Understanding rules as habits. Developing a pragmatist anthropological approach

By taking Wittgenstein’s well-known reflections on following a rule as its starting point, the paper suggests that what the Austrian philosopher meant by rule could better be understood in terms of habits, as these have been theorized by the classical pragmatists – and by John Dewey in particular. This kind of interpretation reinforces both the rejection of the intellectualistic approach to the issue of following rules, and the emphasis on their primarily social dimension. On the other hand, this reading also forces us to clarify what the anthropological consequences might be of Wittgenstein’s leap from the dichotomy between the alleged a priori norms and their alleged empirical actualizations to our already meaningful ordinary practices. Consequently, the paper articulates the basic anthropological assumptions characterizing the pragmatist approach to habits by stressing their natural and social implications. Finally, the author outlines what the consequences might be of this interpretation of rules in terms of habits for the question of normativity.

Keywords: Habits, Rules, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Anthropology

• Affective Scaffoldings as Habits: A Pragmatist Approach Laura Candiotto, Roberta Dreon, in Frontiers in Psychology 629046/2021
  DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629046

Roberta Dreon, Understanding rules as habits. Developing a pragmatist anthropological approach in "PARADIGMI" 3/2016, pp 103-117, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2016-003007