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ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, or MENTAL ASSOC...
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ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, or See also:MENTAL ASSOCIATION
, a See also:term
used in See also:psychology to See also:express the conditions under which representations arise in consgiousness, and also for a principle put forward by an. important See also:historical school of thinkers to See also:account generally for the facts of See also:mental See also:life
.
See also:Modern physiological psychology has so altered the approach to this subject that much of the older discussion has become antiquated, but it may be recapitulated here for historical purposes
.
Earlier Theory.—In the See also:long and erudite See also:Note D**, appended by See also:Sir W
.
See also:
Aristotle's doctrine received a more or less intelligent expansion and See also:illustration from the ancient commentators and the schoolmen, and in the still later See also:period of transition front the See also:age of See also:scholasticism to the time of modern See also:philosophy, prolonged in the works of some writers far into the 17th See also:century, Hamilton adduced not a few philosoohical authorities who gave prominence to the See also:general fact of mental association—the Spaniard Ludovicus See also:Vives (1492–1540) especially being most exhaustive in his account of memory
In See also:Hobbes's psychology much importance is assigned to what he called, variously, the See also:succession, sequence, series, consequence, coherence, train of imaginations or thoughts in mental discourse
.
But not before See also:Hume is there express question as to what are the distinct principles of association
.
See also: Hamilton, though professing to See also:deal with reproddction only, formulates a number of still more general laws of mental succession—law of Succession, law of Variation, law of Dependence, law of Relativity or Integration (involving law•pf Conditioned), and, finally, law of Inttinsic or See also:Objective Relativity—as the "highest to which human Consciousness is subject; but it is in a' sense quite different that the 'psychologists of the so-called Associationist School intend their See also:appropriation of the principle 0r principles commonly signalized . As far as can be judged from imperfect records, they were anticipated to some extent by the experientialists of ancient times, both Stoic and Epicurean (cf . See also:Diogenes Laertius, as above) . In the modern period, Hobbes is the first thinker of permanent note to whom this doctrine may be traced . Though, in point of fact, he took anything but an exhaustive view of the phenomena of mental succession, yet, after dealing with trains of See also:imagination, or what' he called mental discourse, he sought in the higher departments of See also:intellect to explain reasoning as a discourse in words, dependent upon an arbitrary See also:system of marks, each associated with, or See also:standing for, a variety of imaginations; and, See also:save for a general assertion that reasoning is a reckoning—otherwise, a -compounding and resolving—he had no other account of know-ledge to give . The whole emotional See also:side of mind, or, in his See also:language; the passions, he, in like manner, resolved into an expectation of consequences based on past experience of pleasures and pgins ;of sense . Thus, though he made no serious See also:attempt to justify his See also:analysis in detail, he is undoubtedly to be classed with the associationists of the next century . They, however, were wont to trace their psychological theory no further back than to Locke's See also:Essay . See also:Bishop See also:Berkeley was driven to posit expressly a principle of suggestion or association in these terms:— " That one idea may suggest' another to the mind; it will suffice that they have been observed to go together; without any demonstration of the See also:necessity of their' coexistence, or so much as knowing what it is that makes them so to coexist " (New Theory of See also:Vision, 25); and to support the obvious application of the principle to the See also:case of the sensations of sight and See also:touch before him, he constantly urged that association of See also:sound - and sense of language which the later school ha§ always put' in' the foreground, whether as illustrating the principle in general or in explanation of the supreme importance of language for knowledge . It was natural, then, that Hume, coming after Berkeley, and assuming Berkeley's results, though he reverted to the larger inquiry :of Locke, should be' more explicit in his reference to association; but he was original also, when he spoke of it as a " See also:kind'of attraction which in the mental See also:world will be found to have as extraordinary.. effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as,various forms " (Human Nature, i. i, §'4) . Other inquirers about the same' time conceived of association with this breadth of view, and set themselves to track, as psychologists, its effects in detail . See also:David See also:Hartley in his Observations on See also:Man, published in 1749, (eleven years after the Human Nature, and one See also:year after the betters known Inquiry, of Hume), opened the path for all the investigations of like nature that have been so characteristic of English psycho-logy .
