There are two roles that association played in 18th–19th century associationism. The first dominates modern understanding of the history of the concept: association is a causal link posited to explain why ideas come in the sequence they do. The second has been ignored: association is merely regularity in the trains of thought, and the target of explanation. The view of association as regularity arose in several forms throughout the tradition, but Thomas Brown (1778–1820) makes the distinction explicit. He argues (...) that there is no associative link, and association is mere sequence. I trace this view of association through the tradition, and consider its implications: Brown's views, in particular, motivate a rethinking of the associationist tradition in psychology. Associationism was a project united by a shared explanandum phenomenon, rather than a theory united by a shared theoretical posit. (shrink)

It is often argued that if one holds a liberal political philosophy about individual rights against the state and the community, then one cannot consistently say that a state that violates those principles is owed the right of noninterference. How could the rights of the collective trump the rights of individuals in a liberal view? I believe that this debate calls for more reflection, on the relation between liberalism and individualism. I will sketch a conception of liberalism in which there (...) is nothing awkward about saying that associations, as such, have some moral rights to noninterference. If liberal associationism is compelling in general terms then, if states can be shown to be associations in the relevant respects, then liberalism itself will supply the moral basis for a right of that kind, held by a state or people as such, to nonintervention. (shrink)

Although best known as a philosopher and political theorist, John Stuart Mill made important contributions to psychology as well. In this he followed his father, James Mill, whose two‐volume Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) relied upon and updated the “associationist” research program initiated by John Locke and further developed by Dr. David Hartley and David Hume, among others. The Mills pere et fils shared an abiding interest in how human character is formed (and too often deformed) (...) along associationist lines. The elder Mill couched this in “educational” terms, and his son in “ethological” ones. J.S. Mill's new science of Ethology, or character‐formation differed in important respects from his father's theory. The most significant of these was that James Mill held that an individual can play no part in the formation of his own character, while his son disagreed vehemently. Here I trace the sources and implications of this disagreement. (shrink)

What can the success of modern AI tell us about how humans learn? This paper argues that taking AI seriously as a model of human learning supports a modest but genuine associationism. The central finding is that supervised learning—learning driven by evaluative feedback—underlies a surprisingly wide range of contemporary AI systems, from large language models to game-playing agents, differing primarily in how much work is required to generate the relevant feedback signal. This vindicates associationist ideals of a uniform, gradual, (...) error-driven learning mechanism operating across domains, and defuses the once-influential argument that associationist mechanisms are too limited to account for human cognitive capacities. At the same time, the successes of deep learning depend on computational architectures that go well beyond anything classical associationists envisaged, and supervised learning operates within these as one component rather than a complete account of learning. (shrink)

This article compares early nineteenth-century English and Scottish theories of the mind and the way that it develops to findings in today's developmental psychology and neuroscience through a close observation of the work of Elizabeth Hamilton. Hamilton was a Scottish writer and philosopher who produced three pedagogical works in her lifetime, consisting of her carefully formulated philosophy of mind and practical suggestions to caretakers and educators. Although Hamilton has received relatively little attention in modern philosophical literature, her understanding of the (...) mind and the way it develops—based on her nuanced understanding of associationism and Scottish faculty psychology—is overwhelmingly supported by empirical findings today. In addition to utilizing Hamilton's work for the sake of understanding early nineteenth-century philosophy of mind, I argue that a large portion of Hamilton's work should be used to inform future research programs, early caregiving guides, and educational methods. (shrink)

Associationism can be broadly defined as a school of thought in philosophy and psychology that holds that mental activity can be accounted for by processes that combine simple elements or ideas. More than a century ago, scientific psychology started taking measurements of word associations, and only a few years later, word associations became a major research tool in psychiatry. With the advent of neurobiology and the discovery of the neuron, the term association came to denote physical connections between cells (...) or parts of the brain. The resulting ambiguity made the concept highly fruitful and at the same time introduced the risk of committing categorical mistakes and of engaging in unfounded speculation, since little was known about the actual functioning of neurons. In modern cognitive neuroscience, computational models provide the critically needed link between the psychological and the biological approaches. The concept of association, with its biological, psychological, and computational connotations, provides the framework needed for further experimental research. Its potential for contributing to our understanding of psychopathology can hardly be overestimated. (shrink)

