A Biological Hypothesis of the Origin of Sensory and Intuitive Functions

[This article was written by the author (Danidin) in 2017, but was never published at that time. It is presented here in its original form because, despite some possible refinements, it has largely retained its relevance to the present day.]

In the wild, any animal, in order to survive, must first and foremost:

1. feed
2. avoid predators - so as not, in turn, to become food for them.

Feeding as a form of behavior is always directed toward a specific material result in the form of a piece of living matter from the external environment, which can be used to increase the mass of one’s own organism. My hypothesis is that feeding underlies all sensing functions, and each of these functions corresponds to one of the possible strategies for obtaining food.

Thus, feeding strategies can be divided into extraverted sensing (central-static) and introverted sensing (peripheral-dynamic) strategies. How do they differ?

Se strategies are oriented toward obtaining a food resource already concentrated through the vital activity of other animals.

That is, these are strategies for hunting other animals that possess a similar level of organization and consciousness, and involve taking their lives - more simply, the strategies of predators.

The advantage of this approach to feeding is, above all, that the subject deals with an abundant, high-calorie, readily digestible resource. The disadvantage is that this resource must still be fought for: first, one must be able to lie in wait for, catch up with, and immobilize the prey, and then, very probably, also be able to defend it in a fight with other predators.

The centrality of the Se strategy corresponds to the fact that, if successful, its user becomes the top link in the trophic chain and gains access to all the food resources in the area under their control. Since knowledge of the specific terrain is a major advantage when hunting from ambush, there are no preconditions here for changing the place where food is obtained. Moreover, defending the right to priority exploitation of “one’s own,” already familiar territory is a crucial element of this strategy. As a result, as long as the productivity of the area remains high, the subject adopts a sedentary way of life and does not leave the boundaries of their area without particular necessity - statics.

The strategy of flexible-maneuvering sensing (ГР-С = leading Se) has its origins in pack predation.

This is the most competitive of all strategies. The subject hunts in a group of similar individuals, which is itself a powerful collective predator in the given territory. However, the subject’s ultimate goal is not merely the role of an ordinary hunter, but a dominant position in the group - one in which they can exploit other hunters by appropriating the products of their efforts.

The strategy of balanced-stable sensing (УС-С = creative Se) has its origins in the feeding behavior of solitary predators and omnivores.

The species’ entire range is divided among solitary hunters, each of whom knows their own area well, dominates within it, and guards its boundaries against competitors. Territoriality comes to the fore here. Although it is also present in the ГР-С strategy, its significance there is mitigated - the group may occasionally admit outside members. Here, by contrast, the territory holder strictly guards the boundaries, allowing no one to encroach on their area and everything within it (food + females inhabiting the area - in the case of a dominant male, or, in the case of a female - her young).

Si strategies represent a way of obtaining food through gathering. This can include herbivory and the consumption of plant fruits, insects, and carrion.

That is, all those types of feeding that exclude a struggle with prey comparable in size and level of consciousness; and also, in most cases, exclude confrontations with other individuals (or, at least, reduce the significance of such confrontations and make them optional).

The advantage of this approach is that the subject does not have to become continually involved in situations that threaten injury and maiming, and does not have to defend their dominant position continually. The disadvantage is that more time and effort must then be spent finding and eating food - because food for which competition is reduced inevitably turns out to be much more dispersed across the territory and/or lower in calories.

The peripherality of the Si strategy consists in its user’s striving to move farther away from the main arena of competition, where predators dominate. This is not because the user cannot defend themselves. They probably can. However, any confrontation could potentially bring them harm, but no benefit: they are not a predator and do not intend to eat defeated rivals. The dynamics of this strategy are associated with the need to change pastures and food sources constantly - all of them tend to become depleted, and new food cannot come running to you on its own if you are not a predator.

The strategy of linear-assertive sensing (ЛН-С = creative Si) has its origins in herd herbivory.

