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A mental event is a particular occurrence of something going on in the mind Mind refers to the collective aspects of human intellect and consciousness that originate in the brain and which are manifest in some combination of thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination. ...
For example, if Mary is walking through a park and she sees City Hall, that instance of seeing City Hall is an instance of perception—something that is supposed to be going on in Mary's mind. That instance of seeing is a mental event. It is an event because it is something that happens, and it is mental because it happens in someone's mind. If Mary thinks to herself, "I am a human being," that thought is a mental event; if she feels happy after doing well on an exam, that is a mental event. And so on. Visual perception is one of the senses, consisting of the ability to detect light and interpret (see) it as the perception known as eyesight, sight or naked eye vision. ... PSYCHOLOGY In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ... An event is something that takes place; an occurrence and arbitrary point in time. ...
For example, if Mary is walking through a park and she sees City Hall, that instance of seeing City Hall is an instance of perception—something that is supposed to be going on in Mary's mind.
It is an event because it is something that happens, and it is mental because it happens in someone's mind.
If Mary thinks to herself, "I am a human being," that thought is a mentalevent; if she feels happy after doing well on an exam, that is a mentalevent.
Mental properties are alleged to have, not just one, but up to four features that make their causal relevance philosophically puzzling, no less problematic than mind-body interaction is for the substance dualist.
But the same sorts of problems arise whatever entities — events, substances, states of affairs, etc. — one takes to be the causal relata, and there is no need to take a stand on this particular issue (see causation: the metaphysics of, §1) for the purposes of this article.
For the property dualist, mental properties — and here the mental properties taking center stage are the phenomenal properties of conscious experience — are sui generis, not reducible to the dispositional or structural properties recognized by the physical sciences (see dualism).
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