Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

The earliest detailed introspective account of such sequences of thought can
be found in the 350 BC writings of Aristotle (Sorabji, 2006, p. 54): “Acts of recollection
happen because one change is of a nature to occur after another.” For Aristotle,
ideas were images (Cummins, 1989). He argued that a particular sequence of
images occurs either because this sequence is a natural consequence of the images,
or because the sequence has been learned by habit. Recall of a particular memory,
then, is achieved by cuing that memory with the appropriate prior images, which
initiate the desired sequence of images. “Whenever we recollect, then, we undergo
one of the earlier changes, until we undergo the one after which the change in question
habitually occurs” (Sorabji, 2006, p. 54).
Aristotle’s analysis of sequences of thought is central to modern mnemonic
techniques for remembering ordered lists (Lorayne, 2007; Lorayne & Lucas, 1974).
Aristotle noted that recollection via initiating a sequence of mental images could be
a deliberate and systematic process. This was because the first image in the sequence
could be selected so that it would be recollected fairly easily. Recall of the sequence,
or of the target image at the end of the sequence, was then dictated by lawful relationships
between adjacent ideas. Thus Aristotle invented laws of association.
Aristotle considered three different kinds of relationships between the starting
image and its successor: similarity, opposition, and (temporal) contiguity:
And this is exactly why we hunt for the successor, starting in our thoughts from the
present or from something else, and from something similar, or opposite, or neighbouring.
By this means recollection occurs. (Sorabji, 2006, p. 54)
In more modern associationist theories, Aristotle’s laws would be called the law of
similarity, the law of contrast, and the law of contiguity or the law of habit.
Aristotle’s theory of memory was essentially ignored for many centuries
(Warren, 1921). Instead, pre-Renaissance and Renaissance Europe were more interested
in the artificial memory—mnemonics—that was the foundation of Greek oratory.
These techniques were rediscovered during the Middle Ages in the form of Ad
Herennium, a circa 86 BC text on rhetoric that included a section on enhancing the
artificial memory (Yates, 1966). Ad Herennium described the mnemonic techniques
invented by Simonides circa 500 BC. While the practice of mnemonics flourished
during the Middle Ages, it was not until the seventeenth century that advances in
associationist theories of memory and thought began to flourish.
The rise of modern associationism begins with Thomas Hobbes (Warren, 1921).
Hobbes’ (1967) notion of thought as mental discourse was based on his observation
that thinking involved an orderly sequence of ideas. Hobbes was interested in
explaining how such sequences occurred. While Hobbes’ own work was very preliminary,
it inspired more detailed analyses carried out by the British empiricists
who followed him.
134 Chapter 4