Associationism: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Psychological concept}}
{{about|the psychological concept|the Utopianutopian socialist economic theory|Fourierism}}

The phrase association of ideas was first used by John Locke. Inin chapter1689 in Chapter 33 his of ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding|An Essay concerning Human understanding]]'' titledentitled “Of the Association of Ideas’Ideas″, he describes the ways that ideas can be connected to each other.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|lastfirst=Howard C. |last=Warren|url=httphttps://archive.org/details/historyoftheasso007979mbp|title=A History Of The Association Psychology|date=1921|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|others=Universal Digital Library}}</ref> He writes “Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexionconnection with one with another”.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last=Locke, John.|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/927360872|title=Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An.|date=2000|publisher=Infomotions, Inc|oclc=927360872}}</ref>. Although he believed that some associations were natural and justified, he believed that others were illogical, causedcausing errors in judgment. He furtheralso explains that one can associate some ideas together based on their education and culture., saying, “there is another connection of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom”.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" />. The term associationism later became more prominent in psychology and the psychologists that used that subscribed to the idea became known as the associationists.<ref name=":3" />. Locke's view that the mind and body are two aspects of the same unified phenomenon can be traced back to Aristotle's ideas on the subject.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The Nature of Cognition|last=Sternberg|first=Robert|publisher=MIT Press|year=1999|isbn=9780262692120|location=Cambridge, MA|pages=69}}</ref>

In his 1740 book ''[[A Treatise of Human Nature|Treatise on Human Nature]]'' David Hume outlines three principles for ideas to be connected to each other,: resemblance, continuity in time or place, and cause or effect.<ref name=":5">{{Citation|last=Hume|first=David|editor2-first=Sir Lewis Amherst|editor2-last=Selby-Bigge|editor1-first=P. H|editor1-last=Nidditch|title=A Treatise of Human Nature|date=1739-01-01|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00046221|work=David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature (Second Edition)|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/oseo/instance.00046221|isbn=978-0-19-824587-2|access-date=2020-05-04}}</ref> He argues that the mind uses these principles, rather than reason, to gotraverse from one idea intoto another rather than reasonidea.<ref name=":3" />. He writes “When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determined by reason, but by certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the imagination.”<ref name=":5" /> These connections are formed in the mind by observation and experience. Hume does not believe that any of these associations are “necessary’ in a sense that ideas or object are truly connected, instead he sees them as mental tools used for thinkingcreating a useful mental representation of the world.<ref name=":3" />

==== Later Membersmembers ====

Associationism is often concerned with middle-level to higher-level mental processes such as [[learning]].<ref name=":1" /> For instance, the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are linked in one's mind through repetition so that they become inextricably associated with one another.<ref name=":1" /> Among the earliest experiments that tested the applications of associationism, involve Hermann Ebbinghaus' work. He was considered the first experimenter to apply the associationist principles systematically, and used himself as subject to study and quantify the relationship between rehearsal and recollection of material.<ref name=":1" />

Some of the ideas of the Associationist School also anticipated the principles of [[Classical conditioning|conditioning]] and its use in [[behaviourism|behavioral psychology]].<ref name="Boring" />. Both [[classical conditioning]] and [[operant conditioning]] use positive and negative [[Association (psychology)|associations]] as means of conditioning.<ref name=":6" />

[[Category:TheoryMetaphysics of mind]]