The main reason social scientists study culture is because of the (sometimes implicit) hypothesis that culture “affects” or “causes” action (Swidler 2001a, 2001b; Vaisey 2009). If culture was a causally inert cloud of stuff floating around doing nothing, it would not be worth anyone’s attention. That is, cultural theory and …
Habit versus Skill Ascriptions Habit and skill tend to be run together in social theory and the philosophy of action (Dalton, 2004). However, there are good conceptual and empirical reasons to keep them distinct (Douskos, 2017b). Notably, the ascription of skill and habits entail different things about action, and only …
Recently, however, some philosophers have begun to pay attention to habits. An example is a series of papers by Bill Pollard starting in the mid-aughts (Pollard, 2006a, 2006b), and more recently Steve Matthews (2017). Pollard tackles some fundamental issues arguing (positively) for habit-based explanations of action as a useful addendum (if …
A recurrent theme in previous posts is that social scientists have a lot to gain by replacing belief-desire psychology as an explanatory framework with a dispositional theory of the mental. As I argued before, it is something that we already do and has a good pedigree in social theory. The …
You must be logged in to post a comment.