3 ms·
While I don't want to get bogged down into details of definitions, I'll take a swing at it: A skill is a capability learned through experience which is wielded
by nevinera 13y ago
While I don't want to get bogged down into details of definitions, I'll take a swing at it:
A skill is a capability learned through experience which is wielded with intention.
A behavior is simply a way of acting - it could be conscious or unconscious, it could be enforced or intentional.
A habit is an unintentional behavior.
A personality characteristic and a character attribute are basically the same thing: unconscious ways of perceiving value and making decisions.
There are of course dozens of ways to define each of those terms, and I'm not interested in debating which of them is 'correct' - I am here primarily focusing on the distinction between instilling value-judgments via rituals and enforcement and attempting to control the self-perception or decision-making styles by behaving in artificial ways.
Describing them all as 'patterns of acting' is like calling all matter 'arrangements of chemicals'. It is of course accurate, and even in some cases useful, but you muddy very important distinctions by generalizing to that degree. In the case in point, the distinction lost is between valuations and perceptions.
- dragonwriter 13y agoI think the distinction you are making is illusory in the sense of the discussion -- you cannot influence outward action of the type you describe as skill, behavior, and habit without describing the internal processing you describe as "personality characteristics" and "character attributes", and you cannot observe "personality characteristics" or "character attributes" except as they manifest through skill, behavior, or habit.