Mental pictures of the world

Picture of the world can be defined as the system of images (and links between them) – visual representations of the world, information about the relationship between man and reality, visual, and auditory, tactile and olfactory, images and information that are most often emotional.

Generated by these kinds of configurations information, images and position in life of people, their beliefs, ideals, principles, knowledge and activities, values ​​and spiritual guidance, and any significant changes picture of the world entail changes in the system of these elements.

Picture of the world:
completely determines the specific mode of perception and interpretation of events and phenomena;
is a basis, the foundation world view, based on which a person acts in the world;
has historically conditional nature, which involves constantly changing picture of the world of all its stakeholders.

The subject or bearer of the world picture is and individual, and social or professional groups, and ethno-national or religious community.
Picture of the world – cultural integrity, which includes three main components - outlook, mentality and attitude. These components are combined into a picture of the world specific to this age, ethnic group or subculture way.

Perception of the world - a set of visual images of culture, man, his place in the world, relations with the world and other people.
World View - a conceptual part, provided the general categories of space, time, movement, etc. The main major elements - frame picture of the world - are a set of basic principles or concepts, basic assumptions about the world or those parts of it that relate to the situation. They may not be realized by man, but integrated into the world picture, as are necessary for the interpretation of any situation, to determine the meaning and to assess what is happening.

The criteria by which we can to distinguish the features of the different pictures of the world:
scale;
clarity;
emotional coloring;
light and darkness;
presence of the past, present and future;
analytism and synthetism;
the special subject of the environment;
activity-passivity;
symbolism;
reflexivity;
saturation of interpersonal relationships;
conformity;
determinate world order;
the degree of overall development;
characteristics of a representative system.

Mental model. It is deeply ingrained in the mind the set of concepts, generalizations or even pictures and images that are on the way we perceive the world and act. Very often people do not realize how they refer to mental models, or how they influence on the behavior.

Moreover, a man can transform its own experience into particular concepts, that form the conceptual system, that is constructed, modified and updated continuously by him.
The term “picture of the world” appeared in 19 c. and its issues subsumed into the semiotics during the study of primary
modeling systems (languages) and nearline (myth,religion, folklore, poetry, film, painting, architecture).

Thus, the worldview of each person arises in picture of the world: "Every civilization, social system characterized by its own particular way of perceiving the world“.
(A. Gurevich).
It follows that the mentality of any linguistic-cultural community is due largely to picture of the world, which represent the world view.

Picture of the world can be represented by the space respectively (up - down, right - left, east - west, far away -
close), time (day - night, winter - summer), quantitative, ethical, and other parameters. Influence on it are formations of language, traditions, nature and landscape, education, training and
other social factors. Picture of the world may be holistic - these are mythological, religious, philosophical, physical
pictures of the world, but it may also reflect some fragments of the world, i.e. be local.

Conceptual pictures of the world of different people are the same,
because the human mind is equal. The national language pictures of the world - just another of their "colorization."

A mental picture is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses.

So, common examples of mental pictures include daydreaming and the mental visualization that occurs while reading a book. When a musician hears a song, he or she can sometimes "see" the song notes in their head, as well as hear them with all their tonal qualities. This is considered different from an after-effect, such as an after-image. Calling up an image in our minds can be a voluntary act, so it can be characterized as being under various degrees of conscious control.

According to psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, our experiences of the world are represented in our minds as mental images. These mental images can then be associated and compared with others, and can be used to synthesize completely new images. In this view, mental images allow us to form useful theories of how the world works by formulating likely sequences of mental images in our heads without having to directly experience that outcome. Whether other creatures have this capability is debatable.