ABSTRACT
The physiological counterpart of Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume’s associationism was supplied by David Hartley, but T. Hobbes anticipated an important ingredient of Hartley’s physiology. The theory of associationism was developed not only within a psychological context but also within an anatomical-physiological context. The thrust of James J. Gibson’s attack on Berkeley initially was the indirect, sensation-based psychology of perception and the building block view of consciousness. The concept of association owes its origins to Aristotle, but it was the empiricists Berkeley and Hume who took this simple idea and extended its applicability, making it the universal explanatory principle of empiricist psychology. Berkeley’s empiricism provided the basis for both his phenomenalist epistemology and his idealistic ontology. Berkeley’s idealism, though both controversial and influential, was not popular in twentieth century psychology, yet Gibson’s theory of ecological reciprocity dealt with the problem of mind and matter as had Berkeley’s metaphysics. Hume would carry empiricist epistemology further, ending with a more through phenomenalism.
