Olfactory imagery: is exactly what it smells like
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Olfactory imagery: is exactly what it smells like Benjamin D. Young1
Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Mental Imagery, whereby we experience aspect of a perceptual scene or perceptual object in the absence of direct sensory stimulation is ubiquitous. Often the existence of mental imagery is demonstrated by asking one’s reader to volitionally generate a visual object, such as closing ones eyes and imagining an apple. However, mental imagery also arises in auditory, tactile, interoceptive, and olfactory cases. A number of influential philosophical theories have attempted to explain mental imagery in terms of belief-based forms of representation using the Dependence Thesis, dependence upon means of access, such as enactivism, or in terms of the similarity of content with perceptual processing. The focus of this paper concerns the later approach and in particular assessing if Nanay’s promissory note that his theory is applicable to modalities other than vision, such as smell, seems likely to be of theoretical tender. The thesis argued for in this paper is that olfactory imagery exists and is best accounted for by considering it as a type of perceptual processing with a unique representational format relative to the olfactory perceptual modality. The paper concludes by summarizing the applicability of Nanay’s theory of mental imagery for olfaction and suggests some further issues that arise when transitioning to multi-modal mental imagery. Keywords Mental imagery Olfactory imagery Smell Perception Olfactory quality
& Benjamin D. Young [email protected] 1
The Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Reno 89557, USA
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B. D. Young
1 Introduction Mental Imagery, whereby we experience aspect of a perceptual scene or perceptual object in the absence of direct sensory stimulation is ubiquitous. Often the existence of mental imagery is demonstrated by asking one’s reader to volitionally generate a visual object, such as closing ones eyes and imagining an apple. However, mental imagery also arises in auditory, tactile, interoceptive, and olfactory cases.1 A number of influential philosophical theories have attempted to explain mental imagery in terms of belief-based forms of representation using the Dependence Thesis (Martin 2002; Smith 2006), dependence upon means of access, such as enactivisim (Noe¨ 2002, 2004, 2005), or in terms of the similarity of content with perceptual processing (Ishiguro 1967; Kind 2001; Currie 1995; Currie and Ravenscroft 2002; Noordhof 2002; Nanay 2010, 2015). The focus of this paper concerns the later approach and in particular assessing if Nanay’s promissory note that his theory is applicable to modalities other than vision, such as smell, seems likely to be of theoretical tender. Olfactory stimulus transduction, cortical encoding, and perception are different than vision in a number of interesting ways that have been used to argue for the inadequacy of neurobiological models of consciousness (Young 2012) and Enactivists theories of perception (Young 2017). Thus, olfa
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