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Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit pp 35–63Cite as

Habits, Habit Change, and the Habit of Habit Change According to Peirce

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Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics ((SAPERE,volume 31))

Abstract

Peirce’s “law of habit” extends the ordinary and scholarly concept of habit from human to nonhuman habits and to habits in the animate and the inanimate nature. It predicts that habits change by the habit of habit change and distinguished between habits, laws, rules, and norms. Human habits as habits of thought, action, and feeling and perception are phenomena of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. With human habits, the habits of nature share the feature of plasticity. Peirce attributes the plasticity of habits also to the laws of cosmic and biological evolution and distinguishes laws as habits of nature from rigid laws that do not change. The paper also examines good habits in their contrast to bad ones and concludes with remarks on habit and habit change in semiosis.

This paper is a much expanded and revised version of the author’s keynote lecture given at the 2015 Michicagoan Linguistic Anthropology Conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on May 8, 2015. Thanks are due to the organising committee of the meeting, especially James Meador and Andrew Forster.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Winfried Nöth

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  1. Winfried Nöth
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Correspondence to Winfried Nöth .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Modern Languages, State University of New York at Cortland, Cortland, New York, USA

    Donna E. West

  2. Department of Anthropology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

    Myrdene Anderson

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Nöth, W. (2016). Habits, Habit Change, and the Habit of Habit Change According to Peirce. In: West, D., Anderson, M. (eds) Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_3

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