[From Frank Lenk (2015.07.05.1700 CDT)]
Lloyd -
I may be misinterpreting, but your most recent synthesis seems to be, in many places, close to my own views on habit. I have been reading Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct as part of my dissertation work. Dewey describes habits as “arts” - that is, they are what we learn to navigate the world. Most habits are good, in the sense that they help us do that navigation. They become “bad” when they are learned to accommodate one situation but we find ourselves in conditions other than the ones for which they were adapted. According to Dewey, habits have power because they are so much a part of us, that in any real sense they are us, that our character is defined by the interpenetration of our habits. Dewey is very clear that the essence of habit is in no way repetition, but learning and skill. Habits can be thoughtless (“mere routine”), but the best habits are those that are “intelligent” - that is, they are flexible, sensitive, having “grow[n] more varied, adaptable by practice and use." Dewey allows that, “the truth is in every waking moment, the complete balance of the organism and its environment is constantly interfered with and as constantly restored,” and sees habits as the mechanism of that restoration.
There is much more, obviously, but the parallels between habits and perceptual control systems are clear. We are our habits. We are our control systems. These ar
e equivalent statements (in my view, anyway). To me, then, “habit” is simply a fuzzy verbal concept (you call it folk psychology) that PCT clarifies as different aspects of perceptual control systems arranged in a hierarchy.
As a result, I am not sure what the concept of “habit” offers that the concept of perceptual control systems does not.
Frank
Frank Lenk
Director of Research Services
Mid-America Regional Council
600 Broadway, Suite 200
Kansas City, MO 64105
www.marc.org
Ph. 816.701.8237 (direct)
flenk@marc.org
···
From: “csgnet@lists.illinois.edu” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Reply-To: lloydk@klinedinst.com
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2015 at 8:12 AM
To: “csgnet@lists.illinois.edu” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Habit-my revised working definition
[From Lloyd Klinedinst (2015.07.05.0813 CDT)]
As before, attached is my current summary of what I understand CSGnet members saying
to help me get at a working definition of habit in line with PCT.
Thanks much for your continuing contributions to this thread.
Lloyd
Dr. Lloyd Klinedinst
10 Dover Lane
Villa Ridge, MO 63089-2001
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