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A Representational Account of Olfactory Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Clare Batty
Clare Batty*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY40506-0027, USA
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Extract

Seattle rain smelled different from New Orleans rain…. New Orleans rain smelled of sulfur and hibiscus, trumpet metal, thunder, and sweat. Seattle rain, the widespread rain of the Great Northwest, smelled of green ice and sumi ink, of geology and silence and minnow breath.

— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Much of the philosophical literature on perception has focused on vision. This is not surprising, given that vision holds for us a certain prestige. Our visual experience is incredibly rich, offering up a mosaic of apparent three-dimensional objects. For this reason, it is commonplace to suppose that visual experience is world-directed, with the view taking its most popular form in the representational, or content, view. World-directed views contrast with what we might call subjectivist views — views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 511 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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