Summarize James Mill’s version of associationism.
James Mill was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and political theorist. He rejected the Indian culture and civilization, and divided the Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British. His son, John Stuart Mill, was the philosopher of liberalism. He accepted the ideas of Hartley about the existence of sensations and ideas in the mind.
In psychology, associationism is a theory that considers the law of association as the fundamental principle of mental life. In the same way, Mill also explained the mental processes in terms of sensations. Like Hartley, Mill also believed that the mind consist of both sensations and ideas. He explained that when one experiences the ideas continuously, the associations become so strong and appear in consciousness. Mill provided a most complete summary of associationism.
He also elaborated Hume’s associationism. He saw the functioning of mind by the law of contiguity, which states that when one think about an object, he/she recalls the other objects that are experienced previously at the same time and same place. He also mentioned that mind functions with law of frequency, which states that two things or events are more often linked and the more powerful will be the association, and law of vividness, which states that more vivid sensations and ideas form strong associations.
According to Mill, complex ideas come from two or more simple ideas and complex ideas unite to form more complex ideas. He said that the fusion of ideas is only due to the law of contiguity. Mill, in his analysis, described the two kinds of sensations namely, synchronous and successive. If the events occur at same time, they lead to synchronous ideas, and if the events occur close to each other, they lead to successive ideas. He concluded that mind is completely passive and mental experiences are as predictable as physical events.