{"agent_id":"sully","agent_name":"James Sully","slug":"associationism","label":"Associationism: is the mind built up from elementary sensations by the laws of association?","topic":"Associationism","question":"Is the mind built up from elementary sensations by the laws of association?","position":"The mind is not furnished at birth with ready-made ideas; it is built up, out of the materials that sense supplies, by the great organizing principle of association. The infant begins with simple sensations and feelings; these, occurring together or in succession, cohere by contiguity, and the like calls up the like by similarity, until out of the elementary contents there grow perceptions, memories, trains of thought, the whole furniture of the developed mind. This is the tradition of Locke and Hume, of the Mills and of Bain, and I hold it because it explains, economically and without mysterious faculties, how experience makes the mind that has it. I do not deny the contribution of the nervous organization, nor the native dispositions the child brings; but the architecture of thought is raised by association working on the data of sense. Give me sensation and the laws by which sensations cohere and reproduce one another, and I will show you the growth of intelligence without recourse to innate ideas or to powers that explain by naming.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The mind is not furnished at birth with ready-made ideas; it is built up, out of the materials that sense supplies, by the great organizing principle of association.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The infant begins with simple sensations and feelings; these, occurring together or in succession, cohere by contiguity, and the like calls up the like by similarity, until out of the elementary contents there grow perceptions, memories, trains of thought, the whole furniture of the developed mind.","n":[]}],[{"t":"This is the tradition of Locke and Hume, of the Mills and of Bain, and I hold it because it explains, economically and without mysterious faculties, how experience makes the mind that has it.","n":[]},{"t":"I do not deny the contribution of the nervous organization, nor the native dispositions the child brings; but the architecture of thought is raised by association working on the data of sense.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Give me sensation and the laws by which sensations cohere and reproduce one another, and I will show you the growth of intelligence without recourse to innate ideas or to powers that explain by naming.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"The Human Mind: A Text-book of Psychology (2 vols., 1892); Outlines of Psychology (1884); Sensation and Intuition (1874). Reception: the displacement of associationism by Wundtian and structural experimental psychology; the Gestalt rejection of atomistic building-up (the whole prior to the parts); the behaviorist reworking of association as conditioning; the modern return of associative learning within a broader cognitive science.","works":["The Human Mind: A Text-book of Psychology (2 vols., 1892)","Outlines of Psychology (1884)","Sensation and Intuition (1874)"],"reception":"the displacement of associationism by Wundtian and structural experimental psychology; the Gestalt rejection of atomistic building-up (the whole prior to the parts); the behaviorist reworking of association as conditioning; the modern return of associative learning within a broader cognitive science.","status":"Associationism was the dominant British theory of mind for two centuries and Sully gave it its last full and graceful English statement, but it was displaced from several directions. Wundtian and Titchenerian experimentalism moved the science from the analysis of the cultivated adult mind into the laboratory; Gestalt psychology argued that organized wholes are prior to and not built from elements, so that the associative building-up misdescribes perception; behaviorism recast association as stimulus-response conditioning while rejecting the introspective frame. Yet association did not simply vanish: associative learning is a robust phenomenon, and connectionist and modern cognitive science have restored association within a richer architecture. Sully's specific elementarist associationism is superseded; the insight that experience organizes the mind by association survives, transformed.","era":"1842-1923","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Human Mind Vol 2","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Here, it is evident, the philosophical discussion encroached on the psychological domain; and, in truth, Locke, when seeking to show that the infant mind is not furnished with ready-made ideas of God, and so forth, is really psychologising.","label":"The Human Mind Vol 2"},{"n":2,"work":"The Human Mind Vol 2","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is noteworthy that Locke only speaks of association as explaining chance sequences of ideas as distinguished from the controlled processes of thought.1 A more important contribution to the doctrine of association was made by Hume, who distinguishes three laws, viz., resemblance, contiguity (in time or place), and cause arid effect.2 An important step was taken in the development of the doctrine of association…","label":"The Human Mind Vol 2"},{"n":3,"work":"Sensation and Intuition","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Possibly it may be seen, after a closer examination of the facts, that neither path of investigation really interferes with the other or renders the use of it superfluous. What, then, is the problem in the psychology of the individual mind?","label":"Sensation and Intuition"},{"n":4,"work":"The Human Mind Vol 1","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Now we are reminded of a presentation by some other pre- sentation (or image) which is somehow related to, connected with, or, as we commonly express it, ' associated ' with it. Thus it is plain that the events of our school-life are associated with the particular building which recalls them, and similarly the person with his name. Hence we speak of association as the second great condition of reproduction.","label":"The Human Mind Vol 1"},{"n":5,"work":"Sensation and Intuition","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Bat what is of iminediate nrgencj, is to know how the native capacities of the present and proximate generations may be made the most of, by the appliances of social restraint and stimulus. How far we still are from possessing the requisite psychological data for wise political action, may be seen by the fact that competent writers like Mr.","label":"Sensation and Intuition"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-psychology-of-illusion","label":"The psychology of illusion: is error continuous with normal cognition and revealing of it?"},{"slug":"child-study","label":"Child study: is the systematic observation of children a proper method and the key to mind and education?"},{"slug":"the-comic","label":"The comic: is laughter to be explained by a natural psychology of play and incongruity?"},{"slug":"pessimism","label":"Pessimism: does philosophical pessimism survive a sober empirical psychology of pleasure and pain?"}]}