I argue that Merleau-Ponty is right to claim that some shift in an agent's perspective on the world is partly constitutive of their forming a habit, but that he is wrong about what this shift is because he wrongly conflates habit and skill. I defend an alternative: the perspectiival shift constitutive of habit-formation is that habitual courses of action come to be and seem familiar.

I distinguish between 'hard nudges' and 'soft nudges', arguing that it is possible to show that the latter can be compatible with informed consent - as Cohen has recently suggested; but that the real challenge is the compatibility of the former. Hard nudges are the more effective nudges because they work on less than conscious mechanisms such as those underlying our habits: whether those influences - which are often beyond the subject's awareness - can be reconciled with informed consent (...) in health care is the more challenging question. I suggest two directions for possible answers: on the one hand, looking at the growing empirical literature on mindless judgement and behaviour; and on the other hand considering a more diversified conception of consent, which I sketch. (shrink)

The opening words of the second book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are as familiar as any in his corpus: Excellence of character results from habituation [ethos]—which is in fact the source of the name it has acquired [êthikê], the word for ‘character-trait’ [êthos] being a slight variation of that for ‘habituation’ [ethos]. This makes it quite clear that none of the excellences of character [êthikê aretê] comes about in us by nature; for no natural way of being is changed through (...) habituation [ethizetai]. Equally familiar, unfortunately, is the characterization of Aristotle’s notion of character formation as a form of habituation by means of the repetition of actions which results in a “habit” in the same way that a weight lifter produces muscles through the repetition of exertions. As a 19th century commentator remarked on the passage above, “[insert Grant].” From a Socratic perspective, such a view of becoming good seems hopelessly rigid and unconnected to the intellectual development which knowledge of the good requires. Habit and habituation in Aristotle seem eminently familiar and eminently unphilosophical. Such a view would be mistaken on at least three counts. First, the notion of character formation (to use the broadest possible term for the phenomenon of habituation) in Aristotle is significantly more complicated than the notion that through habituation one develops good habits which are what we mean by ethical virtue. Although character formation includes the development of proper emotional responses, such as taking pleasure in what is fine and being repulsed by what is shameful, it is equally concerned with cognitive development independent of the intellectual virtues. Second, although Aristotle’s terms for “ethics” (êthica), character-trait (êthos), and habituation (ethos, ethismos, or ethizetai) are linguistically and conceptually interrelated, his notion of “ethical state” (hexis) is both linguistically and conceptually quite distinct from the notion of “habit,” at least as we use that term today. As one Aristotle translator has put it, “A hexis is not only not the same thing as a habit, but is almost exactly its opposite.” For Aristotle, a hexis is a dynamic equilibrium which, although always productive of virtuous actions, is nonetheless the basis for being virtuous in varied circumstances. Thirdly, once Aristotle’s notion of a character state is retrieved from its false association with “habit” and repetitive habituation, one sees that its apparent divorce from practical reason is more a fixture of Aristotle’s analytical method and its connotations of inflexibility or fixedness are in fact antithetical to Aristotle’s description of ethical virtue. Rather than view ethical “character” in its Greek etymological sense as an indelibly fixed or engraved mark or stamp (charactêr) upon one’s soul, Aristotle’s notion of ethical character (êthos) or virtue (aretê) captures the notion of a virtuoso who is responsive in an excellent fashion to what reason perceives in particular and changing circumstances. (shrink)

Habits form a crucial part of the everyday conceptual scheme used to explain normal human activity. However, they have been neglected in debates concerning folk-psychology which have concentrated on propositional attitudes such as beliefs. But propositional attitudes are just one of the many mental states. In this paper, I seek to expand the debate by considering mental states other than propositional attitudes. I conclude that the case for the autonomy and plausibility of the folk-psychological explanation is strengthened when one (...) considers an example from the non-propositional-attitude mental states: habits. My main target is the radical eliminativist program. As regards habits, eliminativists could argue in two distinct but related ways. They can either abandon the concept "habit" altogether or retain the folk-psychological term "habit" by reducing it to the causal chain of the observed behavior pattern, as is sometimes done in social theory. I contend that both of these strategies are defective. The correct way to talk about habits is in terms of manifestations and activating conditions, not in terms of causal chains. Hence, if eliminativists take up either of the two arguments given above, they will not succeed. Correspondingly, by the added generality gained through the consideration of habits, the case for folk-psychology is strengthened. (shrink)