The ability to predict is the most importantability of the brain. Somehow, the cortex isable to extract regularities from theenvironment and use those regularities as abasis for prediction. This is a most remarkableskill, considering that behaviourallysignificant environmental regularities are noteasy to discern: they operate not only betweenpairs of simple environmental conditions, astraditional associationism has assumed, butamong complex functions of conditions that areorders of complexity removed from raw sensoryinputs. We propose that the brain's basicmechanism for discovering such complexregularities is implemented (...) in the dendritictrees of individual pyramidal cells in thecerebral cortex. Pyramidal cells have 5–8principal dendrites, each of which is capableof learning nonlinear input-to-outputtransfer functions. We propose that eachdendrite is trained, in learning its transferfunction, by all the other principal dendritesof the same cell. These dendrites teach eachother to respond to their separate inputs with matching outputs. Exposed to differentbut related information about the sensoryenvironment, principal dendrites of the samecell tune to functions over environmentalconditions that, while different, are correlated . As a result, the cell as awhole tunes to the source of the regularitiesdiscovered by the cooperating dendrites,creating a new representation. When organizedinto feed-forward/feedback layers, pyramidalcells can build their discoveries on thediscoveries of other cells, graduallyuncovering nature's hidden order. Theresulting associative network is powerfulenough to meet a troubling traditionalobjection to associationism: that it is toosimple an architecture to implement rationalprocesses. (shrink)

Association dominated theorizing about the mind in the English-speaking world from the early eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth and remained an important concept into the twenty-first. This endurance across centuries and intellectual traditions means that it has manifested in many different ways in different views of mind. This article traces associationist themes as they developed over the years by presenting the views of central historical figures in each era, focusing specifically on their conception of the associative relation and how it (...) operates in the mind. (shrink)

This chapter begins with the intellectual formation of John Stuart Mill, friend and mentor of Alexander Bain (1818–1903). It presents the case for thinking that, despite his lifelong residence in England, Mill is properly regarded as an inheritor of one important strand in the Scottish philosophical tradition, namely the positivistic naturalism of David Hume. Mill valued Bain’s comments on his System of Logic, and the high regard he placed on Bain’s early psychological work, led him to play a key part (...) in Bain’s appointment to the Chair of Logic in the amalgamated University of Aberdeen (1860), despite strenuous opposition. This chapter explores Bain’s seminal contributions to the foundation of physiologically based psychology, as well as his founding of the subsequently internally acclaimed journal Mind. The chapter interprets Bain as the principal mature exponent of an alternative non-Reidian, non-metaphysical version of the ‘science of mind’. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley, while not alone in securing idealism its standing in British thought for several generations of philosophers, was by far the ablest exponent of the position. He was by far the ablest critic, too, of the “school of experience,” the empiricist philosophers. In particular, he criticized the doctrines of the associationist psychology of Hume, Hartley, and the Mills. This criticism was metaphysically based, arguing that the psychology was inadequate because of its “atomism,” that is, because it presupposed an (...) inadequate account of relations. Bradley proposed an alternative account of relations that led to a very different view of such psychological phenomena as inference. Since there were many controversies internal to introspective psychology concerning the status of relations, Bradley’s views can be seen as part of a movement that eventually forced the science to deal more adequately with relational facts. Nonetheless, Bradley’s metaphysics was decidedly antiempiricist, and was in the end antagonistic to the idea that an empirical science could provide any ultimate sort of explanation of human being. In that respect, Bradley’s critique stood apart from those that were internal to the science. (shrink)

Locke confines ”sensitive knowledge” to objects we presently perceive or that we remember perceiving. Hume's causal theory of assurance, the claim that the relation of causation extends assurance beyond memory and present perception, is a constructive attempt to remedy this severe limitation in the scope of Locke's third degree of knowledge. Throughout Part iii and well into Part iv of Book I, Hume endorses causal inference and also distinctions among degrees of probabilistic evidence. As even Beattie recognized, Hume is not (...) advancing the skeptical problem of induction in Treatise I.iii.6; rather, Hume's objective is to show that inferences about unobserved causes and effects of objects that have been perceived are due to a faculty of association, not to ”reason” construed as a nonassociative faculty. Distinctions between justified inferences and unjustified ones are in turn drawn within the imagination or faculty of association. (shrink)

Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the basic notions of cognitive science. Together with previous challenges against associationism, the target article should be viewed as a call to arms to re-evaluate the empirical basis for contemporary conceptualizations of human learning and the notion of a concept that has become too imprecise for describing the elements of cognition.

