From Molecules to Perception: Philosophical Investigations of Smell

Abstract

Theories of perception have traditionally dismissed the sense of smell as a notoriously variable and highly subjective sense, mainly because it does not easily fit into accounts of perception based on visual experience. So far, philosophical questions about the objects of olfactory perception have started by considering the nature of olfactory experience.However, there is no philosophically neutral or agreed conception of olfactory experience: it all depends on what one thinks odors are. We examine the existing philosophical methodology for addressing our sense of smell: on the one hand appeals to phenomenology that focus on the experiential dimensions of odor perception and on the other approaches that look at odor sources and their material dimensions. We show that neither strategy provides enough information to account for the human sense of smell and argue that the inclusion of the missing dimension of biology, with its concern for the function (or functions) of olfaction, provides the means to develop a satisfactory and empirically informed philosophy of smell.

Why human olfaction should not be modeled on theories and tasks of vision

“…The three problems discussed above exemplify why olfaction should not be ‘modeled’ on vision. Not all concepts from vision are useful for understanding olfaction ( Köster et al, 2014 ; Barwich, 2019 ; Bochicchio and Winsler, 2020 ; Barwich and Smith, 2022 ).…”

Smell identification and the role of labels

“…1 Philosophers now recognise that olfactory experiences, while different from visual ones, are not mere sensations, but exteroceptive perceptions capable of presenting us with aspects of our environment (e.g. Batty, 2010;Barwich & Smith, 2022). Finally, research on non-Western languages has refuted the universality of the claim that smell is incapable of linguistic expression.…”