Dewey, Second Nature, Social Criticism, and the Hegelian Heritage

Testa, Italo

doi:10.4000/ejpap.990

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…Dewey nonetheless distinguished between "routine" and "intelligently controlled" habits. This distinction is not absolute but dialectical, meaning that the same habit can exhibit both features in different situations (Testa, 2017). Whereas routine habits are characterized as rote, inflexible, and stereotyped mechanical drills that are automatically triggered by previous cues, intelligent habits are characterized for being both self-preserving and self-transforming.…”

Section: The Importance Of Habits For An Ecological Theory Of Skilled Motor Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Segundo-Ortin

Heras–Escribano

2021

Synthese

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A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them.

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Section: The Importance Of Habits For An Ecological Theory Of Skilled Motor Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Segundo-Ortin

Heras–Escribano

2021

Synthese

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“…In contrast Dewey sees habit as mechanism that differently organises life force. Testa (2017) has argued recently that in Human Nature and Conduct Dewey developed a strong criticism of ideas of life force (such as Bergson's vitalism, and, by implication, Ravaisson's on whom Bergson draws) that "assume a dualism between life and mechanism" (Testa 2017: 9). Dewey argues that all life is mechanism.…”

Section: Comparing Ravaisson Deleuze and Deweymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, rather than a separation of creative élan vital from habit to allow some for some sort of spontaneity in nature, Dewey maintains that all forms of action, from mechanical action through to that of the creativity of the artist, are just different types of mechanism. As Testa (2017) argues, habit for Dewey is ability, an art that is formed by past experience. Habits can be expressive: the virtuoso artist or performer is the accomplished technician ‘who fuses mechanism with thought and feeling’ (1981a: 51).…”

Section: Comparing Ravaisson Deleuze and Deweymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is here that Dewey’s criticism of the separation of mechanism and life in relation to habit has real bite in terms of wider social critique. Habit can become (or be enforced as) a mechanism that is opposed to life, in forms of ‘over-mechanisation’ (Testa, 2017: 11) in which organic mechanization is turned into inorganic mechanisation. This, for example, informs Dewey’s analysis of the reification of industrial labour in which living patterns of interaction become routine habit and the mechanisation of production turns the habits of workers into mechanistic ones: reinforcing an historic division between the labour/working class and leisure/bourgeois classes.…”

Section: Comparing Ravaisson Deleuze and Deweymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Habit, experience and environment: A pragmatist perspective

Bridge

2019

Environ Plan D

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Contemporary discussions of human-environment relations see habits as enabling forces of change (becoming) in contrast to traditional views of habit as routine and restrictive elements of identity (being). Vital life (becoming) is realised in habit through body repetition (Ravaisson) or through material force (Deleuze). This paper argues for the significance of the pragmatist work of John Dewey that shares this dispositional, enabling view of habit, but denies any dualism between life and mechanism. The paper explores Dewey's idea of habits as mechanisms of natural forms of organisation that have different life force, depending on the situational qualities of environment-human transactions. This approach also implicates habit in problematisation. The paper goes on to discuss the implications of pragmatist thinking for understanding human-environment relations and the place that habits have in intervening in and reforming those relations through social activism and public policy.

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“…Dewey has recently found place, for example, in Axel Honneth's (2017) attempt to revive the idea of socialism. Similarly, Italo Testa (2017aTesta ( , 2017b interprets Dewey in order to develop his own critical social theory. Arto Laitinen and Arvi Särkelä (2018), in turn, find inspiration from Dewey's work in their analysis of social pathologies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grounding social criticism: from understanding to suffering and back

Hirvonen

2019

Dig.

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This paper critically examines John Dewey’s and Axel Honneth’s critical social philosophies in order to highlight two different normative sources of social struggle: scientific understanding and social suffering. The paper discusses the relations of these sources with each other and aims to show to what extent the normative sources of Dewey’s and Honneth’s critical social theories are compatible. The comparison between Dewey and Honneth is used in order to argue for a desiderata for critical social ontology. The argument is that we want to consistently include both elements – suffering and understanding – in a critical theory as only by having both will critical theory grant a clear enough direction and good enough motivational normative core for a social struggle.

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Dewey, Second Nature, Social Criticism, and the Hegelian Heritage

Cited by 7 publications

References 12 publications

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Habit, experience and environment: A pragmatist perspective

Grounding social criticism: from understanding to suffering and back

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