tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post4688515408621675272..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Two Kinds of Habit?Eric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-35981428790684636052006-12-10T21:08:00.000-08:002006-12-10T21:08:00.000-08:00I’m not sure that habits formed by mere repetition...I’m not sure that habits formed by mere repetition are completely without reward. The reward for using your parking breaks is that your car doesn’t roll downhill. Even if your car rolling downhill isn’t a real possibility at a given time, the habit of using your parking breaks, wherever they are placed, is nevertheless useful for those rare occasions when you’re parking on a slope. If you value your vehicle and detest having to deal with insurance claims, the payoff for having the habit will be relatively large compared to the amount of effort you put into creating the habit in the first place. You might dispute this use of ‘reward,’ but then one might also dispute whether it’s actually rewarding to eat junk food. So maybe the real difference is not in the types of habit but in the types of reward. Here you could still say that different types of reward, as two different types of causes, by that very fact create different types of habit. Even so, it’s completely arbitrary how you want to draw distinctions or lump things together. You could distinguish between “types” of car accidents according to which hill a car rolls down, each hill representing a different “type” of cause. Or you could say that car accidents involving cars rolling downhill are of the same “type” because they each involve a slope as cause. Which cause is more important? Likewise, you could distinguish between “types” of habit according to which “type” of reward causes it, or you could say that all habits are of the same “type” because in each case a reward is involved as cause, regardless of the specifics of each reward.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com