Habits

Fausto Caruana is a research scientist at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Parma. He is specialized in social, cognitive and affective neuroscience with a focus on the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying emotions, empathy, mirror neurons, and motor cognition. Italo Testa is Associate Professor at the University of Parma, Italy, where he researches critical theory, pragmatism, embodied cognition, social ontology, and German classical philosophy with a focus on the notions of second nature and theory of recognition.

• Introduction: the pragmatist reappraisal of habit in contemporary cognitive science, neuroscience, and social theory: introductory essay Italo Testa and Fausto Caruana; Part I. The Sensorimotor Embodiment of Habits; Section 1. The Neuroscience of Habits: 1. Habit formation, inference and anticipation: continuour themes in a pragmatist neuroscientific perspective Jay Schulkin; 2. Habits and self: a temporal view Georg Northoff; Section 2. Habits and Emotions: 3. Emotional Mirroring Promotes Social Bonding and Social Habits: An Insight from Laughter Fausto Caruana; 4. Emotions, habits, and skills: action-oriented bodily responses and social affordances Rebekka Hufendiek; Section 3. Habits and Skills: 5. What the situation affords: habits and heedful attitudes in skilled performance Katsunori Miyahara, Tailer G. Ransom and Shaun Gallagher; 6. Swim or sink: habit and skilful control in sport performance Massimiliano L. Cappuccio and Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza; Part II. The Enactment of Habits in Mind and World; Section 4. Habits and the Background of Action: 7. The backside of habit: notes on embodied agency and the functional opacity of the medium Maria Brincker; 8. Habit, ontology, and embodied cognition without borders: James, Merleau-Ponty, and Nishida Jonathan McKinney, Maki Sato, and Anthony Chemero; Section 5. Habits, Intentionality, and Language: 9. Clarifying the character of habits: understanding what and how they explain Daniel D. Hutto and Ian Robertson; 10. Habits, meaning and intentionality: a Deweyan reading Pierre Steiner; 11. Language, habit and the future Elena Clare Cuffari; Section 6. Habits and Moral Life: 12. Moral habit Mark Johnson; 13. Habits of goodness: how we come to be virtuous without moral laws Teed Rockwell; Part III. Socially Embedded and Culturally Extended Habits; Section 7. Habits, Human Development, and Social Practices: 14. Growing minds: pragmatic habits and enculturation Richard Menary; 15. 'Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society': pragmatism, social theory, and cognitive science Stephen Turner; 16. Habit and the human lifespan: toward a Deweyan account of aging and old age Shannon Sullivan; Section 8. Habits, Cultural Artifacts, and Aesthetics: 17. Habits and enculturated mind: pervasive artifacts, predictive processing and expansive habits Joerg Fingerhut; 18. Brain, body, habit and the performative quality of aesthetics Vittorio Gallese; Section 9. Habits, Social Ontology, and Institutions: 19. A habit ontology for cognitive and social sciences: methodological individualism, pragmatist interactionism, and 4E cogniton Italo Testa; 20. Social ontology between habits and social interactions Roberto Frega; 21. Social reproduction, feminism, and Deweyan habit ontology Fredico Gregoratto and Arvi Särkelä.

'This informative and ground-breaking anthology is an invaluable resource for anyone trying to reimagine the foundations of the mind. Exploring the concept of habit through the lens of pragmatism, the book maps out pragmatist positions and how such positions can extend, embed, enact, and embody current debates in the cognitive and social sciences.' Ellen Fridland, Lecturer in Philosophy, King's College London, UK