Enactivism has influentially argued that the traditional intellectualist ‘act-content’ model of intentionality is insufficient both phenomenologically and naturalistically, and minds are built from world-involving bodily habits – thus, knowledge should be regarded as more of a skilled performance than an informational encoding. Radical enactivists have assumed that this insight must entail non-representationalism concerning at least basic minds. But what if it could be shown that representation is itself a form of skilled performance? I sketch the outline of such an (...) account from the perspective of Peirce’s pragmatist semiotics, which theorises signs as habits of associating specific cues with appropriate acts and schemas of ensuing experience. Within this framework, I argue, a naturalistic account of propositional structure can be constructed which transcends the symbolic – and in some instances even the linguistic – sphere, and offers new insights regarding the Information Processing Challenge, and the Hard Problem of Content. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of biology argues that we must rethink the biological individual beyond the boundary of the species, given that a key part of our essential functioning is carried out by the bacteria in our intestines in a way that challenges any strictly genetic account of what is involved for the biological human. The gut is a kind of ambiguous other within our understanding of ourselves, particularly when we also consider the status of gastro-intestinal disorders. Hegel offers (...) us theoretical tools to describe and understand our relationship to our gut. His description of our selves as continually mediated through otherness is strikingly compatible with the kind of structure contemporary biology presents us with. His accounts of digestion and habit, contextualized by his logic, help point toward an understanding of selfhood as porous and yet still capable of being sufficiently unified for us to make sense of ourselves, one which allows us to acknowledge otherness within us while still having enough unity for agency. (shrink)

This paper examines Pierre Hadot’s philosophy as a way of life in the context of race. I argue that a “way of life” approach to philosophy renders intelligible how anti-racist confrontation of racist ideas and institutionalized white complicity is a properly philosophical way of life requiring regulated reflection on habits – particularly, habits of whiteness. I first rehearse some of Hadot’s analysis of the “way of life” orientation in philosophy, in which philosophical wisdom is understood as cultivated by (...) actions which result in the creation of wise habits. I analyze a phenomenological claim about the nature of habit implied by the “way of life” approach, namely, that habits can be both the cause and the effect of action. This point is central to the “way of life” philosophy, I claim, in that it makes possible the intelligent redirection of habits, in which wise habits are more the effect than simply the cause of action. Lastly, I illustrate the “way of life” approach in the context of anti-racism by turning to Linda Martín Alcoff’s whiteness anti-eliminativism, which outlines a morally defensible transformation of the habits of whiteness. I argue that anti-racism provides an intelligible context for modern day forms of what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” insofar as the “way of life” philosophy is embodied in the practice of whites seeing themselves seeing as white and seeing themselves being seen as white. (shrink)

This paper argues that habits, just like beliefs, can guide intentional action. To do this, a variety of real-life cases where a person acts habitually but contrary to her beliefs are discussed. The cases serve as dissociations showing that intentional agency is possible without doxastic guidance. The upshot is a model for thinking about the rationality of habitual action and the rationalizing role that habits can play in it. The model highlights the role that our history and institutions (...) play in shaping what actions become habitual for us. (shrink)

In Aspiration, Agnes Callard examines the phenomenon of aspiration, the process by which one acquires values and becomes a certain kind of person. Aspiring to become a certain type of person involves more than wanting to act in certain ways. We want to come to see the world in a certain way and to develop the dispositions, attributes, and skills that allow us to seamlessly and effectively respond to situations. The skilled athlete or musician, for example, has developed the muscle (...) memory and the perceptual equivalent to naturally see what a situation requires and to respond well, whether playing a Rachmaninoff concerto or returning a tennis volley. -/- I use Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception to flesh out the process of becoming, through which aspired-to values, skills, and characteristics become part of one’s embodied being-in-the-world. Although some rightly focus on Merleau-Ponty’s efforts to avoid over-intellectualizing skillful action, without appreciating his distinction between habitual actions and human (or personal) acts, we overlook an important aspect of robust human agency—the way “a human act becomes dormant and is continued absent-mindedly as a reflex” (90). Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit and its relation to personal acts offers a rich and phenomenologically sensitive picture of aspiration. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can (...) be internally fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

In this chapter, one considers finance at its very foundations, namely, at the place where assumptions are being made about the ways to measure the two key ingredients of finance: risk and return. It is well known that returns for a large class of assets display a number of stylized facts that cannot be squared with the traditional views of 1960s financial economics (normality and continuity assumptions, i.e. Brownian representation of market dynamics). Despite the empirical counterevidence, normality and continuity assumptions (...) were part and parcel of financial theory and practice, embedded in all financial practices and beliefs. Our aim is to build on this puzzle for extracting some clues revealing the use of one research strategy in academic community, model tinkering defined as a particular research habit. We choose to focus on one specific moment of the scientific controversies in academic finance: the ‘leptokurtic crisis’ opened by Mandelbrot in 1962. The profoundness of the crisis came from the angle of the Mandelbrot’s attack: not only he emphasized an empirical inadequacy of the Brownian representation, but also he argued for an inadequate grounding of this representation. We give some insights in this crisis and display the model tinkering strategies of the financial academic community in the 1970s and the 1980s. (shrink)

Habit in semiosis can be modeled both as a macro-level in a hierarchical multi-level system where it functions as boundary conditions for emergence of semiosis, and as a cognitive niche produced by an ecologically-inherited environment of cognitive artifacts. According to the first perspective, semiosis is modeled in terms of a multilayered system, with micro functional entities at the lower-level and with higher-level processes being mereologically composed of these lower-level entities. According to the second perspective, habits are embedded in ecologically-inherited (...) environments of signs that co-evolve with cognition. Both descriptions offer a novel approximation of Peirce’s semiotics and theoretical findings in other areas (hierarchy theory, evolutionary biology), suggesting new frameworks to approach the concept of habit integrated with its role in semiosis. (shrink)

