s followed by Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment. Kant perceived his philosophical task as concern with the question of the validity of knowledge; he understood psychology as an empirical search for laws of mental functioning (Watson 224-225).
Hume's work was within the mechanistic framework and continued the development of empiricism and associationism; he believed that determining the laws of the mental universe was possible. He proposed two laws of association, resemblance or similarity, and contiguity in time or place. Hume believed that the more similar and contiguous two ideas are, the more readily they will be associated. The laws of the association of ideas were considered by Hume to be the mental counterpart of the law of gravity in physics. Hume identified two kinds of mental contents, impressions or the basic elements of mental life (like sensation and perception in today's terminology) and ideas or mental experiences in the absence of stimulating object (images). Impressions were strong and vivid, and ideas were weak copie
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