A physician by profession, he sought to combine with an elaborate theory of mental association a minutely detailed hypo-thesis as to the corresponding See also:action of the See also:nervous system, based upon the suggestion of a vibratory See also:motion within the nerves thrown out by See also:Newton in the last See also:paragraph of the Principia
.
So far, how-ever, from promoting the See also:acceptance of the psychological theory, this See also:physical See also:hypothesis proved to have rather the opposite effect, and it began to be dropped by Hartley's followers (as F
.
See also:Priestley, in his abridged edition of the Observations, 1775) before it was seriously impugned from .without
.
When it is studied in the `original, and not taken upon the See also:report of hostile critics, who would not, or could not understand it, no little importance must still be accorded to. the first attempt, not seldom a curiously felicitous one, to carry through that See also:parallelism of the physical and psychical, which since then has come to See also:count for more and more in the See also:science of mind
.
Nor should' it be forgotten that Hartley himself, for all his paternal interest in the doctrine of vibrations, was careful to keep See also:separate from its fortunes the cause of his other doctrine of mental association
.
Of this the point See also:lay in no See also:mere restatement, with new precision, of a principle of coherence among" ideas," but in its being See also:talent as a See also:clue by which
to follow the progressive development of the mind's powers
.
Holding that mental states could be scientifically understood only as they were analysed, Hartley sought for a principle of See also:synthesis to explain the complexity exhibited not only in trains of representative images, but alike in the most involved combinations of reasonings and (as Berkeley had seen) in the apparently simple phenomena of objective See also:perception, as well as in the varied See also:play of the emotions, or, again, in the manifold conscious adjustments of the motor system
.
One principle appeared to him sufficient for all, See also:running, as enunciated for the simplest case, thus: " Any sensations A, B, C, &c., by being associated with one another a sufficient number of times, get such a power over the corresponding ideas (called by Hartley also vestiges, types,'images) a, b, c, &c., that any one of the sensations A, when impressed alone, shall be able to excite in the mind b, c, &c., the ideas of the See also:rest." To render the principle applicable in the cases where the associated elements are neither sensations nor simple ideas of sensations, Hartley's first care was to determine the conditions under which states other than these simplest ones havetheir rise in the mind, becoming the See also:matter of ever higher and higher combinations
.
The principle itself supplied the See also:
The principle began also, if not always with direct reference to Hartley, yet, doubtless, owing to his impressive advocacy of it, to be applied systematically in special directions, as by See also:Abraham See also:Tucker (1768) to morals, and by See also:Archibald See also:Alison (1990) to See also:aesthetics
.
See also: In See also:Germany, before the time of See also:Kant, mental association was generally treated in the traditional manner, as by See also:Wolff . Kant's inquiry into the See also:foundations of knowledge, agreeing in its general purport with Locke's, however it differed in its See also:critical See also:procedure, brought him See also:face to face with the newer doctrine that had been grafted on Locke's philosophy; and to account for the fact of synthesis in See also:cognition, in express opposition to associationism, as represented by Hume, was, in truth, his See also:prime See also:object, starting, as he did, from the See also:assumption that there was that in knowledge which no mere association of experiences could explain . To the extent, therefore, that his influence prevailed, all inquiries made by the English associationists were discounted in Germany . Notwithstanding, under the very See also:shadow of his authority a corresponding, if not related, movement was initiated by J . F . See also:Herbart . See also:Peculiar, and widely different from anything conceived by the k ssociationists, as Herbart's metaphysical opinions were, He was at one with them, and at variance with Kant, in assigning fundamental importance to the psychological investigation of the development of consciousness, nor was his conception of the laws determining the interaction and flow of mental presentations and representations, when taken in its See also:bare psychological import, essentially different from theirs . In F . E . See also:Beneke's psychology also, and in more See also:recent inquiries conducted mainly by physiologists, mental association has been understood in its wider scope, as a general principle of explanation . The associationists differ not a little among themselves in the statement of their principle, or, when they adduce several principles, in their conception of the relative importance of these . Hartley took account only of Contiguity, or the repetition of impressions synchronous or immediately successive; the like is true of James Mill, though, incidentally, he made an express attempt to resolve the received principle of Similarity, and through this the other principle of Contrast, into his fundamental law—law of Frequency, as he sometimes called it, because upon frequency, in See also:conjunction with vividness of impressions, the strength of association, in his view, depended . 