Humans, including preschool children, exhibit role-based relational reasoning, of which analogical reasoning is a canonical example. The connectionist model proposed in the target article is only capable of conditional paired-associate learning.

We agree with Jones & Love (J&L) that much of Bayesian modeling has taken a fundamentalist approach to cognition; but we do not believe in the potential of Bayesianism to provide insights into psychological processes. We discuss the advantages of associative explanations over Bayesian approaches to causal induction, and argue that Bayesian models have added little to our understanding of human causal reasoning.

That every response is also a stimulus has important implications for how we characterize the private experiences of both people and non-human animals. Acting as stimuli, responses, whether covert or overt, change the probability of subsequent responses. Hence, all behavior, covert and overt, is necessarily associative in some sense, and thinking may be characterized as “covert autochaining.” According to this view, animals capable of responding to temporally remote stimuli and to characteristics of their own bodies necessarily engage in some form (...) of associative thinking. This characterization of thinking necessarily presumes that private behavioral events adhere to at least some processes that occur in — and have been extensively studied in — overt behavior. To assume otherwise, as do Daniel Dennett, Robert Nozick, and others, is to be unnecessarily pessimistic both about the robustness of evolutionary processes and about our ability to explain complex human phenomena in rigorous empirical terms. (shrink)

I challenge the dominant understanding of what it means to say two thoughts are associated. The two views that dominate the current literature treat association as a kind of mechanism that drives sequences of thought. The first, which I call reductive associationism, treats association as a kind of neural mechanism. The second treats association as a feature of the kind of psychological mechanism associative processing. Both of these views are inadequate. I argue that association should instead be seen as (...) a highly abstract filler term, standing in for causal relations between representational states in a system. Associations, so viewed, could be implemented by many different mechanisms. I outline the role that this view gives associative models as part of a top-down characterization of psychological processes of any kind and of any complexity. (shrink)

A number of studies have investigated how immersion in a virtual reality environment can affect participants’ implicit biases. These studies presume associationism about implicit bias. Recently philosophers have argued that associationism is inadequate and have made a case for understanding implicit biases propositionally. However, no propositionalist has considered the empirical work on virtual reality and how to integrate it into their theories. I examine this work against a propositionalist background, in particular, looking at the belief and patchy endorsement (...) models. I argue that the results therein can only be accommodated by a model which recognizes structural heterogeneity, that is, one which allows for implicit biases being both associatively and non-associatively structured. My preferred view – that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings – allows for this, as well as for heterogeneity at the level of content (propositional and imagistic), a feature which also earn its explanatory keep in this context. I conclude that empirical work on virtual reality and implicit bias gives us a reason to prefer a pluralist model of bias, and that my unconscious imagination model, in its recognizing wide-ranging heterogeneity, is uniquely placed to accommodate the results of work on virtual reality and bias mitigation. (shrink)

Recent developments in cognitive science provide compelling leads that need to be interpreted and synthesized within the context of semiotic and biosemiotic principles. To this end, we examine the impact of the mind-body unity on the sorts of choices that an organism is predisposed to making from its Umwelt. In multicellular organisms with brains, the relationship that an organism has with its Umwelt impacts on neural plasticity, the functional specialisations that develop within the brain, and its behaviour. Clinical observations, such (...) as those recorded by Norman Doidge, as well as historical observations from outside the field of semiotics (Plato, Aristotle, Hume) shed further light on this process, and serve to further substantiate our semiotic and biosemiotic paradigm. Our analysis develops a rather limited associationism (with reference to Peirce’s categories) into a more general and robust interpretation that is applicable to all mind-bodies, whether they be neurons, paramecia and amoebae, or humans, cats and dogs. Biosemiotics is a more universal semiotics that takes us beyond the confines of anthropocentrism, because it recognizes the role of the body in shaping Mind. (shrink)

This paper sketches a recently emerging divide between two interpretations of Hume's methodology and philosophy of science. On the first interpretation Hume relies on an inductive methodology and provides a (Newtonian) dynamic theory of the mind, and his philosophy of science reflects this methodology. On the second, Hume relies on inferences to the best explanation via comparative analysis of instances, and offers an anatomy of the mind relying on a chemical and organic imagery. The paper also aspires to lean the (...) reader's sympathies toward the latter interpretation while outlining some of its potential consequences for the character of Hume's psychology, the limits of associationism, and his empiricism. (shrink)

