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A Sense So Rare: Measuring Olfactory Experiences and Making a Case for a Process Perspective on Sensory Perception

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Abstract

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of sensory experiences and their capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects.

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Notes

  1. In fact, introductions into the problem of perception even deal with sensory experiences only by reference to “vision and the other senses” (Crane 2011). And even though audition has its own entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (O'Callaghan 2009), smell remains anecdotal.

  2. These molecules she terms “odors” in contrast to the notion of “smell” describing their perceptive quality, even though there is a perfectly adequate scientific term available—odorants—to refer to odoriferous molecules.

  3. Bell, best known for his major role in the invention of the telephone, criticized the lack of measures to quantify and qualify smell. In his 1914 paper, "Discovery and Invention," he discusses his ideas about the material nature of odors. His ideas are influenced by the dominant science of his time, physics. Asking whether odors might either be emanated by particles or transmitted by vibrations, first suggestions for experiments refer to the possibilities to measure the weight of odor particles or the reflections of odor vibrations from mirrors (Bell 1914, p. 653).

  4. Monorhinal means smelling with one nostril, whereas birhinal means smelling with both nostrils.

  5. Orthonasal refers to the process of sniffing smells through the nose, whereas retronasal refers to the process of perceiving smells through the mouth pathway.

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  1. KLI, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Ann-Sophie Barwich

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Barwich, AS. A Sense So Rare: Measuring Olfactory Experiences and Making a Case for a Process Perspective on Sensory Perception. Biol Theory 9, 258–268 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-014-0165-z

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