Abstract
There are many accounts of representation in the philosophical literature. However, regarding olfaction, Burge’s (2010) account is widely endorsed. According to his account, perceptual representation is always of an objective reality, that is, perception represents objects as such. Many authors presuppose this account of representation and attempt to show that the olfactory system itself issues in representations of that sort. The present paper argues that this myopia is a mistake and, moreover, that the various arguments in favor of olfactory objects fail. Yet, by taking seriously a minimal notion of representation, adopted from Shea (2018), we can see that the olfactory system is representational after all even if it doesn’t represent objects as such. That is, olfaction issues in minimal representations. Crucially, however, this paper will conclude with an argument to the effect that olfactory object files (objectual representations of olfactory objectual properties) are constructed by interactions between various mental systems. The claim to be defended is that objectual representations of olfactory objects are constructed when minimal olfactory content is embedded in object-files that contain other non-olfactory properties that meet Burge’s criteria for representation. Some extant work on feature-binding, attention, and object-files will be introduced to support the suggestion.
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Notes
In what follows, all uses of the term “representation” denote representation of the mental variety; the kind that features in mentalistic explanations. Though, all mental representations are likely ultimately identical to or grounded in neural representations, this paper make no commitment to the metaphysics of representation.
Carvalho (2014) is an exception to this trend. He argues that the more minimal notion of figure-ground segregation is sufficient for representation. I will discuss his view in what follows and ultimately claim that it doesn’t work.
It should be noted that Burge thinks objectual representations are the only sort of perceptual representation that exist.
By “detect”, Burge and others mean mere information registration. Importantly, this notion is non-mentalistic. For example, thermometers can detect temperature, but thermometers do not represent temperature in any sense that matters for psychology.
I provide details of their accounts in what follows.
Millar introduces coffee as a paradigm example of filling-in, so for consistency that will be the example used throughout.
See Barwich (p.6–7; 2019) for some interesting empirical reasons to reject Millar’s account also.
Barwich’s (2019) primary criticism of filling-in is that odors are not discrete and stable entities. I need not belabor this point here.
Although there is evidence in favor of this hypothesis, it faces problems of its own. It is plausible that there is a brief temporal window in which odor intensity is indeed stable. Even if adaptation occurs, it is arguable that that is insufficient to show that there are no stable representations of odor intensity. The only conclusion that adaptation forces us to reach is that if there are intensity constancies, they are short lived. The following takes no stand on this issue, however. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point.
See Keller (2016, pp.72–75)) for additional reasons to reject the idea that figure-ground segregation is sufficient for the perception of objects.
For this paper, the stabilization of behavior that results from design will not be discussed.
See Shea (2018, p.53) for a detailed account of this process.
To be clear, the claim is not that rats utilize the concept CATSMELL, but rather rats represent the odorant produced by a cat purely referentially.
Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing this point.
Alternatively, one might think that part of what distinguishes perception from imagination is that perception necessarily involves the awareness or seeming awareness of worldly things in one’s environment, whereas imagination does not. However, it is also plausible that the distinction between imagination and perception might instead be partly grounded in the feeling of control. This distinction is orthogonal to the distinction between representing an objective world or not. For instance, one might imagine a situation that seems to be as of the objective world, yet one might distinguish it from a perception if the content seems to be in their control (e.g., as when one looks for familiar forms in clouds).
Now, one might remark that there is no intuitive objectual representation of smell if we do not have any cross-modal or verbal cues to an object. I agree with this claim; however, my reason for endorsing the intuition is that there are almost always cross-modal or verbal cues to objects. I want to thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point.
