Association of Ideas - Early Theory

Early Theory

The associationist theory is anticipated in Plato's Phaedo, as part of the doctrine of anamnesis. The idea of Simmias is recalled by the picture of Simmias (similarity) and that of a friend by the sight of the lyre on which he played (contiguity). But Aristotle is credited with originating associationist thinking based on this passage: "When, therefore, we accomplish an act of reminiscence, we pass through a certain series of precursive movements, until we arrive at a movement on which the one we are in quest of is habitually consequent. Hence, too, it is that we hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other, and from similar or contrary or coadjacent. Through this process reminiscence takes place. For the movements are, in these cases, sometimes at the same time, sometimes parts of the same whole, so that the subsequent movement is already more than half accomplished." The passage is obscure, but it does at all events indicate the various principles commonly termed contiguity, similarity, and contrast. Similar principles are stated by Zeno the Stoic, by Epicurus (see Diogenes Laertius vii. § 52, x. § 32), and by St Augustine of Hippo (Confessions, x. c. 19). Aristotle's doctrine received a more or less intelligent expansion and illustration from the ancient commentators and the schoolmen, and in the still later period of transition from the age of scholasticism to the more modern philosophy, prolonged in the works of some writers far into the 17th century. William Hamilton adduced not a few philosophical authorities who gave prominence to the general fact of mental association - the Spanish philosopher Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540) especially being exhaustive in his account of memory.

In Thomas Hobbes's psychology much importance is assigned to what he called, variously, the succession, sequence, series, consequence, coherence, train of imaginations or thoughts in mental discourse. But not before Hume is there express question as to what are the distinct principles of association. John Locke had, meanwhile, introduced the phrase "Association of Ideas" as the title of a supplementary chapter incorporated with the fourth edition of his Essay, meaning it, however, only as the name of a principle accounting for the mental peculiarities of individuals, with little or no suggestion of its general psychological import. Of this last David Hume had the strongest impression; he reduced the principles of association to three: Identity, Contiguity in time and place, Cause and (or) Effect. Dugald Stewart put forward Resemblance, Contrariety, and Vicinity in time and place, though he added, as another obvious principle, accidental coincidence in the sounds of words, and further noted three other cases of relation, namely, Cause and Effect, Means and End, Premisses and Conclusion, as holding among the trains of thought under circumstances of special attention. Thomas Reid, preceding Stewart, was rather disposed to make light of the subject of association, vaguely remarking that it seems to require no other original quality of mind but the power of habit to explain the spontaneous recurrence of trains of thinking, when become familiar by frequent repetition (Intellectual Powers, p. 387).

Hamilton's own theory of mental reproduction, suggestion, or association is a development, greatly modified, of the doctrine expounded in his Lectures on Metaphysics (vol. ii. p. 223, seq.), which reduced the principles of association first to two, Simultaneity and Affinity, and these further to one supreme principle of Redintegration or Totality. In the ultimate scheme he posits no less than four general laws of mental succession concerned in reproduction:

• (1) Associability or possible co-suggestion (all thoughts of the same mental subject are associable or capable of suggesting each other);
• (2) Repetition or direct remembrance (thoughts coidentical in a modification, but differing in time, tend to suggest each other);
• (3) Redintegration, direct remembrance or reminiscence (thoughts once coidentical in time, are, however, different as mental modes, again suggestive of each other, and that in the mutual order which they originally held);
• (4) Preference (thoughts are suggested not merely by force of the general subjective relation subsisting between themselves, they are also suggested in proportion to the relation of interest, from whatever source, in which they stand to the individual mind).

Upon these follow, as special laws:

• A - Primary - modes of the laws of Repetition and Redintegration:
  • (1) law of Similars (Analogy, Affinity);
  • (2) law of Contrast; and
  • (3) law of Coadjacency (Cause and Effect, etc.).
• B - Secondary - modes of the law of Preference, under the law of Possibility:
  • (1) laws of Immediacy and Homogeneity and
  • (2) law of Facility.