Habit And Reflexivity In Skill

Is habit related to reflexivity in skills? Through combing the conceptual history of habit and reflexivity,we can see that the two form a continuous spectrum,and the opposite poles are strong Habitualism and strong Intellectualism.The former,represented by Dreyfus,only emphasizes the role of habits,and believes that skills are pre-reflective embodied action flows.The latter,represented by Mc Dowell,only emphasizes the role of reflexivity,and believes that skills permeate concepts and reflections.But both views ignore the link between habit and reflexivity.In this spectrum,there are also weak Habitualism and weak Intellectualism that try to blend the two components.Weak Habitualism is represented by Merleau-Ponty,who advocates that habit contains pre-reflective motor intentionality.Weak Intellectualism is represented by Kilpinen,whose theory of reflexive habituality advocates that habit continuously improves and constructs itself through reflexivity.By constructing a substantive dialogue between weak Intellectualism and strong habitualism,this paper defends Kilpinen’s theory of reflexive habituality and supports the integration of habit and reflexivity while overcoming the defects of Kilpinen’s theory: the factors of human intelligence are not clarified so it is impossible to explain automated everyday embodied coping of skills.The argument for strong Habitualism is maxim of cognitive interference that asserts that reflection hinders the skill.It displays in the intuition of expertise of Skill Acquisition Model of Dreyfus as well as the motor acuity of Stanley and the reflex like of Papineau.Drawing on Heidegger’s circumspection and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of lines of forces,Dreyfus’ s concept of absorbed coping requires to respond to solicitation in skills,rather than a theoretical grasp of things.The weak Habitualism represented by Merleau-Ponty tries to revise the strong Habitualism with motor intentionality,pointing out that habit contains non-conceptual motor intentionality.From the perspective of weak Intellectualism,the mistake made by strong Habitualism is that over-intellectualization of intellect treats rationality as a form of conceptual propositional knowledge while ignoring the existence of tacit knowledge and implicit memory.They regards intuition as a automatic mindless concept,which resulting in phenomenological paradox and the automatic,ballistics and invariant description of skills.With the help of the research results of philosophy of action and cognitive science,weak Intellectualism can make a strong rebuttal to strong Habitualism.The key lies in pointing out the relationship between skills and tacit knowledge,manifesting that know-how in tacit knowledge is intelligence that is reflective and non-propositional.Noe points out that to solve the phenomenological paradox requires distinguishing between paying attention to inner states and paying attention to what we do,in which intuition is an implicit memory fused with thinking.Fridland’s refutation of the skill of automaticity,ballisticness,and invariance shows that the more skilled experts have higher self-control as well as skills possess variability and flexibility,thus proving the role of reflexivity in skills.Overall,the tacit knowledge in skills determines that there cannot be only automatic and unconscious habitual dimensions,but there must be reflexive elements such as attention,intuition,self-control and flexibility.Habit and reflexivity are unified in skills.Through the critique of strong Habitualism and the defense of weak Intellectualism,the theory of reflexive habituality has been further developed,with stronger explanatory power and coherence.