An influential classification of mental states is due to Franz Brentano, who argues that there are only three basic kinds: presentations, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate. Conscious states are part of the phenomenal experience while occurrent states are causally efficacious within the owner's mind, with or without consciousness. The characteristic of intentional states is that they refer to or are about objects or states of affairs. Propositional attitudes, like beliefs and desires, are relations a subject has to a proposition. Sensory states involve sense impressions like visual perceptions or bodily pains. Important distinctions group mental phenomena together according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious or occurrent. Various overlapping classifications of mental states have been proposed. Some philosophers deny all the aforementioned approaches by holding that the term "mental" refers to a cluster of loosely related ideas without an underlying unifying feature shared by all. According to functionalist approaches, mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of their intrinsic properties. Intentionality-based approaches, on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as the mark of the mental. Consciousness-based approaches hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. According to epistemic approaches, the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person.
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