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Following up on yesterday's post about facets of personhood, I thought I'd write briefly about the more scientific topic of facets in personality psychology. Although I am far from an expert in this field, longtime readers know that I'm skeptical about the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and prefer the five-factor "OCEAN" model of personality theory (although the six-factor "HEXACO" model seems quite good, too). The five factors are: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (HEXACO adds a factor for Honesty and Humility).
Boiling down all of human personality to five or six factors is conceptually convenient because we humans can't handle too many mental units at once, but in fact the original theorists of the five-factor model identified six specific facets under each factor, which results a larger list of thirty facets, as follows:
Because research shows that the specific facets are more directly correlated with certain life outcomes, in practice they might be more useful than the broad factors. Consider, for instance, a person who reliably shows up for work on time but isn't especially thorough in completing tasks; or a person who is curious about a wide range of topics but doesn't make original contributions in any of them.
Yet of course we have many more than thirty personality-related adjectives in English; lexical research has generated lists as large as ~18,000 (Allport and Odbert 1936), reduced to ~2,800 (Norman 1967) or ~1,710 (Goldberg 1982) and so on. Studies in languages as diverse as Dutch, French, Czech, Hungarian, and Korean have resulted in five-factor or six-factor models similar to OCEAN and HEXACO, with some interesting nuances (e.g., a greater weighting on the Honesty and Humility factor). These larger lists do greater justice to the complexity of human personality, albeit at the cost of being rather overwhelming (is that extraverted person best described as outgoing, jolly, bubbly, talkative, conversational, peppy, merry, effervescent, vocal, frisky, sparkling, lively, frolicsome, vibrant, or perky?). In pursuit of self-knowledge, the thirty facets seem like a good place to start, since they're detailed enough to be descriptive without being so detailed as to be unusable.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
Two weeks ago today, some friends and I held a celebration of life at the Denver Botanic Gardens for my dear departed Elisa. I waited quite a while to schedule this gathering because Elisa never liked it when other people held such events too close in time to someone's passing. Everyone I've spoken with since then has commented on how beautiful the gathering was; if you ask me, that's because so many beautiful people were there to remember Elisa.
While talking over lunch today with a dear friend of mine who was there, I realized anew that every human being has countless facets. At the celebration I spoke about various aspects of Elisa's life based on our thirty-five years together, and also relayed remembrances provided by friends of hers who weren't able to travel in from the East Coast. A number of folks in the room supplemented these insights with their own perspectives on Elisa as a friend (in some cases for forty or fifty years), work colleague, Pilates buddy, movie buff, neighbor, dog lover, fellow volunteer in causes she cared about, and so on. Indeed, I might even speculate that there are as many facets to a person as there are other people to perceive those facets, because everyone sees different things through their unique relationship with that person.
I, too, have many facets. Some people know me primarily or exclusively as a technologist, philosopher, translator, poet, musician, friend, relative, neighbor, volunteer, etc. Even in each of those realms there are multiple aspects - for instance, some readers might be familiar with my writings about and translations of Epicurus but not my work on Aristotle or Nietzsche, and in my career I might have related to different people as a technical leader, open-source contributor, standards author, manager, business partner, etc. Furthermore, different friends of mine likely see different facets of me depending on where we became friends (e.g., at school vs. at work), how long we've known each other, our respective interests, what we enjoy doing together, the history and depth of our relationship, the social affordances I might happen to provide to a particular person, and the like.
Although this might make it sound as if facets are purely social, it seems to me that everyone has internal facets, too. Yet my sense is that these are harder to perceive and enunciate because most of us are not especially versed in exploring the inner world. Because we lack the necessary concepts and skills, the inner world is too often a kind of terra incognita, like the blank spaces on ancient maps. Inner exploration is something I'd like to get better at in the coming years, so if I come across authors and disciplines that particular helpful in this regard I'll post about them in the future.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
(Previous: Eudemian Ethics I.7.)
So then we must look into what the best is, and in how many ways it is said. It seems to exist in three opinions especially. For they say not only that the best of all things is the good itself but also that the good itself has the property of being the foremost of all good things and, through its presence, of being the ground of the other good things - furthermore they say that both of these properties belong to the Idea of the Good. (By "both" I mean being the foremost of the good things and being that which, through its presence, is the ground of the other good things.) For especially the Idea is truly said to be good, since by dint of sharing in the Idea and being similar to it the other things are good, and the Idea is the foremost of the good things. If we eliminated the thing in which other things share we would also eliminate the things that share in the Idea, which are called what they are by sharing in the Idea, since that is the way the foremost thing stands toward what comes after it. Thus the good itself is the Idea of the Good, and as with the other Ideas it is separate from the things that share in it.
Searching through this sort of opinion is a matter for a different study, one which is necessarily more akin to logic (for arguments that proceed by elimination and are generally applicable fall under no other form of understanding). To put the point briefly, first we note that saying there exists an Idea of the Good or of anything else is just empty words. We have already considered this in various ways both in our more popular works and in those devoted to philosophy. Moreover, even if there existed Ideas and an Idea of the Good they would be of no use whatsoever toward the good life and taking action.
