Introduction: Habitual Action, Automaticity, and Control

Abstract

William James once said that "ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night" (1899, pp. 65-66). Even if his estimation was wrong by half, habitual action would still be a tremendously pervasive feature of our agency. And yet, references to habitual action have been marginal at best in contemporary philosophy of action.This neglect is due, at least, to the combination of two ideas. The first is a widespread view of habit as entirely automatic, inflexible, and irresponsive to reasons. The second is philosophy of action's tendency (dominant at least since Anscombe and Davidson) to focus on explaining action by reference to reasons. Arguably, if habitual behavior is reasons-irresponsive, and if action is explained by reference to reasons, the study of habit would have very little to teach about action.Recently, however, there has been a surge in philosophical interest on habit and habitual action. Novel approaches are challenging the two ideas mentioned above, arguing that (1) habitual behavior is not entirely automatic or inflexible, but instead has a particular kind of flexibility and intentionality; and that (2) acting out of habit can count as a form of acting for reasons, even in the absence of the traditional rationalizing mental states: belief, desire, and intention.The essays contained in this issue move discussions forward in exciting new directions. In what follows we present each paper and situate it within its broader theoretical context, so that this introduction may serve also as an introduction to the topic of habitual action. A crucial lesson that emerges from these essays is a need to move past disputes between philosophical schools or traditions. Rather than combatting between different philosophical factions, an ecumenical approach capable of skillfully bringing together elements from different traditions seems better able to tackle problems that remain unsolved. These problems include (but are not limited to): developing an account of responsibility for habitual action; explaining our ability to perform joint habitual actions; and clarifying the link between habit and self-control.In what follows we discuss (Sect. 1) diverse approaches to the intentionality of habitual action; (Sect. 2) the relationship between habit and skill; (Sect. 3) the possibility that habits can rationalize action; and (Sect. 4) open questions and new directions.

Difficulty

“…Next, I turned my attention to debates in moral philosophy to illustrate the philosophical usefulness of an empirically-informed account of difficulty. Recent work on difficulty and demandingness (Chappell, 2019;McElwee, 2022), difficulty and skill (Bermúdez & Felletti, 2021;, the nature of effort as it relates to difficulty (Massin, 2017;Shepherd, 2023;Bermúdez, 2023;Bermúdez & Massin, 2023) and difficulty and epistemic responsibility (Guerrero, 2017;Bradford, 2017;Munton, 2023) illustrate the need for an empirically plausible account of difficulty and present fruitful further avenues of research. Given this proliferation of appeals to difficulty in philosophical debates, it is time for philosophers to converge on a more precise, unified picture of the nature of difficulty.…”

An Integrative Review on the Research Progress of Mindfulness and Its Implications at the Workplace

“…In addition, individuals exhibit greater flexible performance due to increased non-judgmental present moment focus [38]. The automaticity of habit is independent from attention [39]. Prior literature proposed that mindfulness significantly impacts self-regulation [25,36,40] by reducing automaticity, and by better prediction and higher congruency between values and actions, leading to a self-determined behavior that is along the lines of the self-determination theory [10,41,42].…”