We argue that the notion of "mental institutions"-discussed in recent debates about extended cognition-can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual's head). After providing some conceptual background, we discuss the connection between mental institutions and embodied habits of mind. We then discuss the significance of our (...) view for understanding autistic habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a poor fit with neurotypical mental institutions. We conclude by considering how these insights highlight the two-way, extended nature of social impairments in autism, and how this extended picture might assist in constructing more inclusive mental institutions and intervention strategies. (shrink)

The phenomenal body is an intriguing concept, and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of habit, coupled with motor intentionality, provides a novel perspective on its inner workings. I contend that his portrayal of habit tacitly bears two faces – motoric habit and instrumental habit respectively. The former is an attunement to some bodily possibilities that are already at our disposal while the latter is an explicit relation to external objects and a process of incorporating those objects into our own bodies. These two notions (...) play into each other, creating a mechanism that offers an intuitive illustration and simple productive definition for a dynamic picture of bodyhood. Furthermore, it carries an internal delimitation that marks the boundaries of its application. The result is a view that provides something new to current interpretations of Merleau-Ponty, as well as potential applications in areas that derived from his appeals to motor intentionality. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, several changes have been forcibly made and observed in various fields and areas of society, one of which include the field of education; the foundation of the formation of intellect and knowledge. After two years of studying indoors and private educational institutions holding virtual classes, the time has finally come for students to be re- adjusted once more to the blended mode of learning; a combination of virtual and in-person classes. Thus, this study aimed to (...) investigate the development of students’ study habits and how these habits could potentially affect the students’ academic achievement or performance. The study utilized a descriptivecorrelational design to examine the impact of study habits to the academic performance of 137 senior high school students. The study made use of the Palsane and Sharma’s Study Habits Inventory, or also known as PSSHI, and using this instrument, the study has been able to procure sufficient results that will answer the present study’s problems. Using linear regression analysis, the present study found that there was a significance between the study habits and academic performance of the senior high school students, thus the study’s null hypothesis was eventually rejected. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a trend in psychiatry to try and explain disorders of action in terms of an over-reliance on the habitual mode of action. In particular, it has been hypothesized that compulsions in obsessive-compulsive disorder are driven by maladaptive habits. In this paper, I argue that this view of obsessive-compulsive disorder does not fit the phenomenology of the disorder in many patients and that a more refined conceptualization of habit is likely to be helpful in (...) clarifying the distinctions between disorders of action. There are thus two aims to this paper. The first is to highlight the issues pertaining to the view that compulsions are the result of an over-reliance on the habitual mode of action, leading to a loss of agentive control. The second aim is to examine the view of agentive control implicit in those accounts and see how other conceptions of agentive control might do a better job at accounting for the distinct ways in which persons suffering from pathologies of action may be said to lack control. (shrink)

Tennis champion Maria Sharapova has a habit of grunting when she plays on the court. Assume that she also has a habit of hitting the ball in a certain way in a certain situation. The habit of on-court grunting might be bad, but can the habit of hitting the ball in a certain way in a certain situation be classified as intelligent? The fundamental questions here are as follows: What is habit? What is the relation between habit and skill? Is (...) there such a thing as intelligent habit? In this paper I expound the nature of habit by developing and defending a Rylean conception of habit, according to which an acquired disposition is a habit if and only if the manifestation of the disposition is repeated, automatic, and uniform. One implication of this conception is that there is no such thing as intelligent habit. A practical application in athletic expertise is that sport coaches can help athletes go beyond repeated, automatic, and uniform dispositions in sport. (shrink)

Reading, taking notes, and holding study sessions are all examples of routine, habitual study behaviors that pupils engage in to fulfill the learning objective. This study was conducted to the two hundred-five (n=205) grade 6 pupils at Malitbog 1 District, Division of Bukidnon, School Year 2022-2023. It attempted to answer the level of pupils’ study habits and academic performance and determine the significant relationship between the study habits and academic performance. The study utilized the descriptive-correlational research design with (...) documentary analysis and used an adapted and modified questionnaire to gather the necessary data to answer the specific questions of the study. Purposive sampling was employed to determine the respondents. Mean, Standard Deviation, Frequency, Percentage and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient or Pearson r were used as statistical tools. Results revealed that pupils’ overall level of study habits was high while their overall academic performance was at very satisfactory level. Significant correlation was registered between pupils’ study habits and their academic performance. Thus, teachers, parents and stakeholders may collaborate with each other to create and conduct activities that will continue to enhance and improve the pupils study habits to improve their academic performance. (shrink)

Habits figure in action‐explanations because of their distinctive force. But what is the force of habit, and how does it motivate us? In this paper, I argue that the force of habit is the feeling of familiarity one has with the familiar course of action, where this feeling reveals a distinctive reason for acting in the usual way. I do this by considering and rejecting a popular account of habit's force in terms of habit's apparent automaticity, by arguing that (...) one can do something out of habit and from deliberation, before going on to defend The Familiarity View. (shrink)

This exposition focuses on purposeful behavioursaseffortstoward self-actualization. I introducehabit as a set of value-based behaviours that is different than the typical habit of physical movements. Each of those praxis is controlled by cognition drivenby values –both personal and societal, and their following habitsare the result of complex learning. I will then elaborate on three important topics: (1) awareness and efficacy with respect tohabit, (2) collective habit, and (3) implications of existential habit on the individual’s as well as the society’s wellbeing.