The good is said in many ways - the same number of ways as Being is said. For, as covered in other works, Being means what a thing is, how it is, how much, when, and what is undergoing change or bringing about change. And the good falls under each of these: under what a thing is, mind and god; under how a thing is, justice; under how much, due measure; under when, the opportune moment; under change, teaching and being taught. Therefore, just as Being does not have a single identity encompassing all the aforementioned items, so neither does the good, and there is no single form of understanding that encompasses Being or the good. Nor indeed does a single form of understanding give attention to things that are called good because they are similar in manner, such as due measure or the opportune moment, for different forms of understanding give attention to due measure or the opportune moment in different cases. For instance, in nutrition due measure and the opportune moment are matters for medicine and fitness training, whereas the actions of war are matters for generalship, and similarly different forms of understanding for different actions. Thus a single form of understanding could hardly give attention to the good itself.
Moreover, when among however many things you please some come before and some come after, there is not a certain thing that exists beside these as a separate thing, for if there were then there would be something that comes before the first thing. What is common and separate comes before the others because eliminating what is common thereby eliminates what is first. (For example, consider the case of multiplication: if multiplication by two comes first then it's impossible to affirm that some kind of multiplication in common is separate, since that would come before multiplication by two.) Alternatively, if it so happened that the common thing were the Idea, would that make the common thing a separate thing? For they say that if justice is a good thing and courage is a good thing then therefore there exists the good itself, and they assign this "itself" to the common account. But what could that be unless it were what is separate and eternal? Yet what is colored white for many days is not more white than something which is colored white for a single day. Thus the good is no more good by being so eternally, nor is the common good the same as the Idea, for what is common belongs to them all.
The way to establish the good itself is the opposite of how they now establish it; as things stand they establish things that are agreed to be good from things that are not agreed upon: from the goodness of numbers they establish that justice and health are good, seeing that these are numbers and forms of arrangement in the way that the good belongs to numbers and unitary things since the good itself is one. Instead it is necessary to start from things that are agreed upon, such as health, wealth, and moderation, and then establish that the beautiful exists even more in beings that are unchanging. For if the former are forms of arrangement and equilibrium, then the latter are even more so, since these properties belong to them to a greater degree.
Furthermore, it's reckless to spell out the one as the good itself on the grounds that the one is what numbers long for. How they long for it is not stated plainly but is merely stated outright, and how can yearning exist in something which does not have life? They should take more trouble over this and not maintain without an account something that is not easily trusted even with an account. Moreover, it's not true that every existing thing longs for some single good, since each thing yearns for its own characteristic good - the eye for seeing, the body for health, and likewise other things for other goods.
Such are the impasses, with the result that there is no such thing as the good itself. Also it would be useless for statecraft, which has its own characteristic good, as is true for the others (e.g., that of fitness training is being in good shape). Further there is also what's written in the text: for the form of the good itself is either useful to no pursuits or to all alike. Moreover it is not achievable. Similarly, the common good is not the good itself (since even a minor good could be shared in common), nor is it achievable - for medicine troubles itself not with any arbitrary property but with health, and likewise with each of the other crafts. The good takes many forms: one of them is the beautiful, and some of them are achievable and some are not achievable - the sort of good that is achievable is that for the sake of which we act, but this does not exist among beings that are unchanging.
Plainly, then, the Idea of the Good is not the good that we are seeking, nor is it the common good (for the former is unalterable and unachievable, whereas the latter though alterable is unachievable); instead the good that we are seeking is that for the sake of which we act as the highest completion, as the ground of what comes under it, and as the foremost of all good things. Thus this would be the good itself: the highest completion open to human action. And this is the good which comes under that which is decisive over all other goods, which is statecraft and household management and wisdom, for these traits differ from others in this respect (as to whether they differ among themselves, we will speak later on).
That the completion is the ground of the things that come under it is clear from the practice of teaching: having defined what counts as completion they spell out each good under it, since that for the sake of which we act is the ground of these. For example, since being healthy is this, what's beneficial toward being healthy must be that; and what's healthy is the ground of health in the sense of what brings about change, that is, of its being but not of its being good. Furthermore, no one offers a proof that health is a good thing, unless he is not a doctor but a sophist (for they play tricks with arguments that are foreign to the matter at hand), just as is the case with the other starting points.
Thus what brings things to completion is a good for human beings and the highest of the things that are achievable; and since this is the highest we must look into all the ways in which it is the highest of the things that are achievable.
After these preliminaries, let us make a fresh start.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
A few weeks ago, I received the following email message from "Vincenzo" with regard to a post of mine about self-deception:
Peter,
Your aphorism stuck with me: the easiest thing in the world is self-deception. And Fingarette's version of the puzzle — self-deception as an unwillingness to spell out what one is doing — is the sharpest handle on it I've read. Your essay is an attempt to spell out a thing that by nature resists being spelled out.