In a sense of his own, Brown also, while accepting the See also:common Aristotelian enumeration of principles, inclined to the See also:opinion that " all suggestion may be found to depend on prior co-existence, or at least on such proximity as is itself very probably a modification of coexistence," provided account be taken of the influence of emotions and other feelings that are very different from ideas, as when an analogous object suggests an analogous object by the influence of an emotion which each separately may have produced before, and which is, therefore, common to both . To the contrary effect, Spencer maintained that the fundamental law of all mental association is that presentations aggregate or cohere with their like in past experience, and that, besides this law, there is in strictness no other, all further phenomena of association being incidental . Thus in particular, he would have explained association by Contiguity as due to the circumstance of imperfect assimilation of the present to the past in consciousness . A . Bain regarded Contiguity and Similarity logically, as perfectly distinct principles, though in actual psychological occurrence blending intimately with each other, contiguous trains being started by a first (it may be, implicit) See also:representation through Similarity, while the express assimilation of present to past in consciousness is always, or tends to be, followed by the revival of what was presented in contiguity with that •past . The highest philosophical interest, as distinguished from that which is more strictly psychological, attaches to the mode of mental association called Inseparable . The coalescence of mental states noted by Hartley, as it had been assumed by Berkeley, was farther formulated by James Mill: in these terms: " Some ideas are by frequency and strength of association so closely combined that they cannot be separated ; if one exists, the other exists along with it in spite, of whatever effort we make to them.''Analysis of the Human Mind, 2nd ed. vol. i. p . 93.) . S . Mill's statement is more guarded and particular . ' ' When two phenomena have been very often experienced in See also:con-junction, and have not, in any single instance, occurred separately either in experience or in thought, there is produced between them what has been called inseparable, or, less correctly, indissoluble, association; by which is not meant that the association must inevitably last to the end of life— that no subsequent experience or process of thought can possibly avail to dissolve it; but only that as long as no such experience or process of thought has taken place, the association is irresistible; it is impossible for us to think the one thing disjoined from the other."—(Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, 2nd ed. p . 191.) It is chiefly by J . S . Mill that the philosophical application of the principle has been made . The first and most obvious application. is to so-called necessary truths—such, namely, as are not merely See also:analytic judgments but involve a synthesis of distinct notions . Again, the same thinker sought to prove Inseparable Association the ground of belief in an external objective world . The former application, especially, is facilitated, when the experience through which the association is supposed to be constituted is understood as cumulative in the See also:race, and transmissible as original endowment to individuals—endowment that may be expressed either, subjectively, as latent intelligence, or, objectively, as fixed nervous connexions . Spencer, as before suggested, is the author of this extended view of mental association . Modern See also:Criticism.—Of recent years the associationist theory has been subjected to searching criticism, and it has been maintained by many writers that the laws are both unsatisfactorily expressed and insufficient to explain the facts . Among the most vigorous and comprehensive of these investigations is that of F . H . See also:Bradley in his . Principles of Logic (1883) . Having admitted the psychological fact of mental association, he attacks the theories of Mill and Bain primarily on the ground that they purport to give an account of mental life as a whole, a metaphysical doctrine of existence . According to this doctrine, mental activity is ultimately reducible to . particular feelings, impressions, ideas, which are disparate and unconnected, until See also:chance Association brings them together . On this assumption the laws of Association naturally emerge in the following See also:form:—(r) The law of Contiguity.—"Actions, sensations and states of feeling, occurring together or in See also:close connexion, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are See also:apt to be brought up in idea " (A . Bain, Senses and Intellect, p . 327) . (2) The law of Similarity.—" Present actions, sensation, thoughts or emotions tend to revive their like among previous impressions or states " (A . Bain, ibid . 457 . Compare J . S . Mill, Logic, ii. p . 440, 9th ed.) .
