Habits and Metaphor: Constructing the Person

Rule One: Patterns of Action are Built on Habits

It starts in the womb, as young minds construct habitual patterns of behavior — and create a new self-identity, with growing memories of “me.”

The process continues throughout life, as ongoing mental and emotional judgments of what is pleasant and what is unpleasant struggle to birth new self-identities, against a lengthening lifetime of pre-existing habits.

Another way of describing the process:

In philosophy, the criteria for personhood (PH) at a specific point in time (synchronic), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity (PI) over time (diachronic) are traditionally separated. Hence, the transition between both timescales of a person’s life remains largely unclear. Personal habits reflect a decision-making (DM) process that binds together synchronic and diachronic timescales. Despite the fact that the actualization of habits takes place synchronically, they presuppose, for the possibility of…