Users of this strategy are more closely tied to their group than others; they do a great many things collectively - feed, defend themselves against predators, and rear their young; accordingly, outside the group, their ability to survive declines sharply. The herd instinct therefore comes to the fore here - it manifests itself as a desire not to fall behind the group, but also not to stand out markedly from it in appearance and behavior. The need to subsist on low-calorie food and change pastures frequently requires such subjects to train their physical endurance constantly.

The strategy of receptive-adaptive sensing (ВА-С = leading Si) originates in solitary gathering.

Its distinctive feature is an orientation toward food sources that most animals fail to notice or avoid, being unable to derive benefit from them for themselves individually. These can include: mollusks protected by shells and plant fruits, nuts with thick shells, as well as conditionally poisonous fruits and carrion that has already begun to spoil - food of a kind that requires certain skills and caution in separating the edible parts from the inedible ones. Accordingly, users of this strategy can be expected to have highly developed sense organs, especially those of smell and touch (needed to assess food quality), as well as fine manual motor skills (useful in cleaning food).

Now that we have considered all the principal ways of obtaining food, we turn to strategies for avoiding encounters with predators.

Avoiding dangers of all kinds, as a form of behavior, differs from searching for food in the following ways:

1. The positive result of the strategy you have chosen consists here not in the amount of the resource obtained, but exclusively in your continued existence in the world - i.e., such a result can be assessed only qualitatively, not quantitatively;
2. Accordingly, difficulties arise in defining criteria for the success of your personal strategy - you can never be entirely certain whether your success is associated with your actions and skills, or simply with a favorable combination of circumstances. Some conclusions can be drawn here only after a long time has elapsed following observation of many similar beings that have found themselves in similar conditions. By contrast, feeding strategies are more straightforward - food is obtained regularly, and someone’s success in obtaining it can be determined much more quickly and accurately;
3. Avoiding dangers requires taking a much greater number of factors into account (on average), but the logic of their interrelationships in consciousness becomes considerably fuzzier - therefore, the key role comes to be played not by the accuracy with which signals from the external environment are perceived, but by the accuracy of their interpretation, which ultimately serves to develop abstract thinking.

As is known, it is primarily the intuition pole that is associated with fuzziness of logic and blurred perceptual filters, with an orientation toward abstractions rather than material values.

Thus, it can be asserted that the strategy of avoiding danger is considerably more intuitive than the strategy of obtaining food. Moreover, it apparently is the precursor of the intuitive function in all living beings that possess individual consciousness (since there simply are no other strategies of comparable significance for animals).

Let us now consider intuitive strategies in more detail.

As I showed above, the basis of the intuitive function is avoidance of the danger of being eaten. Specifically, it is avoidance that is meant here; defensive strategies involving direct confrontation belong to sensing. For a subject provisionally described as intuitive, we already assume at the outset that they are incapable of offering significant resistance to a predator in a direct confrontation. Accordingly, only two principal possibilities remain: to deceive the predator through their appearance and behavior, or simply to avoid crossing paths with it in space. According to my hypothesis, the first of these possibilities is realized through the Ni function, and the second - through Ne.

The division of sensing into Ni and Ne corresponds to the identification within it of central-dynamic and peripheral-static components. Why is the Ni strategy central, and Ne - peripheral?

Primarily because the Ne subject chooses movement in space as the principal means of evasion, leaving places where the main competitive struggle unfolds for territory that is less attractive or less accessible to predators. Such territory will obviously be peripheral relative to the arena of the main competitive struggle; moreover, the very existence of free space for retreat is more likely in systems where the food resource is more dispersed in space - i.e., in biogeocenoses of the peripheral type.

The Ni subject, however, who prefers deception to retreat, proceeds from the outset on the assumption that movement in space will confer no additional advantages. Such a situation is more likely if predators are too powerful, their spatial distribution is denser, and there are no places to retreat to - and all of these conditions occur simultaneously in biogeocenoses of the central type, which are richest in nutritional resources.

