ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a fundamental rethinking of the concept of association and of how associative models are used in psychology. The general idea is that "association" is a generic term that refers to any causal relationship between representational states in a psychological process. In the current literature, association is treated as a kind of process. Associative models are treated as denoting a member of that kind: using an associative model to describe some process implies that the process is a member of this kind. Historical precedent view is a fundamental revision of the way association is viewed in contemporary cognitive science. Among the associationists, the view is made explicit by Thomas Brown. Association is just invariant sequence. The "associative link," argued Brown, is explanatorily vacuous and metaphysically dubious. Association is not a kind of psychological process; it is a generic causal relation between representational states of the system.
