Clarifying the utilitarian meaning in Alexander Bain's Association Psychology

• Main Author: Charpentier, Claude
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2002
• Subjects: 150
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.642758

The present dissertation on the subject of Alexander Bain's mid-nineteenth century Association Psychology aims at providing an interpretive framework of importance to the clarification of the science's utilitarian meaning. Shared social attitudes and thought patterns associated with radical-utilitarians and fellow reformers John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain serve as frames for defining the latter's position on psychological questions. Herein investigated are abstract, atomistic and mechanistic ways of thinking that joined Mill and Bain together in a community of intellect whose utilitarian perspective structured Bain's psychological ideas. Also explored are the ways in which these psychological ideas expressed the socio-political concerns shared by Mill and Bain alike, and were in fact worked into tools for fashioning social reality and bringing it into a desired form. Thus the object of the study is to determine how certain ways of thought as well as social attitudes common to Mill and Bain functioned as utilitarian influences in the latter's psychological texts. While serving as a case study for use in illuminating the subject of intellectual styles, the present research also draws interest by marking and spelling out psychology's past relevance to society.