At the same time, since the user of the Ne strategy must always be ready to retreat, they must also constantly monitor their position in space and know the characteristics of that space (ideally - better than the predator). Moreover, since the landscape is stationary in most cases, the image of the world reflected in the Ne subject’s consciousness will likewise be stationary, static.

For the user of the Ni strategy, however, knowledge of the landscape in itself is of little use; their consciousness is occupied with monitoring other individuals’ reactions to their own actions and predicting predators’ behavior. Obviously, the internal image of the world in this case will also constitute a process unfolding in time, rather than a static picture.

Specific patterns of behavior:

The strategy of flexible-maneuvering intuition (ГР-И = leading Ne): “flee, be as unpredictable as possible to predators.”

Individuals and species that survive in this way must possess a high speed of thinking and frequently change their behavioral tactics and their resting and feeding places, thereby preventing predators from tracking them; when retreating, they will rely on deceptive maneuvers that confuse the pursuer.

The strategy of balanced-stable intuition (УС-И = creative Ne): “hide where the predator cannot reach.”

A pattern of behavior characteristic of inhabitants of burrows, tree canopies, and mountain crevices, as well as all manner of other inhospitable terrain. Knowing a certain area of territory well, such individuals and species choose the places within it that are most difficult for predators to access as their habitat (even if these are less productive in terms of food resources).

The strategy of receptive-adaptive intuition (ВА-И = leading Ni): “pass oneself off as empty space, blend into the background.”

The typical repertoire of a user of this strategy includes certain features of appearance (innate or acquired) that make mimicry more successful. A shift to a nocturnal way of life is also one of the techniques characteristic of ВА-И (the negative correlation of Ni with a preference for bright lighting persists in humans as well - according to Talanov’s research).

The strategy of linear-assertive intuition (ЛН-И = creative Ni): “pass oneself off as a predator, provoke through staged aggression.”

Perhaps the most unusual of all intuitive strategies. As in the case of ВА-И, mimicry occurs here, but the aim is not to disappear from predators’ sight; on the contrary, it is conspicuous provocation, drawing the predator’s attention to oneself through defiant behavior: threatening noise, demonstratively aggressive lunges, artificially increasing body size, and so forth. At the same time, such an individual’s chance of actually winning in a direct fight with a predator is nonexistent or minimal, i.e., the subject takes a conscious risk, relying on the predator perceiving them as a dangerous rival and being unwilling to become involved, instead giving them a wide berth.

I would particularly note that the strong positive correlation between ЛН-И and ГР-С (forming the pole of extraverted centrality), observed in the Talanov and Khizhnyak questionnaire, may have its origins precisely in the above-mentioned feature of the ЛН-И pattern of behavior. Specifically, in the outward similarity between the offensively aggressive behavior of pack predators of the ГР-С type and the feigned aggression of the ЛН-И type, intended for self-defense.

That is, the shift of the EIE and LIE means toward SEE and SLE may be not only a real correlation between the sets of properties of these 4 types, but also a systematic distortion, a consequence of a program “embedded” in the subconscious of EIE and LIE, intended to imitate the behavior of more “predatory” and potentially dangerous individuals.

What, then, of the heightened correlation between the ВА-С and УС-И strategies (forming the pole of introverted peripherality)?

It seems to me that the reason here is as follows: both ВА-С and УС-И subjects seek out inhospitable terrain, farther from the main arena of action, but do so for different reasons. УС-И individuals simply cannot physically withstand competition with the strongest terrestrial predators of the plains, and seek cover in rugged landscapes and in underground and aboveground shelters. Users of the ВА-С strategy, meanwhile, specialize in searching for food that others do not seek, and such food is also more abundant at the periphery of the system, in more “special” and specific, although generally less productive, biogeocenoses.

Thus, different patterns of behavior lead here to the same result - avoidance of competition and withdrawal to the periphery of the system.