Summarize Hartley’s explanation of association.
David Hartley was an English philosopher and also practiced as a physician. He offered physiological explanation for the association of ideas in terms of mechanics. He explained in his law of association how voluntary behavior can develop from involuntary behavior. His two major influences were Locke and Newton. He took into account the law of contiguity, synchronous and successive.
Hartley’s goal was to synthesize the conception of Newton about nerve transmission with versions of empiricism. He rejected Descartes concept about nerves that they are hollow. However, he accepts the Newton’s concept that nerves are solid and that sensory experience causes vibrations in nerves. Newton called these vibrations as impressions. These impressions reach the brain and causes vibrations, resulting in sensations.
Newton also explained that the vibrations in the brain exist until the impressions cease them. Once ceased, the vibrations in the brain get weaker and these types of vibrations are called vibratinucles. Using Newton’s concept, Hartley mentioned the ideas as fainted replications of sensation. His notion was that these vibrations depend on the previous experiences. He correlated all mental activities with the neurophysiological activity and found that complex ideas are generated spontaneously by the process of association.
He disagreed with Locke that complex ideas are formed from simple ones via reflection. According to Locke, simple ideas combine into complex ones and complex ideas combine into decomplex ideas. For Hartley, all types of ideas, simple or complex, are made up of sensations. According to him, only associations are responsible for the generation of simple ideas and for the conversion of simple to complex ideas.