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Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomena. It is used mostly in the history of philosophy and of psychology. One idea was thought to follow another in consciousness if it were associated by some principle. The three commonly asserted principles of association were similarity, contiguity, and contrast, numerous others had been added by the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century physiological psychology was so altering the approach to this subject that much of the older associationist theory was rejected. Everyday observation of the association of one idea or memory with another gives a face validity to the notion. In addition, the notion of association between ideas and behavior gave some early impetus to behaviorist thinking. The core ideas of associationist thinking recur in some recent thought on cognition, especially consciousness. ==Early theory== The associationist theory is anticipated in Plato's ''Phaedo'', as part of the doctrine of anamnesis. The idea of Simmias is recalled by the picture of Simmias (similarity) and that of a friend by the sight of the lyre on which he played (contiguity). But Aristotle is credited with originating associationist thinking based on this passage: The passage is obscure, but it does at all events indicate the various principles commonly termed contiguity, similarity, and contrast. Similar principles are stated by Zeno the Stoic, by Epicurus (see ''Diogenes Laertius'' vii. § 52, x. § 32), and by St Augustine of Hippo (''Confessions'', x. c. 19). Aristotle's doctrine received a more or less intelligent expansion and illustration from the ancient commentators and the schoolmen, and in the still later period of transition from the age of scholasticism to the more modern philosophy, prolonged in the works of some writers far into the 17th century. William Hamilton adduced not a few philosophical authorities who gave prominence to the general fact of mental association - the Spanish philosopher Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540) especially being exhaustive in his account of memory. In Thomas Hobbes's psychology much importance is assigned to what he called, variously, the succession, sequence, series, consequence, coherence, train of imaginations or thoughts in mental discourse. But not before Hume is there express question as to what are the distinct principles of association. John Locke had, meanwhile, introduced the phrase "association of ideas" as the title of a supplementary chapter incorporated with the fourth edition of his ''Essay'', meaning it, however, only as the name of a principle accounting for the mental peculiarities of individuals, with little or no suggestion of its general psychological import. Of this last David Hume had the strongest impression; he reduced the principles of association to three: Similarity, Contiguity in time and place, Cause and (or) Effect. Dugald Stewart put forward Resemblance, Contrariety, and Vicinity in time and place, though he added, as another obvious principle, accidental coincidence in the sounds of words, and further noted three other cases of relation, namely, Cause and Effect, Means and End, Premisses and Conclusion, as holding among the trains of thought under circumstances of special attention. Thomas Reid, preceding Stewart, was rather disposed to make light of the subject of association, vaguely remarking that it seems to require no other original quality of mind but the power of habit to explain the spontaneous recurrence of trains of thinking, when become familiar by frequent repetition (''Intellectual Powers'', p. 387). Hamilton's own theory of mental reproduction, suggestion, or association is a development, greatly modified, of the doctrine expounded in his ''Lectures on Metaphysics'' (vol. ii. p. 223, seq.), which reduced the principles of association first to two, Simultaneity and Affinity, and these further to one supreme principle of Redintegration or Totality. In the ultimate scheme he posits no less than four general laws of mental succession concerned in reproduction: *(1) Associability or possible co-suggestion (all thoughts of the same mental subject are associable or capable of suggesting each other); *(2) Repetition or direct remembrance (thoughts coidentical in a modification, but differing in time, tend to suggest each other); *(3) Redintegration, indirect remembrance or reminiscence (thoughts once coidentical in time, are, however, different as mental modes, again suggestive of each other, and that in the mutual order which they originally held); *(4) Preference (thoughts are suggested not merely by force of the general subjective relation subsisting between themselves, they are also suggested in proportion to the relation of interest, from whatever source, in which they stand to the individual mind). Upon these follow, as special laws: *A - Primary - modes of the laws of Repetition and Redintegration: * *(1) law of Similars (Analogy, Affinity); * *(2) law of Contrast; and * *(3) law of Coadjacency (Cause and Effect, etc.). *B - Secondary - modes of the law of Preference, under the law of Possibility: * *(1) laws of Immediacy and Homogeneity and * *(2) law of Facility. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Association of ideas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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