Abstract

According to a common opinion, human olfactory experiences are significantly different from human visual experiences. For instance, olfaction seems to have only rudimentary abilities to represent space; it is not clear whether olfactory experiences have any mereological structure; and while vision presents the world in terms of objects, it is a matter of debate whether there are olfactory object-representations. This paper argues that despite these differences visual and olfactory experiences share a hierarchical subject/property structure. Within this structure, olfactorily experienced odours and visual objects have the same status: they are primary subjects which unify other represented elements into perceptual units.

Highlights

  • According to a common opinion, human olfactory experiences are significantly different from human visual experiences

  • I argue that odors are perceptually presented as primary subjects and that they play the same role in organizing olfactory experiences that visual objects play in the case of visual experiences

  • I argue that odors are primary subjects in the same sense as visual objects, i.e., they unify properties into perceptual units but themselves do not need to be constituted by complex entities unified by something else

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Summary

Visual Objects as Primary Subjects

Philosophers of perception often express an intuition that within visual experiences, features like colors, shapes, or sizes are presented as properties of objects (e.g., Clark 2004; Cohen 2004; Keane 2009; Matthen 2004; O’Callaghan 2008). A single object combined with several visual features is experienced as a perceptual unit, for example a figure that is a red, small square. Such a perceptual unit is a complex visual entity constituted by an object and features related to it. The relation between visually experienced objects and features is not contingent in the sense that under normal conditions, when the functioning of perceptual mechanisms is not seriously disturbed, people do not have visual experiences as of featureless objects or uninstantiated features. Experienced objects asymmetrically unify features related to them and those features are always visually presented as constituting perceptual units unified by objects or some other entities (like visual places)

Psychological Data
Many Properties Problem
Primary Subjects
Odors as Primary Subjects
Intuitions Concerning Odors
The Many Properties Problem
Olfactory Subjects and Objects
The Structure of Vision and Olfaction
Conclusions
Full Text
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