The fundamental objection to (I) is that ideas and impressions once experienced do not recur; they are particular existences, and, as such, do not persevere to recur or be presented
.
So Mill is wrong in speaking of two impressions being " frequently experienced." Bradley claims thus to reduce the law to " When we have experienced (or even thought of) several , pairs of impressions (simultaneous or successive), which pairs are like one another; then whenever an idea occurs which is like all the impressions on one side of these pairs, it tends to excite an idea which is like all the impressions on the other side." This statement is destructive of the title of the law, because it appears that what were contiguous (the impressions) are not associated, and what are associated (the ideas) were not contiguous; in other words, the association is not due to contiguity at all
.
Proceeding to the law of Similarity (which in Mill's view is at the back of association by contiguity), and having made a similar criticism of its phrasing, Bradley maintains that it involves an even greater absurdity; if two ideas are to be recognized as similar, they must both be present in the mind; if one is to See also:call up the other, one must be absent
.
To the obvious reply that the similarity is recognized ex lost facto, and not while the former idea is being called up, Bradley replies simply that such a view reduces the law to the mere statement of a phenomenon and deprives it of any explanatory value, though he hardly makes it clear in what sense this necessarily invalidates the law from a psychological point of view
.
He further points out with greater force that in point of fact mere similarity is not the basis of See also:ordinary cases of mental reproduction, inasmuch as in any given instance there is more difference than similarity between the ideas associated
.
Bradley himself bases association on identity plus contiguity:—" Any part of a single See also:state of mind tends, if reproduced, to re-instate the See also:remainder," or " any See also:element tends to reproduce those elements with which it has formed one state of mind." This law he calls by the name " redintegration," understood, of course, in a sense different from that in which Hamilton used it
.
The See also:radical difference between this law and those of Mill and Bain is that it deals not with particular See also:units of thoughts but with universals or identity between individuals
.
In any example of such reproduction the universal appears in a particular form which is more or less different from that in which it originally existed
.
Psychophysical Researches.—Bradley's discussion deals with the
subject purely from the metaphysical side, and the See also:total result practically is that association occurs only between universals
.
From the point of view of empirical psychologists Bradley's results are open to the See also:charge which he made against those who impugned his view of the law of similarity, namely that they are merely a statement—not in any real sense an explanation
.
The relation between the mental and the physical phenomena of association has occupied the attention of all the leading psychologists (see PSYCHOLOGY)
.