Moral Internalism is the claim that it is a priori that moral beliefs are reasons for action. At least three conceptions of 'reason' may be disambiguated: psychological, epistemological, and purely ethical. The first two conceptions of Internalism are false on conceptual, and indeed empirical, grounds. On a purely ethical conception of 'reasons', the claim is true but is an Externalist claim. Positive arguments for Internalism — from phenomenology, connection and oddness — are found wanting. Three possible responses to the stock (...) Externalist objections are uncovered and overturned. In so doing a close relation between Internalism and Behaviourism is revealed, and some stock anti-behaviouristic arguments are co-opted for Externalism. The likely dependence of Internalism on an Atomistic Associationism is uncovered and criticised. Internalism is seen as being ultimately a type of Ethical Determinism. Finally, a sketch of an Anti-Associative Externalism is given whereby the notion of self determination of action is put forward as an account of moral motivation fit to resist both the internalist and the belief-desire psychology premises of the stock non-cognitivist argument. (shrink)

Despite its long period of dominance, the details of associationism as developed by the British Empiricists in the 18th and 19th centuries are often ignored or forgotten today. Perhaps as a result, modern understandings of Empiricist associationism are often oversimplified. In fact, there is no single core view that can be viewed as definitional, or even weaker, as characteristic, of the tradition. The actual views of associationists in this tradition are much more diverse than any such view would (...) allow, even on fundamental aspects of the concept of association. This paper presents some of the most striking theoretical diversity and most significant discussions within the Empiricist associationist tradition. Recognizing this diversity, Empiricist associationism is best viewed as a project with shared questions and methods rather than a shared substantive theory of mind. This discussion can inform our understanding of the historical tradition, and also inform our current use of association and associationism. The concept of association is more flexible than it is often treated, and even its basic nature and function remain up for debate. (shrink)

Theoretical philosophy in the early years of the nineteenth century was dominated by the debate between the English school of sensationalist associationism and the Scottish school of common sense, which rivalry had developed through the eighteenth century and was still playing out. We can get a sense of this rivalry at the beginning of the century by looking at its two chief figures, Dugald Stewart and James Mill. That these two schools were not always quite so far apart as (...) they themselves thought is demonstrated by examining the philosophy of Thomas Brown who attempted a species of synthesis between them. To finish, the chapter further illuminates the state of theoretical philosophy in the early years of the nineteenth century by examining how the metaphysical notion of causation was treated by three different philosophers, Thomas Brown, Willian Hamilton, and Mary Shepherd. (shrink)

Hume is customarily taken to argue for scepticism about causal inference in Book 1, Part 3, Section 6 of the _Treatise_. And he does raise something like the problem of induction in the Conclusion of Book 1. But as David Owen has argued, his concern in Section 6 of Part 3 is the very different one of providing the negative component of his argument for his associationist psychology of causal inference. This pivotal argument explicitly assumes that causal inference is justifying. (...) So Hume cannot adopt scepticism about causal inference without losing his basis for associationism. It is argued that the reliability interpretation can contribute to an explanation of certain aspects of Hume’s argument. (shrink)

In Book 1 of the _Treatise_ Hume proposes an associative psychology of causal inference that reassigns that operation from its traditional place in the domain of knowledge to a new position in the domain of opinion or probability. This associationism suggests the sceptical consequence that the epistemic status of causal inference is wholly inferior to the status traditionally ascribed to it. Such an implausible consequence would undermine the psychology. It is proposed here that Hume defends his psychology from this (...) threat by developing an epistemology that affords a favourable comparison of causal inference and demonstration. On this epistemology, these operations share an epistemic status, justified belief. The epistemology imposes constraints on an account of justified belief. It is argued that the reliability account of justified belief may meet these constraints, whereas epistemological empiricism does not. (shrink)

The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified. In this paper, I distinguish between different understandings of association, and I argue that the crucial senses of association for elucidating implicit bias are the cognitive structure and mental process senses. A hypothesis is subsequently derived: if associations really underpin implicit biases, then implicit biases should be modulated by counterconditioning (...) or extinction but should not be modulated by rational argumentation or logical interventions. This hypothesis is false; implicit biases are not predicated on any associative structures or associative processes but instead arise because of unconscious propositionally structured beliefs. I conclude by discussing how the case study of implicit bias illuminates problems with popular dual-process models of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links (...) and transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

