Mental facts are things like perception, feelings and judgments. Ultimately, they are caused by physical facts that depend on the physical and biological functions that are necessary for consciousness. It is these processes that allow conscious people to recognize the physical and mental facts that are necessary for building social reality. They may be intentional or unintentional, depending on their orientation.
Mental State Facts: Perception
Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent and understand the information presented or the environment. All perception includes signals that pass through the nervous system, which, in turn, is the result of physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. Perception is not only the passive reception of these signals, but also the formation of learning, memory, expectation and attention of the recipient.
Perception can be divided into two processes:
- touch input processing that converts low-level information to higher-level information (for example, retrieves shapes for object recognition);
- processing that relates to a person’s concept and expectations (or knowledge), restorative and selective mechanisms (such as attention) that affect perception.
Perception depends on the complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively it seems mostly easy, because this processing takes place outside of conscious awareness.
Since the advent of experimental psychology in the 19th century, an understanding of the psychology of perception has developed through a combination of different methods. Psychophysics quantitatively describes the relationship between the physical qualities of sensory input and perception. Sensory neuroscience studies the neural mechanisms underlying perception. Perceptual systems can also be studied in the computational field in terms of the information they process. Perceptual problems in philosophy include the extent to which sensory qualities, such as sound, smell, or color, exist in objective reality, and not in the mind of the perceiver.
Although feelings have traditionally been considered passive receptors, a study of illusions and ambiguous images has demonstrated that brain perception systems are actively and consciously trying to recognize their contribution. Discussions are still ongoing about how perception is an active hypothesis testing process similar to science, or whether real sensory information is rich enough to make this process unnecessary.
The senses
The word "feelings" is used to describe physical sensation, touch, through experience or perception. The term is also used to describe experiences other than a physical sensation of touch, such as a “feeling of warmth." In psychology, this fact of mental activity usually describes conscious subjective experiences of emotions. The perception of the physical world does not necessarily lead to a universal reaction among recipients; it varies depending on one’s tendency to cope. Feelings are also known as a state of consciousness, for example, caused by emotions, feelings or desires.
Judgments
Such a fact of mental life as judgments is an assessment of evidence for making a decision. The term has four different uses:
- Unofficial - these are opinions expressed as facts.
- Informal and psychological - used in relation to the quality of cognitive abilities and the capabilities of individuals, which are usually called wisdom or intelligibility.
- Legal - used in the context of the trial with reference to the final conclusion, statement or decision based on a balanced presentation of evidence.
- Religious - used in the concept of salvation. God's assessment of a person’s value: the definition of “good” conveys great value, and “evil” is useless).
In addition, a judgment may mean a judgment of a person, a psychological phenomenon of a person forming the opinion of other people.
Mental health
Mental health is the level of psychological well-being or lack of mental illness. This is the psychological state of a person who functions at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment. From the point of view of positive psychology, mental health can include a person’s ability to enjoy life and create a balance between life needs and efforts to achieve psychological stability.
According to the World Health Organization, mental health includes subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence and self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential. The well-being of an individual person includes the realization of his abilities, overcoming the everyday stresses of life, productive work and contribution to the human community. Cultural differences, subjective evaluations, and competing professional theories influence how mental health is defined.
Are there mental phenomena?
Are all mental phenomena, mental facts generally accepted? What about telepathy and extrasensory perception? Many perceive these things as superstitious nonsense, the remnants of an irrational view of the world, which has been replaced by modern materialistic science. However, some “paranormal” mental phenomena and psychological facts are genuine, in particular telepathy. Here are some of the evidence:
- Philosophical reasons are that a person simply does not want to believe that visible reality is all that is. Many believe that the current vision of reality is sufficiently reliable and objective. They like to believe that the world is as they see it, and that there are no forces, phenomena, natural laws, except for those that are now known. This is stupid and arrogant. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that human awareness is complete. One fine day, there will be living beings who have a more intense awareness of reality than humans. It is extremely likely that there are forces, energies and phenomena in the Universe, besides those that are now discovered, perceived and conscious.
- Consciousness. According to material scientists, this is a type of brain activity, which is an illusion created by cognitive activity. There is no solid evidence for this - this is just an assumption. Perhaps the function of the brain is not to produce consciousness, but to “receive” consciousness that exists outside. This theory considers consciousness as a fundamental property of the universe, which potentially can be everywhere and in everything.
- The quantum physics. Materialists sometimes say that phenomena such as telepathy cannot exist because they contradict the laws of physics. If they really existed, it means that you need to completely rethink the understanding of how the universe functions. Can telepathy be explained in terms of quantum physics? A controversial issue, but the vagaries of the quantum world are to some extent consistent with mental phenomena. For example, there is the phenomenon of “quantum entanglement” in which seemingly “separate” particles are interconnected, reacting to each other's movements, so that they cannot be considered as independent units, but only as part of the whole system. This suggests that at the microcosmic level, all things are interconnected, which would also provide the possibility of exchanging information through telepathy. At the very least, quantum physics supports the argument that the world is infinitely more complex than it seems to normal awareness, and there are phenomena that cannot be understood or even imagined.
Materialists are materialists, but in order to understand this world, science needs spirituality.
Mental phenomena and psychological facts
Mental phenomena are a person’s internal or subjective experience. You can understand this as follows: look around, what do you see? it can be a variety of items. Consciousness perceives all this in the form of a mental image. For a better understanding, look at something, such as a tree or phone, close your eyes and imagine it in front of you. This will be a mental image. They can be very different, relate to the past or the future, cause joy or regret.
There are 4 groups of phenomena:
- Mental images.
- Motives.
- Emotions
- Words (meanings).
All of these items are interconnected and interdependent. The mental life of a person is characterized by a holistic nature.
A wide range of mental manifestations
What is a mental fact? This is what is objective and accessible for objective study. Among them:
- acts of behavior ;;
- bodily processes
- unconscious mental processes;
- psychosomatic phenomena.
S. L. Rubinstein once said:
Every psychic fact is both a piece of reality and a reflection of reality - not only one or the other, but one and the other; it is precisely in this that the originality of the psychic lies, that it is both the real side of being and its reflection - the unity of the real and the ideal.
Thanks to these aspects, the psyche manifests itself, hidden properties are discovered and the possibility of a detailed study of it appears. If mental phenomena are subjective experiences, then mental facts are an even wider range of mental manifestations. This is not only feelings, perceptions and judgments, it is a variety of bodily and mental processes, the results of human activity, socio-cultural phenomena, all that psychology uses to study the psyche.