated, extraverted judging and introverted judging, with F oriented toward values and T oriented towards facts. I disagree with how Fi is commonly portrayed.

Fi judges as "good" or "bad," "right" or "wrong" (morally-speaking), according to an internal plumb line. The plumb line itself is subjective, as it varies from person to person, but the plumb line can also be informed by an accepted set of religious, ideological, or philosophical principles. In either case, what is good and bad, right or wrong isn't invented in the moment.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

I think we should step back and understand what the Feeling function is and does first, before jumping into Fi and Fe. Too many times people work the opposite way trying say "my Fi does this" or "I see Fe as this," and many times they do not understand what the Feeling function does in the first place. This is what Jung says about the Feeling function:



> ...feeling is a kind of judgment, differing from intellectual judgment in that its aim is not to establish conceptual relations but to set up a subjective criterion of acceptance or rejection. Valuation by feeling extends to every content of consciousness, of whatever kind it may be. When the intensity of feeling increases, it turns into an affect, i.e. a feeling-state accompanied by marked physical innervations.


Basically affects or affective reactions are when you have a physical reaction tied to something psychological. Crying and laughter are the most common affects out there but they can be anything from just a good rush, endorphine rush, adrenaline kicking in, nausea, queasiness, butterflies in your stomach, shaking, trembling -- any physiological thing that happens that is rooted in something psychological is considered an affect. This is Psychology 101. Affect (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That being said, the Feeling function takes those affects and draws from them a judgment or rationalization. Hillman goes on to say,


> The feeling function is that psychological process in us that evaluates. Through the feeling function we appreciate a situation, a person, an object, a moment in terms of value. A prerequisite for feeling is therefore a structure of feeling memory, a set of values, to which the event can be related...
> 
> ...As a process that is always going on and that gives or receives feeling-tones -- even the feeling-tone of indifference -- this function connects both the subject to the object (by imparting value) and the object to the subject (by receiving it within the subjective value system). It therefore functions as a relation and is often called "the function of relationship."...
> 
> ...In making judgments the feeling function balances values, compares tones and qualities, weighs importance and decides upon the values it discovers. The feeling function on a more primitive level is mainly a reaction of yes and no, like and dislike, acceptance and rejection. As it develops, there forms in us a subtle appreciation of values, and even of value systems, and our judgments of feeling then rest more and more on a rational hierarchy, whether it be in the realm of aesthetic taste, ethical goods, or social forms and human relationships. Although these systems of values and the judgments coming from them are not logical, they are rational. The developed feeling function is the reason of the heart which the reason of the mind does not quite understand.


He continues


> ...although values are generally organized by scales, feeling cannot be simplified to fit a pain-pleasure or like-dislike system. Some theorists attempt with their logic to reduce feeling to an ultimate pair of hedonic coordinates. But the differentiation of aesthetic feeling (beautiful/ugly), or moral feeling (good/bad), of human feeling (love/hatred, elated/depressed), of biological feeling (attraction/repulsion, receding/expanding) -- all point beyond mere hedonic preferences of like-dislike. Reduction of feeling to hedonic tone inevitably leads to a hedonistic philosophy in which the hierarchy of feeling values and judgments is forced into a framework of pleasure and pain. Then quantitative measures are brought in, and feeling gives way before the technical organization of Thinking....
> 
> ...even in analysis or counseling it is neither correct nor useful to attempt to discover feeling by asking, "Do you like him?", or "Do you like that?" If the answer is a flat "Yes or No," it is usually not truly an individual feeling statement, but rather something more childish and mechanical, perhaps a family view in the sense that it is an affective reaction from the complex and not a conscious feeling judgment. Like and dislike are intricate matters requiring weighing. The feeling answer to "Do you like him?" is "It depends." It depends: on the situation, on what I mean by "like," on what aspects of him I am asked about, and so on. The feeling function sorts all this out; it is a process, as Jung says. To reduce feeling to mere like-dislike is an intellectual devaluation' it would be similarly unjustified to reduce all thought processes to the true/false dichotomy. Reduction is anyhow a pinched way of proceeding in the psychological analysis of anything. We may separate, analyze, examine, describe; but reduction belittles because it cuts down the wholeness of an event, the existential reality of just now, what it feels like, which is always complex. The complexity is given by Feeling. Feeling records the specific quality and value. And just this exploration and amplification of shadings and tones, this reversal of reductionism, is a function of Feeling.


So suffice to say, what most people argue over as being Fi or Fe, is really just the Feeling function in general. Fi and Fe refer to where the subjects energy are pointed when exercising the Feeling process. At the objective outer world or at the inner subjective world.


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Kito said:


> It can be about likes and dislikes, but it's more about the fact that Fi users use their likes and dislikes to govern pretty much everything. Or, they apply a like/dislike to things before anything else. Whereas a Ti user would evaluate whether a new situation makes sense to them, a Fi user would instead decide whether it's harmonious with their values - in other words, do they like it or not.
> 
> Yeah, there's a lot of focus on values, but a mistake some people make is thinking Fi users actually think "Does this conflict with my values?" all the time. Most Fi-doms aren't even aware they have values until they read about it, because it's so built-in.





Bumblyjack said:


> @_Arrow_
> Fi is not the likes and dislikes themselves. It's not the collection of them either. Fi is a cognitive function that looks to your likes and dislikes as references for making judgments.


I think it goes beyond even just "using" likes and dislikes to make judgments. Everyone does that as well.
It's being more in tune with deeper values and emotions, to make judgments. So people for whom Fi is unconscious can choose things they like, but they may not be as aware of why they are choosing it, and the values driving this. You can see this in my examples in the "Demonic Fi in INTP's" thread. I tend not to realize how deeply affected by something I am, so the value judgments come out as rash behavior, that I sometimes wonder why I did.

I think LL's citations spells it out further.

I think at least one source out there has played up this "Fi=personal wants and values" notion, to the point the definition has become really distorted.

And it's not a matter of types "having" a function. A function is a perspective of which we have all of them. It's just that some are more or less conscious for different types.


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