The reader of RTP is granted just a few paragraphs before habit is introduced: Habit! That able but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds sufer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our mind is nonetheless only too happy to fnd, for without it, reduced to its own devices, it would be powerless to make any room habitable. (SW, 9, translation altered; I 8) Implied is a view of mind: powerless to interfere with habit’s course, but (...) equally powerless to reconcile us even to something as innocuous as a room, were it not for habit’s work. Corresponding to this is a view of the world: hostile. The objects are nasty, imposing, menacing: a ‘mentally poisoning’ smell, malicious curtains and a cruel mirror (SW, 9; I 8). Habit, unbidden but welcome, steps in. The mirror becomes compassionate. Habit is a central aspect of the narrator’s worldview. It appears both at major plot points and in signifcant theoretical passages. Proust had already thematised habit in some of his earliest published work – notably in ‘Violante ou la Mondanité’ (1892) (‘Violante, or High Society’) – as well as in unpublished material (see II 1352 fn. 2). His ideas have their roots in his philosophical education, where habit formed a key part of the syllabus. Indeed, in retrospect, we can say that Proust may have been taught philosophy at a time and place where habit, as a philosophical topic, was approaching its high watermark, as a major theme in French philosophical thought. Another major theme, of course, was time. (shrink)

What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representation. Against Intellectualism we argue that the habitual behaviours (...) that compose skilful action are accompanied by their specific, non-cognitive form of intentionality: this is motor intentionality, which is purposive and adaptive while involving no explicit deliberation or goal representation. Our account of habit based on Motor Intentionality explains why the formation of motor habits can sometimes act as the sole basis of skilful acquisition: Motor Intentionality is inherently purposeful because it is an embodied source of sensorimotor anticipation, pre-reflective motivation, and pragmatic know-how. Skill development through exercise always builds on a motor intentional component even when it is guided by Deliberate Practice to the point that, pace Intellectualism, Deliberate Practice is disclosed, not constrained, by habit formation. As suggested by the fact that repetitive exercises can play a major role in the development of flexible and intelligent sport skills, automatism is not a drawback for strategic control and improvisation but rather their pragmatic foundation. (shrink)

Theories in the modern age in philosophy, as well as in the discourse of the social sciences, are pervaded with the presuppositions of the dualisms of mind and world, theory and practice, private and public. These theoretical dualisms make it impossible to have an account of the interconnected nature of the experience of individuals and societies. The philosophical theoretical vocabulary to take account of the relations between these dualisms has been effaced with the legacy of Cartesian dualism. I argue that (...) through a conceptual analysis of the body, as has been posited by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the related concepts of habit, custom and labour, we can reclaim some concepts that allow a mediation of these dualisms. In this article, I make a conceptual analysis of the epistemic, metaphysical and social–political interrelations between these concepts and argue for the relational role they play in our philosophical theoretical discourse. (shrink)

Habitual actions unfold without conscious deliberation or reflection, and yet often seem to be intelligently adjusted to situational intricacies. A question arises, then, as to how it is that habitual actions can exhibit this form of intelligence, while falling outside the domain of paradigmatically intentional actions. Call this the intelligence puzzle of habits. This puzzle invites three standard replies. Some stipulate that habits lack intelligence and contend that the puzzle is ill-posed. Others hold that habitual actions can exhibit (...) intelligence because they are guided by automatic yet rational, propositional processes. Others still suggest that habits guide intelligent behaviour without involving propositional states by shaping perception in action-soliciting ways. We develop an alternative fourth answer based on John Dewey’s pragmatist account of habit. We argue that habits promote intelligent behaviour by shaping perception, by forming an interrelated network among themselves, and by cooperating with the environment. (shrink)

The specific role of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethics has received much less attention than its role in his epistemology, despite the fact that Aristotle explicitly stresses the importance of empeiria as a requirement for the receptivity to ethical arguments and as a source for the formation of phronêsis.1 Thus, while empeiria is an integral part of all explanations that scholars give of the Aristotelian account of the acquisition of technê and epistêmê, it is usually not prominent in explanations of the (...) acquisition of phronêsis.2 The abundant mentions of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethical treatises are often eclipsed in the secondary literature... (shrink)