The concept of an object-file is very similar to the concept of perceptual categorization presented in Barwich (2020) and the profiles account of Smith (2017) since they all account for cross-modal interactions. However, object-files can also depend on high-level cognitive processes that seem to be absent in the case of Smith. For instance, in a review of Keller (2016) he notes that Keller’s theory, “invokes an unnecessary high-level cognitive process to solve a problem that is often the result of crossmodal associations between inputs from different sensory systems and experience of how they typically combine in everyday episodes of multisensory perception” (p.794.) Below I argue that something like an unconscious inference is in fact necessary to bind modality distinct properties together. Importantly, Barwich (2020) invokes a very similar account. However, her view emphasizes that olfactory perception is a skill, whereas I emphasize that olfaction is representational through and through. Moreover, Barwich argues that this process does not explain the formation of olfactory objects. I argue, on the other hand, that in virtue of the objectual nature of the properties that are bound up with odor representation, we do in fact get the representation of olfactory objects. So, although perceptual categorization and object-files are alike in spirit, they do have some small but important differences.
It should be noted that many philosophers do not share this intuition. In fact, many argue that smells are mere subjective feels (see Burge 2010). Since the goal of this section is to vindicate the intuitions of some, namely those who do think that smells can be objectual, I take this section to be a defense of their position.
Although I know of no data directly in support of olfactory object construction, the argument has the form of an inductive inference. Importantly, visual/auditory forms of object construction are well established, and thus provide a firm foundation on which to base my argument.
In contexts in which the low-level information is constitutive of a temporally extended sequence (say, a melody), then the information is encoded into a single event file, and not an object file.
Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this work to my attention.
They no doubt capture our attention, but as we saw in our discussion of figure-ground segregation, attentional capture is insufficient for object perception.
Barwich (2020), drawing on Hermann von Helmholtz also argues that unconscious inferences are crucial to explain olfactory experiences. For instance, see Chaps. 8 and 9.
This is not supposed to be an exhaustive principle. For instance, there likely needs to be a “no-association” principle employed as well to eliminate mere correlative effects. For instance, perhaps the smell of black pepper is always accompanied by the visual representation of salt, but it would be a mistake to bind the smell of pepper to the visual representation of salt. Since ordinary cases of olfactory binding are veridical, these purely associative cases need to be excluded somehow. Perhaps binding requires a counterfactual condition as well to rule out these problem cases. This article makes no commitment to how this should work, but it should be noted that this is a general problem with feature binding and not one exclusive to olfaction.
The claim is not that vision is necessary, but rather that any sense modality that issues in representations in Burge’s sense is necessary.
Besides smelling burnt, coffees can also be fruity, flowery, nutty, spicy, herby, caramelly, chocolaty, carbony, resinous, or any combination. Moreover, those are just the superordinate categories and each one is composed of several subcategories.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.
In a similar vein, one might insist, however, that it is just as plausible that olfactory phenomenology is intrinsically objectual. For instance, Richardson (2013) argues that the role of sniffing can explain the objectual (though she doesn’t use this term) nature of olfaction. She claims that “the involvement of sniffing in smelling is manifest to us in the conscious character of olfactory experience. Olfactory experience does not just involve awareness of certain qualities, such as vanillaryness or mustiness or whatever. It also involves odours that have these qualities seeming to be brought into the nose when we sniff.” (p.11) The claim seems to be that sniffing behavior underwrites the externally directed phenomenology of olfaction. So, although the account on offer in this paper is plausible, the alternative, based in sniffing behavior, has not been ruled out. Now, one might respond to this by simply noting that we can sometimes have smell experiences that are not the result of sniffing. An example would be if someone shoved something smelly under your nose. The claim is not that there can be smelling without breathing, but rather, that there can be smelling without sniffing. Sniffing then, might very well explain the objectual nature of some olfactory experiences, but it certainly is not a necessary precondition of all olfactory experience. If true, then sniffing behavior does not allow one to conclude that olfactory experience is itself objectual. Importantly, however, the role of sniffing behavior in explaining the externally directed nature of olfactory experience is consistent with my positive account of olfactory experience. The main difference is that I argue that exploratory behavior in general, including sniffing (see the Yankee Candle example above) is not strictly speaking a constituent of olfaction. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Peter Carruthers, Georges Rey, Aida Roige, Shen Pan, Samuel Warren, Lia Curtis Fine, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the participants at the departmental work-in-progress at the University of Maryland, College Park philosophy department for their insightful questions and comments.
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Masciari, C.F. Stop and smell the what? Two kinds of olfactory representation. Synthese 200, 338 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03836-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03836-2