Abstract
In this paper, I shall put forward an account of what it is for a person to have the habit of doing X, where X sfands for a kind of action, e.g., smoking, rather than a particular act, e.g., my smoking now. This account will serve as well to explicate cognate notions such as doing X habitually, being in the habit of doing X, and doing X from force of habit.
Habit is ... the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprising of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow.... On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
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Notes
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Macmillan, London, 1891, p. 121.
Action and Purpose, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966, p. 55.
The concept of voluntary ability was first introduced in Timothy Duggan and Bernard Gert, `Voluntary Abilities’, American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967), 127–135; reprinted in Myles Brand (ed.), The Nature of Human Action, Scott, Foresman, Glenview, Ill., 1970.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 5.1.36, in Enquiries, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford University Press, London, 1975, p. 43. Hume uses the terms `custom’ and `habit’ interchangeably though by far the most frequently used term is `custom.’
The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Murray, London 1832.
Herbert L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law,Oxford University Press, London, 1961, Chaps. 2–4.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid.
Op. cit., pp. 112, 114.
For example, A might stand for biting one’s nails here and now; X would stand for bitting one’s nails.
This account of physical or mental ability is developed in Duggan and Gert, op. cit. 12 While the concept of voluntary ability and the ability to will or volitional ability is introduced later, it should be noted that on this analysis one may refrain from doing that which one lacks the ability to will to do. Indeed, one may refrain from doing that which one knows one lacks the ability to will to do. For example, a person suffering from severe claustrophobia will refrain from entering small places even though on this or that occasion he may be inclined to enter such places. His refraining is due to his disability of the will and thus it is involuntary. This is why condition (1) has to do with physical or mental abilities rather than with voluntary abilities which include the ability to will or volitional ability.
Liberty, Necessity and Chance, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. by Sir William Molesworth, John Bohn, London, 1840, Vol. 5, p. 362.
Experience and Nature, open Court, Chicago, 1926, p. 280.
A version of this analysis of the ability to will appeared in Duggan and Gert, op. cit. The present (much revised) analysis appears also in Bernard Gert and Timothy Duggan, `Free Will as the Ability to Will’, Noüs 13 (1979), 197–217.
Smoking may, of course, be an addiction rather than a habit as is the case with drinking. I have in mind here the analogue of the social drinker — call him the `social smoker’. He, unlike the addicted smoker, has the voluntary ability to smoke.
Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind 3.3, ed. by Branch A. Brody, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.,. 1969, p. 115.
The point here relates to a similar point made earlier in connection with refraining.
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind,Hutchinson, London, 1949, 0.42.
Ibid.,p. 91.
Ibid.,p. 110.
R. S. Peters, `Reason and Habit: The Paradox of Moral Education’, W. R. Biblett (ed.), Moral Education in a Changing Society, London, 1963, pp. 107–110.
Ibid.,p. 113.
The Concept of Habit in Education’, Educational Theory 20 (1970), 57.
Thanks are due to Bernard Gert for many helpful suggestions.
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Duggan, T. (1980). Habit. In: Van Inwagen, P. (eds) Time and Cause. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3528-5_12
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