See also: " So far as it stands for a cause it is between processes in the See also:brain." Dealing with the law of Contiguity he says that the " most natural way of accounting for it is to conceive it as a result of the laws of habit in the nervous system; in other words to ascribe it to a physiological cause." Association is.thus due to the fact that when a See also:nerve current has once passed by a given way, it will pass more easily by that way in future; and this fact is a physical fact . He further seeks to maintain the important See also:deduction that the only primary or ultimate law of association is that of neural habit . The objections to the associationist theory are summed up by (; . F . Stout (Analytic Psychol., vol. ii. pp . 47 seq.) under three heads . Of these the first is that the theory as stated, e.g. by Bain, See also:lays far too much stress on the mere connexion of elements hitherto entirely separate; whereas, in fact, every new mental state or synthesis consists in the development or modification of a pre-existing state or psychic whole . Secondly, it is quite false to regard an association as merely an aggregate of disparate units; in fact, the form of the new idea is quite as important as the elements which it comprises . Thirdly, the phraseology used by the associationists seems to assume that the parts that go to form the whole retain their identity unimpaired ; in fact, each part or element is ipso facto modified by the ver~y fact of its entering into such See also:combination . l he experimental methods now in See also:vogue have to a large extent removed the discussion of the whole subject of association of ideas, depending in the case of the older writers on See also:introspection, into a new See also:sphere . In such a work as E . B . Titchener's Experimental Psycholcgy (1905), association is treated as a See also:branch of the study of mental reactions, of which association reactions are one See also:division . ' ASSONANCE (from See also:Lat. adsonare or assonare, to sound to or See also:answer to), a term defined, in its prosodical sense, as " the corresponding or riming of one word with another in the accented vowel and those which follow it, but not in the consonants " (New English See also:Dictionary, See also:Oxford) . In other words, assonance is an improper or imperfect form of See also:rhyme, in which the See also:ear is satisfied with the incomplete identity of sound which the vowel gives without the aid of consonants . Much rustic or popular See also:verse in See also:England is satisfied with assonance, as in such cases as " And pray who gave thee that See also:jolly red See also:nose ? See also:Cinnamon, See also:Ginger, See also:Nutmeg and See also:Cloves," where the agreement between the two o's permits the ear to neglect the discord between s and v . But in English these instances are the result of carelessness or blunted ear . It is not so in several literatures, such as in See also:Spanish, where assonance is systematically cultivated as a See also:literary See also:ornament . It is an See also:error to confound See also:alliteration,—which results from the close juxtaposition of words beginning with the same sound or See also:letter,—and assonance, which is the repetition of the same vowel-sound in a syllable at points where the ear expects a rhyme . The latter is a more complicated and less See also:primitive employment of artifice than the former, although they have often been used to intensify the effect of each other in a single See also:couplet . Assonance appears, nevertheless, to have preceded rhyme in several of the See also:European See also:languages, and to have led the way towards it . It is particularly. observable in the See also:French See also:poetry which was composed before the 12th century, and it reached its highest point in the " Chanson de See also:Roland," where the sections are distinguished by the fact that all the lines in a laisse or See also:stanza close with the same vowel-sound . When the ear of the French became more delicate, and pure rhyme was introduced, about the year 1120, assonance almost immediately retired before it and was employed no more, until recent years, when several French poets have re-introduced assonance in order to widen the scope of their effects of sound . It held its place longer in Provencal and some other See also:Romance literatures, while in Spanish it has retained its See also:absolute authority over rhyme to the present See also:day . It has been observed that in the Romance languages the ear prefers the See also:correspondence of vowels, while in the See also:Teutonic languages the preference is given to consonants . This distinction is See also:felt most strongly in Spanish, where the See also:satisfaction in rimas asonantesis expressed no less in the most elaborate works of the poets and dramatists than in the rough See also:ballads of the See also:people . The nature of the language here permits the full value of the corresponding vowel-sounds to be appreciated, whereas in English—and even in See also:German, where, however, a See also:great deal of assonant poetry exists—the divergence of the consonants easily veils or blunts the similarity of sound . Various German poets of high merit, and in particular See also:Tieck and See also:Heine, have endeavoured to obviate this difficulty, but with-out See also:complete success . Occasionally they endeavour, as English rhymers have done, to mix pure rhyme with assonance, but the result of this in almost all cases is that the assonances, &c., which make a less strenuous See also:appeal to the ear, are drowned and lost in the stress of the pure rhymes . Like alliteration, assonance is a very frequent and very effective ornament of See also:prose See also:style, but such correspondence in vowel-sound is usually accidental and involuntary, an instinctive employment of the skill of the writer . To introduce it with a purpose, as of course must be done in poetry, has always been held to be a most dangerous. practice in prose . Assonance as a conscious See also:art, in fact, is scarcely recognized as legitimate in English literature . (E . |
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