PhD defence T. (Thijs) Heijmeskamp

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation: 

This doctoral dissertation explores how habits shape our environment, and, in turn, how our environment shapes and supports our agency. Often, habits are viewed as in tension with our agency. They are regarded as learned automatic responses and ultimately diminish agency. Yet, such a picture of habit and agency stands in tension with many ways of being in the world. Playing the piano relies on habitual actions and skills, as does riding a bike. Both are also intelligent interactions with the world, as we adapt to new variations in the environment. 
By using John Dewey in close connection to E-cognition and ecological psychology, we can formulate an alternative view of agency and habit. Through Dewey, we gain an understanding of agency and habit as ecological relations. This view is elaborated on in three parts. In Part I, the centrality of automaticity to habit is questioned. Through a criticism of dual process theory, it becomes apparent that there is no justification for seeing cognition as a strict dichotomy between automatic and intelligent thinking. In Part II, habit is ecologized and taken out of the head, through an engagement with enactivism and ecological psychology. Part III argues that habit should not be understood by merely viewing isolated habitual actions. Habit should be understood as spatially and temporally extended, as such can only be understood as a response to a situation. By investigating ‘situation’, we can thematize how our environment structures our agency, both spatially as well as temporally.