Psychologists have long noted the correlation between empathy and prosocial outcomes. Empathetic people are happier, healthier, more cooperative, and more altruistic than people who are less empathetic. However, empathy is not a panacea for all social ills. Critics argue that empathy is idiosyncratic, easily manipulated, biased in favor of one's in-group, and exacerbates rather than relieves underlying inequalities. The praise and critique of empathy raise an interesting question: Can we improve empathy? It depends on what kind of capacity empathy is. (...) I argue that empathy is comprised of both skills and habits. Both skills and habits can be improved, though the process for improvement is quite different for each. I argue that theoretical and empirical considerations support the idea that we can improve both the skills and habits that underlie empathy. If this is right, it shows that it is possible to harness the positive outcomes of empathy while avoiding some of the darker sides of empathy. Finally, I consider whether empathy is an intellectual or moral virtue. (shrink)

This book chapter represents one of the engagements between Catholic and Wesleyan philosophers at the 2008 Wesleyan Philosophy Society. The issue of what precisely "Wesleyan philosophy" would mean and comprise can be usefully illuminated by comparison with the positions and issues that were raised and discussed by Catholic scholars during the 1930s Christian philosophy debates in France, which included Etienne Gilson, Maurice Blondel, Jacques Maritain, and Gabriel Marcel. We also discuss how the thought on a contemporary Catholic philosopher Adriaan Peperzack, (...) specifically on affectivity, can be brought into comparison with that important theme in Wesleyan philosophy. (shrink)

In this chapter what I call the “backside” of habit is explored. I am interested in the philosophical implications of the physical and physiological processes that mediate, and which allow for what comes to appear as almost magic; namely the various sensorimotor associations and integrations that allows us to replay our past experiences, and to in a certain sense perceive potential futures, and to act and bring about anticipated outcomes – without quite knowing how. Thus, the term “backside” is meant (...) to refer both the actual mediation and the epistemic opacity of these backstage intermediaries that allow for the front stage magic. The question is if the epistemic complexities around sensorimotor mediation gives us valuable insights into the nature of human agency and further how it might begin to show us new ways to think of the mind as truly embodied yet not reducible to any finite body-as-object. (shrink)

In this two-part article, I propose a new materialist understanding of behavior. The term “mattering” in the title refers to sense-making behavior that matters, that is, to significant habits and materialized behaviors. By significant habits I mean protocols, practices and routines that generate ways of reading material signs and fixed accounts of movement. I advance a notion of behaving that stresses its materiality and sensory shaping, and I provide select examples from music. I note that current definitions of (...) behavior do not capture its material dimension. This is because behavioral science has mostly viewed matter as passive, and not as an active agency. Such an approach has metaphysically framed behavior as a phenomenon of presence that is external from its environment. The approach of behavioral science to matter where there are fixed borders between the internal and external is lacking, since it does not account for agential cuts as conceptualized by Karen Barad. Instead, I consider behavior performatively; as an ongoing iterative practice and as integral to the growth of immanently self-caused matter that spawns metastable relational formations that produce different possibilities for successive formations. In this regard, behavior matters, and matter behaves. One key aspect of my article advances Bernard Stiegler as a critical new materialist thinker. This advancement concerns the technical doings of artworks, which include the material activity that is generative of sensitivity: feelings and beliefs associated with a sense or meaning. I outline an example of the materiality of habits as constitutive of music. After that, I coin the transformative doings of matter on the artist as a “caripulation,” which is a desired movement or motion that transforms the mover and the moved. Finally, I raise “pharmacological” considerations in terms of the Stieglerian aspects of organic and inorganic organized matter. (shrink)

Le bâtir est un trait fondamental de la condition humaine. À notre époque, les réflexions en vue de mieux comprendre le sens phénoménologique et anthropologique de l’acte de bâtir se mul- tiplient. La constante qui semble rallier ces réflexions consiste à reconnaître l’enracinement du sens de l’acte de bâtir dans l’habiter : le bâtir puiserait ainsi sa signification première dans l’ha- biter. Ce ralliement et ce consensus semblent marquer ainsi ce que l’histoire pourrait un jour désigner comme le « tournant (...) » de l’habiter en architecture. Il est maintenant permis d’envisa- ger et de construire le portrait global de cette activité en usant de toutes les palettes de cou- leurs que comprend le spectre des facultés de l’esprit humain : la poétique, la logique, la phénoménologie, l’herméneutique, la rhétorique, la mystique et, bien sûr, l’éthique. (shrink)

The notion of habit used in neuroscience is an inheritance from a particular theoretical origin, whose main source is William James. Thus, habits have been characterized as rigid, automatic, unconscious, and opposed to goal-directed actions. This analysis leaves unexplained several aspects of human behavior and cognition where habits are of great importance. We intend to demonstrate the utility that another philosophical conception of habit, the Aristotelian, may have for neuroscientific research. We first summarize the current notion of habit (...) in neuroscience, its philosophical inspiration and the problems that arise from it, mostly centered on the sharp distinction between goal-directed actions and habitual behavior. We then introduce the Aristotelian view and we compare it with that of William James. For Aristotle, a habit is an acquired disposition to perform certain types of action. If this disposition involves an enhanced cognitive control of actions, it can be considered a “habit-as-learning”. The current view of habit in neuroscience, which lacks cognitive control and we term “habit-as-routine”, is also covered by the Aristotelian conception. He classifies habits into three categories: (1) theoretical, or the retention of learning understood as “knowing that x is so”; (2) behavioral, through which the agent achieves a rational control of emotion-permeated behavior (“knowing how to behave”); and (3) technical or learned skills (“knowing how to make or to do”). Finally, we propose new areas of research where this “novel” conception of habit could serve as a framework concept, from the cognitive enrichment of actions to the role of habits in pathological conditions. In all, this contribution may shed light on the understanding of habits as an important feature of human action. Habits, viewed as a cognitive enrichment of behavior, are a crucial resource for understanding human learning and behavioral plasticity. (shrink)

