Concept
Mental event
Overview
something that happens in the mind, such as a thought
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Mental event is discussed.
Thus if our definition is to serve, we shall have to define “experience” differently; we shall have to say that the mnemic effects must include something that can be called “knowledge.” This would suggest the definition: A mental event is anything that is remembered. But this is too narrow: we only remember a small proportion of our mental events. We might have regarded “consciousness” as the essence of mental…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is
We say that a man is "conscious of looking a fool," by which we mean that he believes he looks a fool, and is not mistaken in this belief. This is a different form of consciousness from any of the earlier ones. It is the form which gives "knowledge" in the strict sense, and also error.
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
states what it is
Obviously, however, this surging up of personal factors into conscious recognition is a part of the whole activity in its temporal development. There is not first a purely psychical process, followed abruptly by a radically different physical one. There is one continuous behavior, proceeding from a more uncertain, divided, hesitating state to a more overt, determinate, or complete state.
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
So far I have merely been considering an actual occasion on the side of its full concreteness. It is this side of the occasion in virtue of which it is an event in nature. But a natural event, in this sense of the term, is only an abstraction from a complete actual occasion.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
states what it is
The term "sense-data" is ambiguous; and therefore I think I had better begin by trying to explain what the class of entities is whose status I propose to discuss. There are several different classes of mental events, all of which, owing to their intrinsic resemblance to one another in certain respects, may, in a wide sense, be called "sensory experiences," although only some among them would usually be called…
G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Mental event
Related ideas
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
- Cognition
- Mind–body problem
- Artificial intelligence
- Mind–body dualism
- Monism
- Mind
- Visual perception
- Physicalism
- Perception
- Donald Davidson (philosopher)
- Introspection
- Working memory
- Thought
- Anomalous monism
- Dream
- Consciousness
- Epiphenomenalism
Place in the tradition
Part of Biological naturalism.