Back to David Hartley, a man ahead of his time. The bodily emergence of ideas.
“Note the language: “corporeal causes” “generate” and “raise” ideas “by association.” Unlike later “association psychologists” such as James Mill, Hartley does not start with “ideas” as subjective entities already experientially present to the “mind” and then ask how these are linked. Rather, he starts with bodily, specifically neurological processes, and asks: how do such processes generate and raise our perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and actions? This is a proposal for neuroscience, not a version of philosophical or psychological “empiricism.””