Abstract: The following is an outline of an emerging foundation for science that begins to explain living forms and their patterns of movement beyond the sphere of mechanistic interactions. Employing an event ontology based on a convergence of quantum physics and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, coupled with the controversial yet promising theory of formative causation, this development will explore possible influences on the outcomes of events beyond any combination of external forces, laws of Nature, and chance. If it turns (...) out there are no such additional influences--beyond mechanistic causes--it is difficult to see how agency or free will could exist. Assuming agency exists, as Whitehead apparently does, while committing to an event ontology in which process is fundamental leads to interesting questions about the natures of any entities that might participate in events. Furthermore, what might the purposes and agendas of such entities be based upon, beyond memory traces or DNA code? This ontological model, recognizing processes as fundamental, leads to a revised cosmology where the trajectory of a series of events may be due to more than rearrangement of material bits according to external forces and where goal-directed, recurring processes and the emergence of mind are not so surprising. Just as special relativity reduces to classical treatment when speeds slow down, this scientific model for a living world reduces to mechanistic materialism whenever conditions are more limited. Though this development is based on a philosophy of process, there are some dissimilarities with respect to Whitehead’s particular version. (shrink)

One of the most insidious consequences of continuous exposure to gaslighting is that agents develop an expectation of further emotional manipulation. Repeated exposure to demeaning and humiliating behavior can make agents prone to interpret any epistemic challenge as a potential instance of gaslighting. Embedded in physiological and affective habits, this expectation become an integral way of interpreting social interactions and other people’s intentions. The concept of gaslighting was originally coined to alleviate a form of hermeneutic injustice, but some applications (...) of the concept paradoxically come to perpetuate exactly this kind of injustice. When agents perceive gaslighting in epistemically ambiguous situations, they foreclose the possibility of benefiting from productive forms of epistemic frictions. (shrink)

My objective here is to give an account of self-deprecating humor—examining what works, what doesn't, and why—and to reflect on the significance of the audience response. More specifically, I will be focusing not only on the purpose or intention behind self-deprecating jokes, but considering how their consequences might render them successful or unsuccessful. For example, under what circumstances does self-deprecation tend to put listeners at ease, and when is this type of humor more likely to put people off? I will (...) also consider the ways in which self-deprecating jokes are similar to gallows humor, and the extent to which context counts. The target or "butt" of these jokes, in cases of self-deprecation as well as gallows humor, will be explored; as will whether or not the audience bears some responsibility or has a role to play in the ultimate success or failure of a joke. For instance, is the audience role a completely receptive and passive one? Is the joker/jokee relationship one which confers no responsibility on the listener whatsoever? Or, do listeners have an obligation to respond with appreciative laughter to mere attempts at humor, especially the self-deprecating sort, by accepting such levity in the spirit in which it is intended? Does this mean that being a good sport—responding generously or appreciatively when a well-intentioned joke fails to land—would be a habit worth cultivating? If so and courtesy laughter or a playful appreciation of self-deprecating humor is something that can be cultivated, what specifically would that entail? In sum, although I cannot fully or definitively answer each and every one of these questions, I do hope to provide some provisional responses. To better situate the nature of self-deprecation, I will not only provide a brief description of the gallows genre, I will also explore two traditional theories of humor. Those that are particularly relevant, to both gallows and self-deprecating humor are Freud's relief theory and the incongruity view. In addition, I will identify what I believe to be the three essential ingredients of successful self-deprecation and, finally, will conclude with the argument that audiences or listeners do have an important role to play. And, moreover, that generous, appreciative laughter can and should be cultivated—even though this is something that will largely depend on one's personal history and habits, dispositional character and cultural background. (shrink)

Once Socrates has thought something, he comes to acquire an item such that he is then able to think such thoughts again when he wants, and he can, all other things being equal, do this with more ease than he could before. This item that he comes to acquire medieval philosophers called a cognitive habit which most medieval philosophers maintained was a new quality added to Socrates' intellect. However, some disagreed. In this paper, I will examine an interesting alternative theory (...) put forward by Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Prosper de Reggio Emilia about the location of cognitive habits. On their view, cognitive habits are not to be located in the intellect but in something on the side of the body or sensitive soul. (shrink)

