According to this taxonomy, talk of an “associative inference” (e.g., Anderson et al. 1994; Armstrong et al. 2012) is a borderline oxymoron. The easiest way to give sense to the idea of an associative inference is for it to involve transitions in thought that began because they were purely inferential (as understood by the computational theory of mind) but then became associated over time. For example, at first one might make the modus ponens inference because a particular series of thoughts instantiates the modus ponens form. Over time the premises and conclusion of that particular token of a modus ponens argument become associated with each other through their continued use in that inference and now the thinker merely associates the premises with the conclusion. That is, the constant contiguity between the premises and the conclusion occurred because the inference was made so frequently, but the inference was originally made so frequently not because of the associative relations between the premises and conclusion, but because the form of the thoughts (and the particular motivations of the thinker). This constant contiguity then formed the basis for an associative linkage between the premises and the conclusion. [25]