This presupposition takes the Pavlovian thing to new heights. Humans can associate anything with anything and do it instantly if the state of mind at the time is intense enough. That’s how phobias are formed.
I was watching on a talk show about a boy who had an intense fear of clowns. The boy was about 17 years old and he looked and talked like a pretty tough kid. When the host mentioned bringing a clown in, the 17 year old rolled up on the floor in a fetus position and started crying hysterically. A psychologist came on and asked the boy how this happened. The boy said that when he was 4 years old he was watching a movie about a killer clown on Halloween. His aunt just happened to have dressed up as a clown that looked very similar and during one of the intense parts of the movie the aunt, in her clown costume came up behind the boy. When he turned around, there was the clown in the movie- in real life.
Now, intellectually, now that he’s 17 he realizes that his aunt wasn’t the clown in the movie. But, humans are one-time learners and his nervous system learned in that one intense moment to associate massive fear to clowns.
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