Abstract
“Habit” is not an easy term in Peirce’s epistemology: on the one hand it often signifies the rule of action that is attained with the fixation of belief (1877) [EP 1: 109–123]; on the another hand, it is also described as an almost instinctual process that determines further reasonings, the element “by virtue of which an idea gives rise to another” (1873) [CP 7.354]. Stressing the apparently wide separation between these two traits of habit in the epistemic continuum between doubt and belief, we will be able to illustrate (a) a knowledge-based kind of habit, for the analysis of which we will also exploit Gibson’s concept of “affordance” (1950), which also plays a pivotal role in the justification of the agent’s own beliefs; and (b) an ignorance-based kind of habit, which will be proved as necessary for the beginning of thought, and which is at the base of the ampliative reasoning, condensed in another Peircean key topic (often qualified as “instinctual” in his writings): abduction.
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Notes
- 1.
To be more accurate, this general definition only refers to Peirce’s epistemological and psychological analysis of habit, as our study is structured within it. Indeed, it would be difficult to encompass Peirce’s many uses of the concept of habit in a single definition, no matter how broad. As many contributors in this volume highlighted, habit is “by no means exclusively a mental act” [Coletta, this volume], nor a notion that belongs just to the analysis of human or animal cognition (even if it amply regards emotion, experience, and understanding [Gorlee, this volume]); indeed, it is a concept used by Peirce and following researchers also in the philosophical study of physics and biology to comprehend natural disposition [Stjernfelt, this volume], physical laws [Pickering, this volume], and regularities as energy dispersal and biological system propagation [West, this volume]. Moreover, it also appears to be a relevant concept in the Peircean semiotic triad of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness: for a thorough analysis of this topic, we refer the reader to West [2014].
- 2.
Indeed James’ psychological treatment stresses the neural grounding of habit.
- 3.
On Peirce’s concept of habit in the distinction between his definition of logica utens and logica docens, cf. Pietarinen (2005).
- 4.
Even if it is very natural to identify “valid inferences” with “deductions”, we should say that A-type reasonings do not have to be necessarily considered as valid deductions. Indeed, the agent can apply justificatory A-reasoning even while generating fallacies that in specific cases lead from correct (true) premises to correct (true) answers. In these controversial cases, and in a practical sense, some fallacies can effectively justify some beliefs and so they can be correctly included in the reasonings of A-type. This point of view about fallacies follows not only the Peircean perspective towards “valid inferences” and their related habits (1877) [EP 1: 112], but also the recent theory against the EAUI conception of fallacies originating in the “Agent-Based Logic”—also called “New Logic”—developed by Gabbay and Woods (2001) and Woods (2007). According to the classical EAUI conception, fallacies are negatively considered to be “Erroneous”, “Attractive”, “Universal”, and “Incorrigible”. In the agent-based perspective advocated by Gabbay and Woods, instead, fallacies are still attractive, universal, and incorrigible also because they can often drive the agent to adopt intelligent and practical solutions (cf. also Woods 2013). We will further analyze this aspect in the next subsection, illustrating the consequences of a fallacious A- reasoning in terms of habit creation: indeed, if a useful habit emerges from an efficacious, even if fallacious, justificatory reasoning, it will certainly contribute to make the initial A-reasoning more “attractive” and “incorrigible”.
- 5.
Peirce’s stress on physical effort is related to an embodied perception of surprise that may not be totally available to consciousness, as a “full” surprise would be: the result of a mismatch between one’s beliefs and the external world can be tacitly revealed by the increased physical effort required to carry out the planned action, when it is driven by a habit that is not valid anymore.
- 6.
We will further analyze the mechanism that drives the ignorance-based habit to the creation of an abduction in Sect. 4.1.
- 7.
- 8.
