Habitual Ethics? / / Sylvie Delacroix.

• VerfasserIn: Delacroix, Sylvie,
• Place / Publishing House: London : : Bloomsbury Academic,, 2022.
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 pages)

"Just like other experts, members of the professions develop their craft thanks to a deep internalisation of both complex cognitive structures and a mix of habits and intuitive understandings. These non-cognitive aspects of expertise can be what distinguishes the merely competent from the truly brilliant. Yet habits can also be what makes us blind to important features of the world we inhabit. In the life of a professional, these features include the vulnerability of those seeking her services, which in turn grounds the professional's particular ethical responsibility. This book develops an in-depth account of habit to understand its impact upon the way moral decisions are made in a professional context. Its central thesis is the following: what most often stands in the way of a professional meeting her ethical responsibility is not so much stupidity (or character defects) but rather the deleterious aspects of habituation. This book calls for renewed attention to be paid to habits and their relationship to ethical agency. Mostly neglected in moral and legal theory, such an inquiry not only conditions an adequate understanding of the risks inherent in a legal system's institutional structure. It is also essential if we are to come to grips with the challenges raised by the professions' growing reliance upon automated systems.".

Table of Contents

Introduction -- 1. What Is a Habit? -- 2. The Habitual and the Ethical: Unhappy Marriage? -- 3. Why Does 'Habitual Ethics' Matter Today? -- 4. Chapters Overview -- Part I: Habit and Individual Agency -- 1. From Facts to Norms (and Back) -- 1. Defining 'The Natural' (and the Role of Science) -- 2. The 'Motivation Problem' -- 3. 'Following a Rule' -- 2. Habit and Skill Acquisition -- 1. Skilful Coping and Skilful Action -- 2. The Structure of the Environment and Its Impact on Skill Acquisition -- 3. 'Tacit' Learning Attitude(s) -- 3. Routine and Rigidified Habits -- 1. Teleologically Indeterminate Professional Encounters -- 2. Humility and 'Sophia': Pre-conditions of Habit Plasticity? -- 3. Obstacles to Habit Plasticity in Professional Contexts -- 4. Growing Out of the Habitual -- 1. Growing Out of the Habitual: Habit v. Reason -- 2. When 'Reason' Shields Us from Normative Significance -- 5. Growing within the Habitual -- 1. Responsiveness to Reasons -- 2. Habit and the Work of Attention -- 3. Responsiveness to the Other: A Forgotten Capability? -- Part II: Collective Habits and Moral Transformations -- 6. Law and Habits -- 1. The Narrow View: The Step from 'The Pre-Legal to the Legal' -- 2. Non-Deliberative Components within a Genealogy of Legal Normativity -- 3. The Types of Habits Law May Foster -- 7. Algorithmic Habits and Social Transformations -- 1. Inferred Traits and Optimisation Endeavours -- 2. Precluded Transformations: Alienation through Reification -- 3. Ensemble Contestability -- 4. Bottom-Up Data Trusts -- Conclusion.