El contrato social es fruto del consenso. Rastreamos las diferencias y similitudes de los autores modernos al proponer la sumisión de los intereses particulares -que no diversos- al bien común, así como la necesidad de restricción institucional de los derechos asegurados con el pacto. Las apelaciones contemporáneas a una libertad positiva irrestricta por parte de corrientes supuestamente sucesoras del liberalismo pasan por una homogenización emocional y (neuro)cognitiva, facilitada por los procesos de socialización digital que hiperboliza el yo a la vez (...) que limita la singularidad individual y, a la vez, fomentan el populismo tribal y la intolerancia, poniendo en riesgo la democracia o las formas políticas. Planteamos la recuperación de la política como diálogo o la apuesta por posiciones ontológicas inestables que, en su inmanencia, aprendan a vivir en diferencia. (shrink)

『도덕과 입법의 원칙에 대한 서론』에서 벤담은 인간의 마음을 의식, 무의식, 허위의식이라는 세 상태로 분류한다. 이 삼원구도는 위법 행위의 모든 유형을 입법자에게 제공하고자 했던 벤담의 실험적 과업에 활용되는데, 책 전체를 통해 딱 세 번 등장한다. 흥미롭게도 세 번의 등장은 행동, 성향, 법(규칙)이라는 상이한 맥락에서 발생하는데, 이 맥락들은 책 전체의 논증 구조를 이룸과 동시에 새로운 입법과학에 대한 저자의 방법론적 성찰을 투영한다. 입법자를 위한 위법 행위의 목록을 제시하겠다는 실천적 목표는 입법과학의 올바른 방법론에 대한 고민을 수반하지 않을 수 없다. 이러한 고민의 결과물이 의식-무의식-허위의식이라는 삼원구도의 (...) 발명이다. 본 논문은 이 삼원구도의 맥락적 의미와 기능을 통해 벤담의 무의식 개념을 규명하였다. 마땅히 존재해야 할 의식의 부재는 의도성의 영(zero)도에서 행동의 발생 과정을 원천적으로 재검토하는 기회를 제공한다는 것이 본 논문의 최종 결론이다. (shrink)

This paper is in honour of Prof. Swapan Seal, a mentor and inspiration who asked me to write on Biographia Literaria. -/- "In an age of Artificial Intelligence which currently operates on the level of "Fancy" (aggregating and predicting based on "fixities and definites" of large datasets), Coleridge’s distinction becomes crucially important. Can a machine possess the "Secondary Imagination"? Can it "dissolve and diffuse" to create a new "I AM"? Or is it forever trapped in the Associationism of algorithms? (...) Coleridge’s Biographia asserts that to be human is to be a creator, an echo of the infinite. It challenges the reductionist tendencies of modern science (Ryle’s machine) by insisting on the "ghost" of subjectivity. It challenges the skepticism of deconstruction (de Man) by offering a faith in the unified symbol. As a prototype for understanding the human psyche, it stands as a monument to the belief that the mind is not a mirror of nature, but a lamp that illuminates it." . (shrink)

Cet article donne un aperçu sur les études et recherches menées et coordonnées par l’auteur sur le phénomène italien des associations de personnes handicapées et parents de personnes handicapées à travers une analyse socio-historique, d’une part, et pédagogique d’autre part. À travers une étude qui conjugue éléments historiques et données quantitatives et qualitatives, la recherche met en évidence le rôle d’advocacy joué par les associations depuis leur constitution et leur contribution aux événements historiques et politiques qui ont ouvert, à partir (...) des années 1970, la voie italienne de l’intégration scolaire et sociale. Ainsi, il apparaît que les associations familiales ont contribué au développement civique et au changement sociopolitique du pays tout entier. Le regard pédagogique avec lequel on analyse le phénomène associatif est aussi partie prenante du processus culturel qui valorise la parentalité et permet de surmonter les préjugés qu’une certaine littérature, de nature sociologique et psycho-dynamique, avait généré sur les familles des personnes handicapées. De cette façon, on saisit la contribution fondamentale des associations tant dans la réorganisation des services que dans la réalisation d’espaces d’accueil, d’enrichissement relationnel, de stimulation culturelle et organisationnelle et dans le développement et la promotion du processus d’intégration des personnes handicapées. Si le rôle de sujet promoteur de sens civique et innovateur de projets pour la société toute entière se révèle à partir des besoins de ces dernières, le monde associatif traverse actuellement un moment d’évolution de son organisation interne dû aux récentes politiques de prévention sociale qui imposent d’autres recherches et réflexions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

