Skip to main content
Log in

Smelling lessons

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In this paper, I consider the question: does human olfactory experience represents objects as thus and so? If we take visual experience as the paradigm of how experience can achieve object representation, we might think that the answer to this question is no. I argue that olfactory experience does indeed represent objects—just not in a way that is easily read from the dominant visual case.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See, for example, O’Shaughnessy’s (1957) discussion of touch and Strawson’s (1959) discussion of audition.

  2. Drawing on Strawson’s famous chapter in his Individuals (1959), philosophers have become interested in the question of whether, and to what degree, auditory experience is spatial in nature, as well as in questions concerning the nature of sounds and other auditory objects. See, for example, Casati and Dokic (1994), Nudds (2001) and O’Callaghan (2007, 2008, 2010a, b). Touch has also received recent attention, with similar questions about the spatial nature of tactile experience dominating a major issue of the discussion. See, for example, Martin (1992) and O’Shaughnessy (1989). As we will see, olfaction has been considered by a small number of philosophers and raises equally interesting questions for us to consider.

  3. Dretske is not alone in upholding this kind of view. Shoemaker (1996), for example, claims of perception in general: “[s]ense perception affords ‘identification information’ about the object of perception. When one perceives, one is able to pick out one object from others, distinguishing it from the others by information, provided by the perception, about both its relational and nonrelational properties” (205). Similarly, Sanford (1970) holds the view that a kind of spatial discrimination is constitutive of seeing objects. He claims: “two balls [, a blue one and a yellow one,] appear to be distinct only if they appear to be in different places” (80), that “although there is a kind of distinction by properties, the difference in properties is relevant only because it marks a difference in place” (79).

  4. In what follows I will drop ‘human’ from ‘olfactory experience’. The reader should understand that, unless otherwise noted, ‘olfactory experience’ refers to human olfactory experience.

  5. Due to the apparent uniformity of the colored expanse, one might characterize your experience in terms a very weak notion of grouping. But such a weak notion does not imply the robust form of object individuation that, as our Lego case shows, other visual experiences can achieve.

  6. In what follows, I will use ‘smell’ in its nominal position to refer to an olfactory property, or a property presented in olfactory experience. In everyday usage, ‘odor’ is also used to denote such a property. I will, however, restrict my use of ‘odor’ to denote a kind of object—in particular, those gaseous emanations that ordinary objects like roses give off.

  7. This is not say that humans are never capable of minimal olfactory experience with more organization. We are; but only ever in the highly controlled circumstances of the laboratory and when fitted with the appropriate apparatus on our noses. In those circumstances, humans are able to determine the direction that an odorant is coming from. See, for example, Porter et al. (2005) and von Békésy (1964). Because my interest is the kind of olfactory experience we have day to day, I will not consider these rare circumstances.

  8. I use this form of example in other papers, including Batty (2010) and Batty (forthcoming). As I take it to be a particularly striking one, I rely on it again here.

  9. There might also be a difference in the perceived intensity of the lemony smell in each case—given that, in Miss-a-Spot, there more of the lemony odor around. But, again, that would not amount to a difference in terms of the organization of the properties involved.

  10. In a footnote, Clark (2000, p. 79) also suggests that olfactory experience cannot solve the Many Properties Problem. Smith (2002, p. 138) also makes the same point—although he does not refer to the problem as such.

  11. I adopt the use of ‘undifferentiated’ here from Matthen (2005, p. 284).

  12. Matthen (2005) draws attention to another notion of content that is free of ties to phenomenology. He cites research that supports the idea that the visual system consists of at least two sub-systems each of which provides information for the perceiver to use. These are, as he puts it, the motion-guiding system and the descriptive system. The former guides agent motion and action while the latter provides information concerning the descriptive features of objects that is employed largely for epistemic purposes. Among the differences between these two systems, Matthen urges, is that the motion-guiding system operates at a largely unconscious level. The descriptive system, on the other hand, delivers up conscious states of visual awareness. The notion of content that goes with the latter, then, is one that is tied to phenomenology. The one that goes with the former is not. More importantly, we can make sense of the idea that a perceiver is subject to states with both of these kinds of content—without conflict.

  13. As we now know, similar considerations ought to rule out counting Dretske’s limiting visual experience as representational.

  14. Here I consider a simple case in which a single object is before you.

  15. The abstract view is defended by Davies (1991, 1992, 1996) and McGinn (1982). A version of the object-involving view is defended by McDowell (1993, 1994). The considerations brought in favor of each of these views in the visual case are as follows. Consider the visual experience you have when you look at an orange on the counter. According to abstract theorists, it is possible that experiences of two qualitatively identical, yet distinct, oranges might be phenomenally indistinguishable. Indeed, a perceiver might hallucinate an orange before her and yet have that experience be phenomenally indistinguishable from a veridical experience of an orange. To preserve this possibility, the abstract theorist proposes that the content of each is content into which no particular object enters. The object-involving theorist, on the other hand, claims that such a view ignores the particularity of visual experience. It’s not that some object appears to be orange, oval, and so on. This one does! The very orange before you, then, must be a part of the content of your experience. While not proponents of the object-involving view of content per se, others argue against the abstract view by similarly directing our attention to the particularity of visual experience. Burge (1991) and Bach (2007), for example, argue for a view according to which visual content has a similar structure to an open sentence. A gap at subject position gets ‘filled’ by the particular objects perceived. And, although not content theorists of any stripe, Campbell (2002, Chap. 6) and Martin (2003) argue that visual experience is constituted, in part, by a relation to particular things in the world. As I indicate in this paragraph, this debate between abstract and object-involving accounts simply does not arise for olfactory experience.

