A mental event is any event that happens within the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

of a

conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

individual. Examples include

thought In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, a ...

s, feelings, decisions, dreams, and realizations. Some believe that mental events are not limited to human thought but can be associated with animals and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

as well. Whether mental events are identical to complex physical events, or whether such an identity even makes sense, is central to the mind-body problem.

Relation to mind-body problem

Some state that the mental and the physical are the very same property which cause any event(s). This view is known as substance monism. An opposing view is

substance dualism Substance may refer to: * Matter, anything that has mass and takes up space Chemistry * Chemical substance, a material with a definite chemical composition * Drug substance ** Substance abuse, drug-related healthcare and social policy diagnosis o ...

, which claims that the mental and physical are fundamentally different and can exist independently. A third approach is Donald Davidson's ''

anomalous monism Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind–body relationship. It was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper "Mental Events". The theory is twofold and states that mental events are identical with physical events, and ...

''. The Philosophy of Action states that every action is caused by prior thoughts or feelings, and understanding those mental events would in turn explain behavior.

Physicalism In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...

, a form of substance monism, states that everything that exists is either physical or depends on that which is physical. The existence of mental events has been used by philosophers as an argument against physicalism. For example, in his 1974 paper '' What Is it Like to Be a Bat?'', Thomas Nagel argues that physicalist theories of mind cannot explain an organism's subjective experience because they cannot account for its mental events.

Examples

* Mary is walking through a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...

and she sees and recognizes

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

. This instance of seeing and recognizing City Hall is an instance of

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

—something that happens in Mary's mind. That instance of perception is a mental event. It is an ''event'' because it is something that happens, and it is ''mental'' because it happens in Mary's mind. * Mary feels happy after doing well on an exam and she smiles. This thought is a mental event. The smile is a physical event. * An

orca The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only Extant taxon, extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black ...

recognized a feeling of hunger. It eats a fish. The recognition of the feeling of hunger is a mental event. Eating the fish is the physical event.

References

Consciousness studies Philosophy of mind Terms in science and technology {{cognitive-psych-stub

Relation to mind-body problem

Examples

See also

Further reading

References