This paper attempts to do the following things. First, it reinterprets the notion of «mind engineering» from a more neutral standpoint and offers a totally new approach to the phenomenon. Thus, instead of looking at the phenomenon from a wholly negative perspective (such as identification of mind engineering with «brainwashing», «mind control» and other coercive and manipulatory techniques), it defines mind engineering as the process of «design/redesign, implementation/reimplementation, evaluation/reevaluation of minds». In itself, this process can be deliberate or forceful. Here, (...) the author looks at deliberate mind engineering primarily. Secondly, the «mind» is defined as a set of beliefs, and the latter, following Charles Peirce, is interpreted as the set of habits. The phenomenon of habit is interpreted pragmatically-hermeneutically and is defined as a «‘fixed’ functional interpretation of the world and one’s place in it that either works or does not work». If a specific interpretation constantly works, it constitutes a «good» habit. If it does not work, it means a «bad» habit. Unlike the current social-psychological approaches to habit as goal-independent and automatic, and therefore «mindless»/non-cognitive, the author claims that habits are essentially goal-dependent, and cognitive. The habit’s main goal is to resolve the problematic situation that the organism is in. Habit’s cognitive element is grounded in the organism’s interpretive effort that allows it to specify a problematic situation as problematic. Therefore, the connection between the organism and a situation is not direct/immediate but rather is mediated via functional interpretive meaning. In the end, mind engineering must be taken as «habit engineering», and, thus understood, the phenomenon in question can be seen as one of the key phenomena to clarify human nature. (shrink)

‘There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping’, writes Hubert Dreyfus, ‘for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body’1. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In this essay we examine both (...) habitual and skilled movement, sketching the outlines of a multidimensional framework within which the many differences across distinctive cases and domains might be fruitfully understood. Both the range of movement phenomena which can plausibly be seen as instances of habit or skill, and the space of possible theories of such phenomena are richer and more disparate than philosophy easily encompasses. We seek to bring phenomenology into contact with relevant movements in psychological theories of skilful action, in the belief that phenomenological philosophy and cognitive science can be allies rather than antagonists. (shrink)

There is increasing appreciation for the role that location plays in the experience of a musical event. This paper seeks to understand this role in terms of our habitual relationships to place, asking whether and how being musical somewhere can expand and transform our habituated comportment there, and with what consequences. This inquiry is anchored in a series of site-specific improvised performances by Jen Reimer and Max Stein, and the theory and practice of the late experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros. (...) The argument made interpreting these performances is grounded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment, and Alia Al-Saji’s reception of it. This paper claims that such site-specific improvised performances can elicit a sort of hesitation in our everyday style of sensory-motor conditioning, and, concomitantly, awaken a layer of sensory living amenable to radically new sonic and behavioural configurations. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine human freedom and habits based on justice. The main issue guiding this research is how justice can direct human freedom and habits to create equality in the state, and the authors use a historical-factual approach to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas to sketch out how this can be achieved. The main result of this research shows that justice is a moral virtue which perfects the will and directs human acts for good. Justice (...) is also called a habit because it perfects the will and inclines the will to give each man what is his, equality. It implies equality because it relates to others and indicates a significant relationship with others. Justice is principally in rulers because of their primary authority and competency, while it is secondary and administrative in the people. Power exists among the people through the law to bring the common good, whereas the people are indirectly present in the state community through obedience to the law. However, the law can be unjust because power prioritizes the interests of capital owners over those of the vulnerable. This practice is common because power benefits from their existence. Furthermore, when power moves away from the common good in favor of itself, the classical notion of justice suggests depriving those in power of their rights of appointment and leaving the offices of state to the best. Therefore, the people have to strive diligently to provide good leaders and keep them from falling under tyranny. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of agency in spontaneous action via a phenomenology of musical improvisation, drawing on fieldwork conducted with large con- temporary improvising ensembles. I argue that musical improvisation is a form of ‘participatory sense-making’ in which musical decisions unfold via a feedback pro- cess with the evolving musical situation itself. I describe how musicians’ technical expertise is developed alongside a responsive expertise, and how these capacities complicate the sense in which habitual action can be viewed (...) as pre-conscious or ‘automatic.’ Nevertheless, I shall argue that the self-awareness required for expert improvisation does not amount to highly reflective deliberation, arguing instead that the practice of musical improvisation involves an exercise of practical rationality, akin to what Aristotle called phronēsis. Musical decisions – as an expressive form of sense-making – are guided by feelings of ‘rightness’ that are experienced directly and intuitively, responding to the norms and reasons that are embedded in the instruments, sounds, and practices of a particular (sub)culture. (shrink)