What happens to a mind that embraces skepticism? On familiar classical and contemporary accounts, it suspends judgment about the matters skepticism calls into question. For Hume, such suspension can occur only temporarily. He claims that skepticism's more enduring effect is weaker: it lowers the vivacity of, and thus our confidence in, beliefs, typically leaving commonplace ones intact. Hume's associationism offers at least two explanatory mechanisms for this effect, one doxastic and one emotional. In the doxastic mechanism, causal reasoning about (...) our failures in reasoning decreases the vivacity of beliefs formed through reasoning. In the emotional mechanism, appreciating our cognitive failures diminishes certain passions, and with them the vivacity of beliefs otherwise augmented by those passions, especially pride. Understanding these mechanisms not only resolves exegetical puzzles about Hume's apparently flippant attitudes toward skepticism, but also provides a psychologically rich picture of how minds might self-correct without exaggeration. (shrink)

_The Philosophy of Mind_ remains the only sourcebook of primary readings offering in-depth coverage of both historical works and contemporary controversies in philosophy of mind. This second edition provides expanded treatment of classical as well as current topics, with many additional readings and a new section on mental content. The writers included range from Aristotle, Descartes, and William James to such leading contemporary thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and Jaegwon Kim. The 83 selections provide a thorough survey (...) of five areas of enduring controversy: the mind-body problem, mental causation, mental content, innatism and modularity, and associationism and connectionism. Each section includes an introductory overview of the topic by the editors as well as suggestions for further reading. The selections added for the second edition serve both to enhance historical coverage and to update contemporary issues, especially in areas of current empirical research such as connectionism and innatism. Changes to historical coverage include a wider array of readings on classic positions as well as neglected precursors to views often considered recent innovations. The section on the mind-body problem in particular has been greatly expanded, including numerous selections on consciousness and phenomenal qualities (qualia). The book is ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy and the history of psychology and will be useful both as a reference for researchers and a self-contained survey for the general reader. (shrink)

Yoshimi has attempted to defuse my argument concerning the identification of network abstraction with empiricist abstraction - thus entailing psychologism - by claiming that the argument does not generalize from the example of simple feed-forward networks. I show that the particular details of networks are logically irrelevant to the nature of the abstractive process they employ. This is ultimately because deep artificial neural networks (ANNs) and dynamical systems theory applied to the mind (DST) are both associationisms - that is, empiricist (...) theories that derive the principles of thought from the causal history of the organism/system. On this basis, I put forward a new aspect of the old argument by noting that ANNs & DST are the causal bases of the phenomena of passive synthesis, whereas the language of thought hypothesis (LOT) and the symbolic computational theory of mind (CTM) are the causal bases of the phenomena of active synthesis. If the phenomena of active synthesis are not distinct in kind from and are thus reducible to those of passive synthesis, psychologism results. Yoshimi’s program, insofar as it denies this fundamental phenomenological distinction, is revealed to be the true anti-pluralist program, by essentially denying the causal efficacy of the mechanistic foundations of active synthesis by referring phenomenology exclusively to associationism for its causal foundation. (shrink)

This paper discusses possible forms of loss or weakness of the ability to interact with others and the ways in which this arises. In particular, in the context of socio-affective knowledge and related failures, it focuses on certain deficits that primarily involve the body. The article aims to show that the “destiny” of our inner drives and our lives—the specific solutions to which they are forced in their vicissitudes—is less “blind” than it appears, leaving (albeit minimal) margins of escape, also (...) because it has a relational connotation. Starting from Bernhard Waldenfels’s recent work on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in which this question is addressed from a phenomenological-responsive point of view, this article reflects on the problem by establishing a comparison between Waldenfels’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s phenomenology of values. Beyond the differences that their approaches to the problem of relational deficits present, Waldenfels and Scheler can be put in fruitful dialogue with each other, starting from their common interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. Within this framework, it is possible to evaluate, adopting Scheler’s point of view, both a methodological aspect and a psychological presupposition of Freud’s ontogenesis of sympathy and love: associationism. From this perspective, Freud reveals himself in part as an heir to British empiricism. I will argue that, with and beyond Freud, the human being is not reducible to a mere sum of blind sensations or blind drives and that for both at least certain forms of inability to interact with others are derivative—deformations of normal responsivity and aberrations of normal pulsional-(relational) life—rather than originary phenomena. (shrink)

