Growing minds: pragmatic habits and enculturation

The classical pragmatists provided a clear set of leading ideas about what a habit is. This conception of “habit” is distinct from the behavioral conception of habit as a fixed disposition to respond to stimuli that has been enforced by the environment. This chapter focuses on developing a pragmatic account of habit based on leading ideas from Peirce and Dewey. It also argues that this account can play a useful role in the emerging account of cognition as culturally evolved and enculturated. The combined account demonstrates that the work of the classical pragmatists is as fresh and important now as it was a hundred years ago.