Comme de nombreux penseurs antiques avant et après eux et contrairement à Socrate, Calliclès et Diogène ont déclaré avoir fondé leur éthique sur l’observation de la nature. Et pourtant, les deux discours normatifs qui sont tirés d’une nature que l’on pourrait a priori croire être la même sont on ne peut plus opposés. Calliclès croit que l’homme est appelé à dominer autrui ; Diogène pense plutôt qu’il doit se dominer lui-même ; le premier est un hédoniste débridé, le second croit (...) que le bonheur ne s’achète qu’au prix du sacrifice des désirs artificiels. Comment expliquer cette dichotomie ? Nous empruntons deux routes explicatives. D’abord, nous montrons que pour Calliclès et Diogène, la notion de nature non seulement diffère, mais est observée sous un angle différent. La première est celle des tyrans et de dieux anthropomorphes, la seconde, celle de petits animaux et de dieux autarciques. La première concerne la relation des hommes entre eux ; la seconde, celle de l’homme avec lui-même. Ensuite, nous exposons la différence des présupposés normatifs qui précèdent ou accompagnent l’observation de la nature ; nous contrastons, pour ce faire, les formes d’anticonventionnalisme et d’anti-intellectualisme défendues par Calliclès et Diogène. -/- SUMMARY. Like many ancient thinkers before and after them and contra Socrates, Callicles and Diogenes said they based their ethics on the observation of nature. And yet, the two normative discourses that are derived from nature that we might a priori believe to be the same could not be more opposed. Callicles believes that people are called to dominate others, Diogenes rather thinks people must dominate themselves. The first is an unbridled hedonist, the second believes that happiness can be bought only at the price of sacrificing artificial desires. How to explain this dichotomy? We take two explanatory routes. First, we show that for Callicles and Diogenes, the notion of nature not only differs but is observed from a different angle. The first one is the nature of tyrants and anthropomorphic gods, the second that of small animals and autarkic gods. The first focuses on the relationship between people, the second focuses on the relationship of a person with themselves. Secondly, we expose the difference in normative assumptions that precede or accompany the observation of nature; in order to do so, we contrast anticonventionalism and anti-intellectualism forms proper to both Callicles and Diogenes. (shrink)

Reading have always been a very important activity, which further paves the way for excellence in life both academically and non-academically. It is a fundamental skill that unlocks learning and provides individual’s benefits. Reading habit and attitude become an interest topic to discuss because it can be the key success in learning. This study aimed to examine the reading habits and attitudes of big city residents in Pakistan towards books with Chinese themes, available in Chinese, English, or Urdu language. (...) Using a survey design and simple random sampling, data was collected from 300 respondents through a pre-tested questionnaire based on Smith's (1991) Adult Survey of Reading Attitude. The study analyzed data from 11 online bookstores and publishers in Pakistan used to provide recent insights. We used two keywords (China, Chinese: چائ نا , چائ ن یز ) to collect data from online bookstores. The results of the study, with a reliability test score of 0.79, showed that the participants had a positive attitude towards reading Chinese themed books. The findings of this study can inform the development of educational programs to enhance reading skills and cultural understanding for users of Chinese-themed books in Pakistan. (shrink)

Our lives are guided by habits. Most of the activities we engage in throughout the day are initiated and carried out not by rational thought and deliberation, but through an ingrained set of dispositions or patterns of action—what Aristotle calls a hexis. We develop these dispositions over time, by acting and gauging how the world responds. I tilt the steering wheel too far and the car’s lurch teaches me how much force is needed to steady it. I come too (...) close to a hot stove and the burn I get inclines me not to get too close again. This feedback and the habits it produces are bodily. They are possible because the medium through which these actions take place is a physical, sensible one. The world around us is, in the language of postphenomenology, an opaque one. We notice its texture and contours as we move through it, and crucially, we bump up against it from time to time. The digital world, by contrast, is largely transparent. Digital media are designed to recede from view. As a result, we experience little friction as we carry out activities online; the consequences of our actions are often not apparent to us. This distinction between the opacity of the natural world and the transparency of the digital one raises important questions. In this chapter, I ask: how does the transparency of digital media affect our ability to develop healthy habits online? If the digital world is constructed precisely not to push back against us, how are we supposed to gauge whether our actions are good or bad, for us and for others? The answer to this question has important ramifications for a number of ethical, political, and policy debates around issues in online life. For in order to advance cherished norms like privacy, civility, and fairness online, we need more than good laws and good policies—we need good habits, which dispose us to act in ways conducive to our and others’ flourishing. (shrink)

A Modern Coleridge shows the interrelatedness of the discourses of cultivation, addiction and habit in Coleridge's poetry and prose, and argues that these all revolve around the problematic nexus of a post-Kantian idea of free will, essential to Coleridge's eminently modern idea of the 'human'.

This paper explores the unique phenomenology of habit and temporality put forth in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. I situate her understanding of temporality in relation to her early work Pyrrhus and Cinéas. I extract her notion of a boundary marked future that decreases anticipation for the future and thus rigidifies habits. In the final section I appropriate the notion of a boundary mark for a cultural phenomenology where we understand boundary marks as constituted by our understandings of ourselves in time (...) and not through aging alone. This cultural boundary mark can be used to understand how societal prejudice operates at the level of lived temporality. (shrink)

Durand of Saint-Pourçain's earliest treatment of cognitive habits is contained in his Sentences Commentary, Book 3, Distinction 23. In the first two questions, he discusses the ontological status of habits and their causal role, establishing his own unique view alongside the views of Godfrey of Fontaines and Hervaeus Natalis. What follows is the Latin text and an English translation of Durand's Sentences (A/B) III, d. 23, qq. 1-2.