This paper applies David Hume’s theory of human nature to analyse addiction as a habit formed through repeated associations between sensory impressions (e.g., substance use) and emotional rewards (e.g., pleasure), driven by passions rather than reason. Drawing from A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740) and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), we argue that addiction, as a Humean habit, is sustained by custom but amenable to change through new experiences. We suggest that addiction treatment can utilise Hume’s insights by targeting (...) these associative chains. Two psychological theories align with Hume’s theory of nature. Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) disrupts maladaptive patterns by introducing coping strategies, while Contingency Management rewards abstinence with incentives, forging alternative emotional pathways. This approach highlights the plasticity of habits within Hume’s empiricism. We address three objections: first, that Hume’s determinism negates agency, was countered by his view of habits as modifiable; second, that neuroscience overshadows Hume’s associationism, resolved by their shared emphasis on repetition and reward; and third, that Hume oversimplifies addiction, mitigated by integrating his theory into a biopsychosocial framework. By synthesising Hume’s philosophy of human nature with modern therapies, this paper offers a novel perspective on addiction as a habit transformable through the principles that create it, bridging eighteenth-century empiricism and contemporary psychology. (shrink)

The paper is dedicated to particular cases of interaction and mutual impact of philosophy and cognitive science. Thus, philosophical preconditions in the middle of the 20th century shaped the newly born cognitive science as mainly based on conceptual and propositional representations and syntactical inference. Further developments towards neural networks and statistical representations did not change the prejudice much: many still believe that network models must be complemented with some extra tools that would account for proper human cognitive traits. I address (...) some real implemented connectionist models that show how ‘new associationism ’ of the neural network approach may not only surpass Humean limitations, but, as well, realistically explain abstraction, inference and prediction. Then I stay on Predictive Processing theories in a little more detail to demonstrate that sophisticated statistical tools applied to a biologically realist ontology may not only provide solutions to scientific problems or integrate different cognitive paradigms but propose some philosophical insights either. To conclude, I touch on a certain parallelism of Predictive Processing and philosophical inferentialism as presented by Robert Brandom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXII, Number 1, April 1996, pp. 23-48 Fantastick Associations and Addictive General Rules: A Fundamental Difference between Hutcheson and Hume MICHAEL B. GILL The belief that God created human beings for some moral purpose underlies nearly all the moral philosophy written in Great Britain in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. David Hume attacks this theological conception of human nature on all fronts. It is out (...) of these attacks that Hume develops his own "science of man" based solely on "experience and observation."1 Francis Hutcheson is often taken to be the most important positive influence on Hume. And there can be no doubt that Hume does take on board several crucial Hutchesonian elements. But Hutcheson's moral theory, like that of most of his contemporaries, is grounded in a theological conception of human nature to which Hume is adamantly opposed.2 In this paper I will examine how Hume's disagreements with Hutcheson embody the anti-theological purpose that defines Hume's work as a whole. I will look, in particular, at Hume's and Hutcheson's different positions on the principles of association. I hope to show how Hume's use of these principles in the Treatise advances his larger goal of placing "the science of man" on "a foundation almost entirely new" (T xvi). I will proceed, first, by explaining Hutcheson's conception of human nature and his use of the principles of association; second, by sketching in broad outline how Hume's accounts of the origins of justice and natural virtue undermine crucial components of Hutcheson's conception of human nature; and third, by elucidating in more detail an aspect of Hume's associationism that is particularly revealing of his distance from Hutcheson. Michael B. Gill is at the Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, 1360 Liberal Arts and Education Building, West Lafayette IN 47907 USA. email: [email protected]. 24 Michael B. Gill I. Hutcheson and Association Hutcheson discusses the mind's tendency to associate in all of his writings, but his most extensive treatment of the matter comes in his Essay on the Passions.3 Hutcheson begins the Essay by telling us that something is good if and only if the perception of it "Causes, or Occasions" a pleasurable feeling, and that something is evil if and only if the perception of it causes or occasions a painful feeling (EP 2). Crucially, Hutcheson denies that all of our pleasures and pains are of the same type (EP 1-8).4 He holds, rather, that there are at least five distinct types of pleasures and pains and that each of them grounds a different irreducible type of good and evil. There are, first, the pleasures and pains caused by things we perceive through the external senses of taste, touch, smell, etc.; things that cause such pleasures are called naturally good, while things that cause such pains are called naturally evil. Second, there are the "Pleasant Perceptions, arising from regular, harmonious, uniform Objects" (EP 5); the things that cause these pleasures are called beautiful.5 Third, there are the pleasures and pains we feel upon perceiving the happiness or misery of other human beings; the things that cause these pleasures are called public goods while those that cause the corresponding pains are called public evils. Fourth, there are pleasures and pains, usually called approval and disapproval, that we feel upon perceiving the actions of others; the actions that cause approval are called virtuous or morally good, while those that cause disapproval are called vicious or morally evil. Finally, there are the pleasures and pains we feel upon perceiving others' moral perceptions of our own actions; the pleasure of perceiving others' approval of one's actions is called the feeling of honor, while the pain of perceiving others' disapproval is called the feeling of shame. For Hutcheson, then, natural goodness, beauty, the public good, virtue and honor are all defined by our pleasures and pains. He does not think, however, that these are defined by just any of our actual or occurrent pleasures and pains. He holds, rather, that they are defined by the pleasures and pains we feel under certain privileged... (shrink)

