A SUGGESTED CLASSIFICATION OF CASES OF ASSOCIATION.
THE discussion of that underlying fact of consciousness, popularly known as the "Association of Ideas," has usually centred in a classification of the kinds of association. The ordinary division into "Association by Contiguity" and "Association by Similarity" involves such misconceptions and makes such false assumptions that there is a growing tendency to reject it in favor of one more accurate and more discriminating.
The most fundamental error of the ordinary classification is a sort of "prophecy after the event." The connection between one object of my consciousness and a succeeding one cannot be explained by their contiguity since, as objects of my consciousness, they cannot be said to be contiguous until they have succeeded one another, that is, until the association is already a fact. In the same sense, objects of consciousness cannot be associated by their similarity, since similarity can be predicated of them only when the association is already accomplished.[1]
In fact, this classification involves either a consistent restriction of psychology to the standpoint of common realism and a restriction of association, as Dr. James says, to things not to thoughts; or it involves the baseless assumption of the Associationists and of the Herbartians, that states of consciousness are psychic entities, that they have an independent existence and may be revived.
The Associationist doctrine has been so thoroughly discussed that one need not defend oneself for rejecting, at the outset, a theory which directly contradicts the testimony of consciousness and makes assumptions which it never recognizes. The opposite theory which treats association as a connection of material
- ↑ Cf. for admirable and extended criticism of these "laws," F. H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, Bk. II., Pt. II., c. 1. Cf. also Ward, Enc. Brit., XX., p. 60; and W. James, Psychology, I., p. 591 seq.
