Błażej Skrzypulec
Affiliation: Jagiellonian University
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: olfaction, experiential content, experiential structure, spatial perception
Date: Thursday 4th of September
Time: 17:00
Location: Room 154 (154)
View the full session: The Senses
One of the main topics in philosophical considerations on the olfactory modality concerns the spatial capabilities of human olfaction. This debate has mainly been framed in terms of the representational content of olfactory experiences. Most authors agree that olfactory experiences have spatial content as they represent olfactory entities as having some spatial characteristics (Batty, 2010, Millar, 2019; Richardson, 2013; Young, 2019). However, while some philosophers believe that olfactory experiences have very limited spatial content as they represent olfactory entities as merely positioned 'here' or 'outside' (Batty, 2010, Chomanski, 2022; Keller, 2016; Richardson, 2013), others oppose such a minimal view of olfactory spatiality. In particular, it is argued that a more robust picture of olfactory spatiality emerges when olfaction is properly recognized as a dynamic system that gathers information over time through bodily action. For example, it is claimed that due to its dynamic aspects, olfaction can represent olfactory entities as positioned in a direction and at a distance from a subject (Aasen, 2019; Smith, 2019; Young, 2020).
However, in contemporary philosophy of perception it is often recognized that experiences not only have spatial content but also have some spatial structure (Macpherson, 2015; Martin, 1992; Phillips, 2013; Richardson, 2010; Serrahima, 2022). While the notion of content characterizes what is presented by an experience, the notion of experiential structure concerns the relatively invariant ways of organization of content (Alford-Duguid, 2023; Macpherson, 2015; Richardson, 2014). For example, ordinary visual experiences possess rich spatial content because they represent various spatial properties of objects and spatial relations between them. However, whatever the spatial content of a visual experience is, at least in normal cases, it is always organized within a spatial structure of a visual field. The visual field is an invariant element of visual experiences which, by virtue of its properties, determines what content can be possessed by visual experiences. For example, because of its bounded nature, the visual field determines that visual experiences do not present objects as being positioned behind the head. The spatiality of olfactory experiences, however, is discussed only in terms of content and not in terms of structure.
The aim of my talk is to explore the topic of olfactory spatial structure and its relation to olfactory spatial content. In particular, I analyze the consequences of different views of olfactory spatial content for the properties of olfactory spatial structure. A rather surprising result is that, regardless of whether olfaction has sparse or robust spatial content, olfactory spatial structure is quite rudimentary. This distinguishes olfaction from vision, where the richness of spatial content is closely correlated with the richness of spatial structure. I suggest that by using the content/structure distinction we can accommodate the divergent intuitions about olfactory spatiality by proposing that in olfactory experiences rich spatial content can coexist with rudimentary spatial structure.
My considerations begin with an explication of the main intuition used to characterize experiential structures, namely that structural elements are relatively invariant elements of experiences (Alford-Duguid, 2023; Macpherson, 2015; Richardson, 2014). I believe that this intuition can be made more precise by using the notion of a class of all possible normal perceptual experiences. From this perspective, the spatial structure of olfactory experiences is composed of those spatial elements that are present in all normal human olfactory experiences. For example, in the case of vision, the bounded visual field is often considered to be a spatial structural element because it is present in all normal human visual experiences (see Martin, 1992; Sorensen, 2011; Soteriou, 2011).
For the purposes of my talk, normal experiences are those which are produced by a perceptual system which is healthy, mature, embodied, and unmodified. The healthy system is such that it can process stimuli without significant disturbance. The mature system has developed in the body along with other senses, and has thus learned various sensorimotor contingencies and correspondences between information received by different sensory systems. Furthermore, the embodied system is actually implemented in a human body and can thus acquire information through bodily actions. Finally, the requirement of the unmodified nature of the perceptual system is intended to rule out cases in which some kind of enhancement would increase perceptual capabilities.
To explore the relationships between spatial olfactory content and spatial olfactory structure, I consider the main accounts of olfactory spatial content. First, I consider the minimal spatiality view, according to which olfactory entities are merely represented as being in a single 'here' location (Batty, 2010; Chmoanski, 2022; Richardson, 2013). Furthermore, I consider major strategies for postulating that spatial olfactory content is more developed than the minimal view suggests. The first one is the synchronic strategy, which aims to show that even without considering bodily information and bodily actions, the spatial olfactory content can be quite robust due to the functioning of the trigeminal system (Frasnelli et al., 2010; Kleemann et al., 2009), the detection of chemical concentrations (Aasen, 2019; Smith, 2019), and the processes of figure/ground segregation (Barwich, 2025). The second is the diachronic strategy, which focuses on the influence of information provided by bodily actions on olfactory spatial content (Aasen, 2019; Millar, 2019; Young, 2020, 2024).
I argue that whatever account of olfactory spatial content is chosen, olfactory spatial structure remains quite rudimentary. As a consequence, unlike in a modality such as vision, well-developed spatial content in olfaction does not correlate with well-developed spatial structure. In particular, I focus on the Structural Localization thesis, which states that for every spatially located entity presented by an experience, there is a structural experiential element in which this entity is experienced as located. I show that the Structural Localization thesis is true in the case of normal visual experiences, since every visually presented entity is represented as being located in some visual direction, and such directions are structural visual elements. On the other hand, the Structural Localization thesis is false in the case of olfactory experiences, even if both synchronic and diachronic strategies for extending olfactory spatial content are successful.