The evidence shows that productivity is fundamental to cognition and phenomenology. Productivity requires an expandable memory, a necessary condition on Turing-completeness (or universal computation). Neural nets and dynamic systems are thought to be necessarily incapable of Turing-completeness due to structural instability, so that they are impossible to build or find in nature. Therefore if phenomenology is evidence for anything in nature, outside of the "epoché", it is evidence, first and foremost, for the language of thought. That is because the language (...) of thought can trivially recruit memory as needed for productivity, which is an eidetic phenomenological law. Neuroscience is starting to gather evidence for the possibility that a productive symbolic system exists, not between associated neurons, but inside of them, via molecular machinery. This machinery and its symbolic operations have the potential to explain transcendental phenomenology, as it goes beyond associationism, empiricism and their resultant psychologism. Just as Mendel explained Darwin’s descent taxonomics, so emerging neuroscience might finally explain Husserl’s cognitive taxonomics, setting the stage for a new synthesis in cognitive science. (shrink)

Hume once argued the basic science to be not physics but “the science of man” and the foundation of this science to be the empiricist mechanism of association governed by the law of similarity in appearance—now more popular than ever in the form of artificial neural networks. I update Hume’s picture by showing phenomenology to be centrally concerned with providing a unifying basis for all the sciences (including physics) by going beyond the psychology of associationism (passive synthesis) to reveal (...) phenomena that are irreducibly syntactic (not associative) in structure. I therefore argue that the language of thought (LOT) is the necessary mechanism at the basis of these descriptive phenomena. I conclude by sketching a new picture of all the sciences unified by LOT based on Husserl’s opposition to Galilean “physicomathematical” science vis-à-vis the life-world (Lebenswelt). (shrink)

L’opinion est souvent exprimée que Bradley fut un des tout premiers critiques du psychologisme. Dans cet article, j’examine cette thèse en me penchant principalement sur ses Principles of Logic . Je définis le psychologisme au sens étroit comme une thèse portant sur les fondements de la logique, et le psychologisme au sens large comme une thèse plus générale en théorie de la connaissance pour montrer que Bradley a rejeté les deux, même s’il n’avait pas grand chose à dire sur la (...) version étroite. Sa critique de l’autre version est basée sur une distinction entre contenu psychologique et contenu logique, et sur sa défense de la thèse de l’idéalité du contenu logique, avant Frege et Husserl. Cependant, il tient encore à l’idée que le contenu logique provient de la perception. Après une brève présentation de ses critiques de la psychologie associationniste, je montre qu’il fait face à de véritables difficultés en essayant d’éviter de retomber dans le psychologisme en faisant appel à la distinction entre universel abstrait et universel concret. Je termine avec quelques remarques sur la place de Bradley dans l’histoire de la psychologie britannique.One often hears the opinion voiced that Bradley was an early critique of psychologism. In this paper, I investigate that claim, focussing on his Principles of Logic . I define psychologism in the narrow sense as a thesis pertaining to the foundations of logic, and psychologism in the wide sense as a more general thesis concerning the theory of knowledge, and show that Bradley rejected both, although he had little to say on the narrow version. His criticism of the wider version is based on his distinguishing between psychological and logical content and on his defence of the ideality of logical content, before Frege and Husserl. Nevertheless, he still hung to the idea that the latter harks back to ordinary perception. I then review briefly his criticisms of associationism in psychology, to show that he faced some difficulties in trying to avoid lapsing back into psychologism, with an appeal to a distinction between abstract and concrete universals. I conclude with some remarks on the palace of Bradley in the history of British psychology. (shrink)