Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T21:44:34.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - “Habit Is Thus the Enormous Flywheel of Society”

Pragmatism, Social Theory, and Cognitive Science

from Part III - Socially Embeddded and Culturally Extended Habits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

Fausto Caruana
Affiliation:
Institute of Neuroscience (Parma), Italian National Research Council
Italo Testa
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi, Parma
Get access

Summary

Pragmatism arose in response to the dominant philosophical ideas of the time, one of which was neo-Kantianism. Present approaches in cognitive science often derive from basic neo-Kantian ideas, notably the notion that social life and language depend on shared “frames.” Pragmatism rejected these neo-Kantian ideas, and instead relied on an extended notion of habit. But the extension required a response to some core neo-Kantian concerns. Pragmatism provided some psychological thinking, especially in William James, and in the critique of the reflex arc concept. This was paralleled and extended by Russian psychologists. They developed a research program which supported alternative accounts of the key problematics of neo-Kantianism, such as the nature of categories and of abstraction. This bears directly on social theory, which uncritically adopted ideas of shared frameworks as an explanatory shortcut, without providing a psychological or cognitive account of how this kind of sharing was possible.

Type
Chapter
Information
Habits
Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory
, pp. 320 - 336
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barbalet, Jack. 2007. “Classical Pragmatism, Classical Sociology: William James, Religion and Emotions.” In Pragmatism and European Social Theory. Edited by Baert, Patrick and Turner, Bryan S., 1744. Oxford: The Bardwell Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter, and Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Boiko, E. I. 1957. “A Contribution towards the Definition of ‘Skill’ and ‘Habit’.” In Psychology in the Soviet Union. Edited by Simon, Brian, 23345. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Chater, Nick. 2018. The Mind Is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind. London: Penguin Random House.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1980. “Democracy and Education.” In The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 9: 1916, Democracy and Education. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 1370. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1983. “Human Nature and Conduct.” In The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 14: 1922, Human Nature and Conduct. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 1226. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1988. “Experience and Education.” In The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 13: 1938–1939, Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and Essays. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 162. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. [1912] 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. [1955] 1983. Pragmatism and Sociology. Translated by Whitehouse, J. C.. Edited by Allcock, John B.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elkonin, D. B. 1957. “Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity.” In Psychology in the Soviet Union. Edited by Simon, Brian, 4768. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galperin, P. YA. 1957. “An Experimental Study in the Formation of Mental Actions.” In Psychology in the Soviet Union. Edited by Simon, Brian, 21325. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr., and Van Orden, Guy C.. 2010. “Adaptive Cognition Without Massive Modularity.” Language and Cognition 2 (2): 14976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich. [1952] 1979. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, 2nd edn. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
James, William. [1890] 1918. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Henry Holt. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin4.htmGoogle Scholar
James, William. [1902] 1936. Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: The Modern Library. www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621Google Scholar
James, William. [1907] 1975. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htmGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1962] 1971. Totemism. Translated by Rodney Needham. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Luria, Alexander R. [1974] 1976. Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations. Translated by M. Loez-Morillas and L. Solotaroff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Luria, Alexander R., and Judovich, Faina Ja. [1956] 1971. Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child. Edited by Simon, Joan. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Menchinskaya, N. A. 1957. “Some Aspects of the Psychology of Teaching.” In Psychology in the Soviet Union. Edited by Simon, Brian, 1906. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Milerian, E. A. 1957. “Involuntary and Voluntary Attention.” In Psychology in the Soviet Union. Edited by Simon, Brian, 8491. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
O'Keefe, John. 2014. “Spatial Cells in the Hippocampal Formation.” Nobel Lecture, December 7, 2014. www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/okeefe-lecture.pdfGoogle Scholar
O'Keefe, J, Dostrovsky, J. 1971. “The Hippocampus As a Spatial Map. Preliminary Evidence from Unit Activity in the Freely-Moving Rat”. Brain Research 34:171175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pribram, Carl H. [1962] 1980. “Preface.” In Higher Cortical Functions in Man, 2nd edn, revised and expanded. Translated by Haigh, B. and edited by Luria, A. R., xvxvi. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Alex. 2018. How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, Paul A. 1978. “Paradox and Indeterminacy.” The Journal of Philosophy 75 (7): 34767.Google Scholar
Simon, Brian, ed. 1957. Psychology in the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Spiegel, Andrew D. 2011. “Categorical Difference versus Continuum: Rethinking Turner’s Liminal–Liminoid Distinction.” Anthropology Southern Africa 34 (1–2): 1120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Testa, Italo. 2017. “Dewey's Social Ontology: A Pragmatist Alternative to Searle's Approach to Social Reality.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (1): 4062.Google Scholar
Tolman, EC. 1948. “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men.” Psychological Review 55:189208.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1967. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, 93111. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [First published in The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (1964).]Google Scholar
Walsh, W. H. 1966. “Philosophy and Psychology in Kant's Critique.” Kant Studien 56: 18698.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×