Consciousness Studies 17 : 10 - 17 . What the Nose Doesn ’ t Know : Non - Veridicality and Olfactory Experience

We can learn much about perceptual experience by thinking about how it can mislead us. In this paper, I explore whether, and how, olfactory experience can mislead. I argue that, in the case of olfactory experience, the traditional distinction between illusion and hallucination does not apply. Integral to the traditional distinction is a notion of ‘object-failure’—the failure of an experience to present objects accurately. I argue that there are no such presented objects in olfactory experience. As a result, olfactory experience can only mislead by means of a kind of property hallucination. The implications of my arguments are twofold. First, we see that accounts of representational content cannot always be based on the visual model. And, secondly, we see that we must recast the notion of nonveridicality, allowing for a notion of non-veridical experience that is disengaged from any particular object. We can learn much about perceptual experience by thinking about how it can mislead us. The idea that perceptual experiences have content has been motivated in just this way. But much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision, with very little consideration of the chemical senses—taste and smell. In this paper, I explore whether and, if so, how olfactory experience can mislead. The paper proceeds in two stages. In the first section, I consider whether a representational view is appropriate for olfactory experience. The tendency among content theorists is to suppose that the experiences of all of the modalities have representational content. But, given the phenomenology of human olfactory experience, it is difficult to see how a representational view of it might go.1 Moreover, although the idea of an olfactory hallucination is one that we seem prima facie comfortable with, the idea of an olfactory illusion is not. Setting aside this latter challenge for the following section, I argue for a view about the nature of olfactory content that honors its phenomenology. In the second section, I consider the notion of non-veridicality for olfactory experience. On the basis of my view of olfactory content, I argue that the traditional distinction between illusory and hallucinatory experience does not apply to olfactory experience. Integral to the traditional notions of illusion and hallucination is a notion of ‘object-failure’—the failure of an experience to present objects accurately. I argue that there are no such presented objects in the case of olfactory experience and that the most we get in that domain is a kind of property hallucination. The implications of my arguments in each section are twofold, but both involve recasting our way of thinking about perceptual experience. First, we see that accounts of representational content cannot always be based on the visual model. And, secondly, we see that we must recast the notion of non-veridicality for olfactory experience, allowing for a notion of non-veridical experience that is disengaged from any particular object. 1. A Representational Account of Olfactory Experience * This paper is dedicated to Ned Hall, who always pushed me towards olfactory hallucinations—considering them, that is, not having them. I must also thank Dan Korman and Kevin Sharpe for their helpful comments on previous presentations of the paper. 1 Obviously there are vast differences in acuity between the human sense of smell and that of other animals. The focus of this paper is human olfactory experience (although I will briefly discuss the olfactory abilities of other animals later in section 1). Unless otherwise necessary, I will drop the qualifier ‘human’.