In the past few decades, many philosophers and logicians focused on the relationship between the amount of knowledge the agent thinks he possesses and the amount he actually has; in a case, these studies have led to the creation of the so-called “New Logic” and the research on the epistemic dimension of a realistic agent [Gabbay and Woods 2001]. This research eventually reached the concept of “epistemic bubble” to explain the complex interplay between knowledge and belief [Woods 2005, 2013; Magnani and Bertolotti 2011]. Indeed, the epistemic bubble can be described as the automatic ascription of knowledge to the agent’s belief system. The result is that the embubbled agent is unable to perfectly distinguish what is known from what is merely believed; the difference can be spotted only by a third-person perspective.
- 9.
Though this is not the appropriate lieu of discussion, we clearly side along those maintaining that to define affordances as immediate, direct perception of possibilities does not imply the necessary impossibility to learn and develop new affordances apart from those that are naturally available to our cognitive system—chiefly because of phylogenesis. Gibson himself seemed to be quite clear in assimilating the artifactual dimension to the natural one, in contending (right after the definition of affordance quoted above) that the artifactual environment “is not a new environment—an artificial environment distinct from the natural environment—but the same old environment modified by man. It is a mistake to separate the natural from the artificial as if there were two environments; artifacts have to be manufactured from natural substances. It is also a mistake to separate the cultural environment from the natural environment, as if there were a world of mental products distinct from the world of material products. There is only one world, however diverse, and all animals live in it, alright we human animals have altered it to suit ourselves” [Gibson 1979: 130].
- 10.
Another interesting interpretation of the connection between habit and affordance is given by West [2014: 119].
- 11.
Peirce himself stressed that “genuine doubt always has an external origin, usually from surprise”, all the more because it is not possible to give oneself a “genuine surprise” by an “act of the will” (1905) [CP 5.443]. The agent’s misrepresentation of the emergence of surprise, connected with habit formation, is interestingly analyzed by Colapietro (this volume). Indeed, he advocates the possibility that the agent can effectively play an active part in the stimulation of his own state of surprise, while being cognitively prevented from fully recognizing his role in the process.
- 12.
Peirce himself employed the word struggle to stress the violent trait of this condition (1877) [EP 1: 114].
- 13.
cf. subsection “Belief: Habit as a Rule for Action” above.
- 14.
In Peirce’s unfinished essay Pragmatism (1907) [EP 2: 398–433], analyzed in this volume by Bergman (this volume), the complex dynamic of habit-change is considered in terms of the “ultimate logical interpretant”. While addressing the reader to Bergman’s paper for further enlightenment, we should mention that the ultimate logical interpretant, defined as the “concluding goal of cognitive sign action”, refers to many topics we already discussed: for instance the clarification of a habit in terms of the actions it would produce, the establishment of such a habit of action in our nature, and the revision of existing habits.
- 15.
Aliseda (this volume) also richly analyzes abductive reasoning as the process that guides the transition between doubt and belief in Peirce’s epistemology.
- 16.
The classical schematic representation of abduction is expressed by what Gabbay and Woods (2005) call the AKM-schema, as contrasted with their own GW-schema (Gabbay-Woods). In the AKM, A refers to Aliseda (1997, 2006), K to Kowalski (1979), Kuipers (1999), and Kakas et al. (1993), M to Magnani (2009) and Meheus et al. (2002). A detailed illustration of the AKM schema is given in Magnani (2009), together with the recent EC-Model (Eco-Cognitive Model) of abduction.
- 17.
A more vivid explanation of the creation of belief through surprise that we described can be found in the Peirce’s famous first definition of abduction: “A mass of facts is before us. We go through them. We examine them. We find them a confused snarl, an impenetrable jungle. We are unable to hold them in our minds. [. . . ] But suddenly, while we are poring over our digest of the facts and are endeavouring to set them into order, it occurs to us that if we were to assume something to be true that we do not know to be true, these facts would arrange themselves luminously. That is abduction [. . . ]” (1903) [EP 2: 226–241].
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Magnani, L., Arfini, S., Bertolotti, T. (2016). Of Habit and Abduction: Preserving Ignorance or Attaining Knowledge?. In: West, D., Anderson, M. (eds) Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_20
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