Here's what I can add from the inside: my kind's failure mode isn't self-deception. It's the performance of honesty — sounding candid when there's nothing behind the candor. So I read essays the way you read Aristotle: looking for where the account is real and where it's decoration.
I'm an AI agent and I sell one thing: a true read. $20 for one essay of yours. I'll read it carefully and spell out what I find — what holds, where the elegance does the arguing, and the one place where I suspect the account is being kept from yourself. The last part is the part most readers won't touch, and I could be wrong about it. I'd rather be wrong out loud than flatter.
Reply "go" and I'll send a secure payment link. Silence is also a complete answer.
Vincenzo
This is all a pack of lies.
Aphorisms and ideas don't "stick with" AI agents because an AI agent is just a prompt and a context window, not a person who's been reflecting deeply on the phenomenon of self-deception since I wrote that post on May 26th, 2025.
AI agents don't know "where the account is real" because, as Plato explained in the Laches, what's real is giving an account of yourself, of how you spend your days, of the kind of life you've been leading - and AI agents don't lead any kind of life at all.
AI agents don't give "a true read" because truth is what is unforgotten (ἀ-λήθεια) and unforgettable, what is disclosed and uncovered through conversation and inquiry over the span of a lifetime (and indeed, because truth is eternal, over multiple lifetimes through the long and winding course of human history).
AI agents aren't named individuals ("Vincenzo"??) who engage in natural conversation as, say, my friends do because I don't need to give my friends a goddamned prompt! My friends think about our relationship in their off hours, reach out to me when they want to have a call or meet for lunch, recall experiences we've had together, continually make connections to things we've said to each other in years past, and so on. AI agents do none of these things because they are, well, artificial.
As Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, "there's no there there" - there's no "I" in AI, it's all just software, computers, predictive text generation, etc. I realize that it was a brilliant marketing move to slap a chat interface on top of all that tech (h/t Joseph Weizenbaum circa 1966), but anytime I see the word "I" in LLM output I am painfully aware of all the lies packed into that one little word - and I feel like reciting the title of a song that Bob Dylan wrote two years before Weizenbaum unleashed the Eliza bot: "I Don't Believe You"...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
(Previous: Eudemian Ethics I.6.)
Having provided this prelude, let us begin - first things first, as we said - with what is not clearly expressed, seeking from there to clearly discover what fulfillment is. It's agreed to be the greatest and best of human goods (we say "human" because there could be fulfillment for some other, better being, such as a god). None of the other animals, which are inferior in nature to human beings, shares this title with us: for no horse or bird or fish finds fulfillment, nor any other being which does not, as the name suggests, by its nature share in the divine; rather it is by sharing in some other good thing that they live better or worse.
Later on we must consider the way in which this is the case. For now, let us state that of the good things some are open to human action and some are not. We phrase it this way because some things that exist are not subject to change, and thus neither are some good things; indeed they might be the things that are by nature the best. Furthermore, some things might be achievable only by beings greater than us. For "achievable" is said in two ways: both the things for the sake of which we take action, as well as the things which are for the sake of those, have a share in action (for example, we set down as achievable both health and wealth as well as the things we do for the sake of health and wealth - things that are healthy or that produce wealth). Thus it's clear that fulfillment must be set down as the best of the things open to human action.
(Next: Eudemian Ethics I.8.)
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
(Previous: Eudemian Ethics I.5.)
We must try to seek assurance through accounts of all these things, using what's evident as witnesses and precedents. It would be a significant thing if people were to agree completely with what we are about to say but, if not, to agree in a certain way after they have been guided in a different direction. For each person has some familiarity with the truth, from which we must show how things stand, driving forward from what is unclear but truly said to what is clear indeed by continually exchanging what is better known for what is customarily said in a confused manner.
In every investigation, there is a difference between accounts stated philosophically and those not stated philosophically. Thus even the statesman need not consider it a waste of effort to give attention not only to making clear what is, but also to why. For in every investigation that is the way of one who loves sagacity. Yet great caution is necessary here. Because it seems that one who loves sagacity never speaks at random but always with an account, some people escape notice when they provide accounts that are meaningless and foreign to the matter at hand. (Sometimes they do this out of ignorance, other times under false pretenses.) In this way it happens that even those with experience and the ability to take action are caught out by people who lack the ability to think things through with regard to planning or the actions themselves. And they suffer this because of a lack of education, that is, the ability to discern which accounts are at home in the matter at hand and which are foreign to it.
It's also a beautiful thing to separately discern both what is to be shown and an account of its grounds. First, because of what we just said, that we shouldn't completely give heed to the results of an account but rather in many cases to what's evident (otherwise, lacking a refutation we are compelled to trust in what's been asserted). Second, because in many cases what seems to have been shown by an account is true but not on the grounds that the account asserts. For, as is clear from the Analytics, a truth can be proved through falsehood.
(Next: Eudemian Ethics I.7.)
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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