- Associationism
Associationism in philosophy refers to the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one state with its successor states. The idea is first recorded in
Plato andAristotle , especially with regard to the succession of memories. Members of the principally British "Associationist School", includingJohn Locke ,David Hume ,James Mill , andJohn Stuart Mill , asserted that the principle applied to all or most mental processes. Later members of the school developed very specific principles specifying how associations worked and even a physiological mechanism bearing no resemblance to modernneurophysiology . For a much fuller explanation of the intellectual history of associationism and the "Associationist School", seeAssociation of Ideas , an edited version of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article of the same name.Some of the ideas of the Associationist School anticipated behaviorist psychology, especially the idea of
conditioning .Fact|date=September 2007In social theory
In the early
history of socialism , associationism was one term used by early-nineteenth-century followers of theutopia n theories of such thinkers asRobert Owen ,Claude Henri de Saint-Simon , andCharles Fourier to describe their beliefs.Fact|date=October 2007ee also
*
Association (psychology)
*Conditioning
*Connectionism
*Thorndike External links
* [http://www.rc.umd.edu/cstahmer/cogsci/index.html Pre-History of Cognitive Science] .
* [http://www.archive.org/details/historyoftheasso007979mbp Howard C. Warren, A History Of The Association Psychology, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
