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Habit, Competence, and Purpose

How to Make the Grades of Clarity Clearer

Bibliographic Data

ID8077869
AuthorsColapietro Colapietro (corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume45
Issue3
Pages348-348
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Charles S Peirce Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-1774 • E-ISSN: 1558-9587
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/tra.2009.45.3.348
OpenAlexW1993968362
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited10

Habit plays a central role in Peirce's pragmatic account of human signification. What he means by meaning is, hence, fully intelligible only in reference to the role he accords to habit in this account. While the main focus of Peirce's critical attention is, especially in the mature articulation of his thoroughgoing pragmatism, upon deliberately acquired habits, it is reasonable to suggest that often his concern is actually with something broader in one sense and narrower in another than individual or isolated habits. Any given disposition to act in certain ways in certain circumstances is taken by him to be an integral part of more or less integrated dispositions to act, feel, and even imagine: it is not taken to be operative apart from these other habits. In this sense, then, his concern is primarily with such integrated dispositions, not isolated habits. Thus, it is broader than the inattentive reader is likely to suspect. But, since those deliberately cultivated dispositions of rational agents that are at the center of Peirce's concerns are ones specifiable only in reference to some human practice such as experimental inquiry or everyday conversations, religious worship or artistic innovation, these dispositions are appropriately taken to be not simply habits in any way whatsoever but primarily habits to act in a competent or expert manner. More simply put, these deliberately cultivated dispositions are, in many instances, best conceived as competencies or expertise. While not all habits equip agents with expert or even competent ways of addressing the shifting demands of experiential situations (that is, while not all habits are instances of competence or expertise), all cases of competence and expertise are, at bottom, more or less harmoniously integrated clusters of flexible, nuanced, and alterable habits. Accordingly, any account of Peirce's conception of habit, especially as it pertains to his pragmatic theory of meaning, must bring into sharper focus the complex relationship among habits, competence, and expertise than Peirce and even his most imaginative expositors have done thus far. The aim of this paper is to push our investigation of the Peircean notion of human habituation in precisely this direction. Against an evolutionary background, the historical foreground of historically evolved and evolving practices will be sketched. Habits in their guise as competencies and expertise will then be seen in the context of such practices, with equal emphasis on initiation into a practice and the open-ended process of acquiring ever more refined expertise

Biology · CLARITY · Competence (human resources · Habit · Mathematics education · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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    Open Access•Charles Legg, Joseph William Black et al.•Erkenntnis•2022

  • Putting Peirce's Theory to the Test

    Akhtar Akhtar, Awais Awais et al.•Transactions of the Charles S…•2013

  • Comment concevoir le pouvoir de l’habitude

    Open Access•Louis Quéré•European Journal of Pragmatism…•2022

  • Confidence through the semiotic process

    Open Access•Priscila Monteiro Borges•Semiotica•2019

  • The Logical Goodness of Abduction in C. S. Peirce's Thought

    Chihab El Khachab, Khachab Khachab•Transactions of the Charles S…•2013

  • The Proof of the Pudding

    Colapietro Colapietro•Transactions of the Charles S…•2012

  • The development of Peirce's philosophy.

    Murray G Murphey•The development of Peirce's…•1961

  • Handbook of Semiotics

    Winfried Nöth•Handbook of Semiotics•1990

  • The principles of psychology

    James Williams, William James•The principles of psychology•1950

  • From questions to stimuli, from answers to reactions

    Open Access•Eileen Crist•Semiotica•1997

  • The Body We Care for

    Open Access•Vinciane Despret•Body & Society•2004

  • The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy

    Peter Winch, Peter J Winch•Idea of a Social Science and Its…•2015

  • How to Talk About the Body? the Normative Dimension of Science Studies

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Unique citing works7
Citations per year0,5
Citation span2012 - 2022 (11)
Citation velocityhistorical
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 7

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