...Reality in a world, like realism in a picture, is largely a matter of habit. Ironically, then, our passion for one world is satisfied, at different times and for different purposes, in many different ways." Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, p. 20)
The term habit conveys the sense of operativeness, of a continuously practiced activity. It is an incorporating practice more than an inscribing practice. Habit is not just a sign. (Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember) "Habits are more than technical abilities such as walking, swimming, knitting and typewriting.
According to Bergson, memory is a representation. Habit enables us to adapt ourselves to a present situation. It acts our past experience but does not call up its image. It is stored in a mechanism which is set in motion by an initial impulse. "Of these two memories, of which the one imagines and the other repeats, the second may supply the place of the first and even sometimes be mistaken for it." (p.82) The former is "as capricious in reproducing as it is faithful in preserving," while the latter is conquered by effort and dependent on our will. (p.88)
Dewey suggests that we recognise the role of desire in habitual behaviour by considering bad habits. For what we can observe clearly in bad habits is the hold they exert over us. They remind us that all habits are affective dispositions: through frequent repetition they become parts of ourselves. (cf discussions of tools)
The social dimension of habit is custom. "From his first movements, the individual sees himself determined and limited by something over which he has no power. It is the power of custom that binds him. It watches over his every step allows scarcely a moment of free space in his activity. Not only his actions, but also his feelings and ideas, his beliefs and delusions are governed by it. Custom is the perpetually constant atmosphere in which he lives and exists; he cannot escape from it any more than from the air he breathes." (Ernst Casserer, "The Object of the Science of Culture" in The Logic of the Social Sciences, p.2)