  16. Although it does not allow for particular objects to enter into the content, the abstract view might account for the richness of perceptual organization exhibited by visual experience with the use of multiple quantifiers and references to more determinate locations than simply ‘before you’. Whether this is enough is the main question on which the debate between abstract and object-involving theorists pivots. For our purposes it is enough to note that there is at least a prima facie way for the abstract theorist to explain the phenomenological facts and, moreover, that the tools they utilize allow them to explain the absence of such organization in way that the object-involving theorist is unable to.

  17. I develop the abstract view more fully in Batty (forthcoming).

References

  • Bach, K. (2007). Searle against the world. In S. L. Tsohatzidis (Ed.), John Searle’s philosophy of language: Force, meaning and mind (pp. 64–78). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batty, C. (2010). What the nose doesn’t know: Non-veridicality and olfactory experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17, 10–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batty, C. (forthcoming). A representational account of olfactory experience. Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

  • Burge, T. (1991). Vision and intentional content. In E. Lepore & R. Van Gulick (Eds.), John Searle and his critics (pp. 195–214). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and consciousness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Casati, R., & Dokic, J. (1994). La philosophie du son. Nîmes: Chambon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (2000). A theory of sentence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies, M. (1991). Individualism and perceptual content. Mind, 100, 461–484.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davies, M. (1992). Perceptual content and local supervenience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 92, 21–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies, M. (1996). Externalism and experience. In N. Block, O. Flanagan, & G. Güzeldere (Eds.), The nature of consciousness: Philosophical debates (pp. 309–327). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dretske, F. (1988). Seeing and knowing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lycan, W. (1996). Consciousness and experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lycan, W. (2000). The slighting of smell (with a brief note on the slighting of chemistry). In N. Bhushan & S. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Of minds and molecules: New philosophical perspectives on chemistry (pp. 273–290). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, M. G. F. (1992). Sight and touch. In T. Crane (Ed.), The contents of experience: Essays on perception (pp. 196–215). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, M. G. F. (2003). Particular thoughts and singular thought. In A. O’Hear (Ed.), Logic, thought and language (pp. 173–214). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, doing and knowing: A philosophical theory of sense perception. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McDowell, J. (1993). De re senses. In J. Haldane & C. Wright (Eds.), Reality, representation, and projection (pp. 98–109). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDowell, J. (1994). Criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy, 68, 455–479.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGinn, C. (1982). The character of mind: An introduction to the philosophy of mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nudds, M. (2001). Experiencing the production of sounds. European Journal of Philosophy, 9, 210–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Callaghan, C. (2007). Sounds: A philosophical theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Callaghan, C. (2008). Object perception: Vision and audition. Philosophy Compass, 3, 803–829.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Callaghan, C. (2010a). Perceiving the locations of sounds. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1, 123–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Callaghan, C. (2010b). Sounds and events. In C. O’Callaghan & M. Nudds (Eds.), Sounds and perception: New philosophical essays (pp. 26–49). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Shaughnessy, B. (1957). The location of sound. Mind, 66, 471–490.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Shaughnessy, B. (1989). The sense of touch. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 67, 37–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peacocke, C. (1983). Sense and content: Experience thought and their relations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perkins, M. (1983). Sensing the world. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, J., Anand, T., Johnson, B., Khan, R. M., & Sobel, N. (2005). Brain mechanisms for extracting spatial information from smell. Neuron, 47, 581–592.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanford, D. H. (1970). Locke, Leibniz, and Wiggins on being in the same place at the same time. Philosophical Review, 79, 75–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shoemaker, S. (1996). Self-knowledge and ‘inner sense’, lecture I: The object perception model. In The first person perspective and other essays (pp. 201–223). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

  • Smith, A. D. (2002). The problem of perception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strawson, P. F. (1959). Individuals: An essay in descriptive metaphysics. London: Methuen.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • von Békésy, G. (1964). Olfactory analogue to directional hearing. Journal of Applied Physiology, 19, 367–373.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Although this is not the original paper that I presented at the Pacific APA in March 2010, it is a more focused presentation of the points taken up by the Symposium’s commentator, Austen Clark. I argue for some of the same points in Batty (2010) and Batty (forthcoming).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clare Batty.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Batty, C. Smelling lessons. Philos Stud 153, 161–174 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9637-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9637-6

Keywords

Navigation