Bill Pollard

Habits in Action: a Corrective to the Neglect of Habits in Contemporary Philosophy of Action Bill Pollard

We are creatures of habit. Today''s philosophers don''t appreciate this. The result is that we tend to "intellectualise" rational human actions by assuming they result from processes of reasoning, when in fact actions usually consist of familiar routines done without any thought at all. Intellectualism misrepresents actions and creates intractable problems. This book offers a solution. An analysis is offered of habitual actions as repeated, automatic behaviours, which are also responsible since they are under the agent''s control. This analysis is located in an anti-intellectual tradition shared by Aristotle, Ryle and Wittgenstein. Against Davidson, McDowell and Dancy who assume rational actions are "actions for reasons", a non-intellectual habit-centred conception of rational actions is proposed. This conception provides new resources for virtue theoretical criticism of Humean thinkers like Smith and Blackburn, and for clarification of McDowell''s naturalism. This book will appeal to professional philosophers and students working in philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, ethics or moral psychology, and anyone else interested in the nature of human action and rationality.