2018/08/31 by Błażej Skrzypulec
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Multisensory perception and integration #Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11406-018-0017-3
crossref issued 2018/08/31 · crossref published 2018/08/31 · crossref published-online 2018/08/31 · openalex publication_date 2018/08/31 · crossref created 2018/08/31 · crossref published-print 2019/07/01 · crossref deposited 2024/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In the contemporary analytic discussions concerning human olfactory perception, it is commonly claimed that (1) olfactory experiences are representations having content and (2) olfactory experiences represent odours, like coffee odour or vanilla odour. However, despite these common assumptions, there seems to be an ontological controversy between two views: the first states that odours are perceptually represented as features and the second states that they are represented as objects. In this paper, I aim to systematically address the “feature or object” status of represented odours by concerning whether odours are represented (a) as subjects of properties, (b) as mereological wholes, and (c) entities persisting in a way characteristic for objects. I argue that olfactorily represented odours constitute a sui generis category and cannot be easily classified as objects or features. Such investigations constitute a step in establishing whether various human modalities are unified by organising the environment according to the same categories.