Philosophy Compass 5/12 (2010): 1147–1156, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00352.

Olfactory Experience II: Objects and Properties

Clare Batty*
University of Kentucky

Abstract
The philosophy of perception has been dominated by vision, with very little discussion of the
chemical senses – olfaction and gustation. In this second entry of a pair on olfactory experience, I
consider what olfaction has to tell us about two issues: (i) the nature of perceptual objects and
(ii) the nature of perceptual properties and, in particular, the secondary qualities. Given the scant
work on olfaction in the philosophical literature, my discussion not only surveys what philoso-
phers have said about olfaction so far, but considers the most plausible views and ⁄ or most pressing
questions in each area of inquiry.

1. Introduction
Let me begin with a word about terminology. In what follows, I will use ‘olfactory expe-
rience’ to refer to human olfactory experience. This is important to keep in mind given
that some of the claims I will make about our olfactory experiences may not apply to
those of other animals. Similarly, I will use ‘smell’ and ‘odor’ more precisely than they
are typically used. We use each in both ‘property-talk’ and ‘object-talk’. For example, we
say that roses have sweet odors, or nice smells. But we also say that objects give off odors,
that their smells can spread or drift through space. In the former case both ‘smell’ and
‘odor’ refer to some property that an object has; in the latter case, they refer to objects
possessing these properties. I will use ‘odor’ to refer to objects – in particular, to those
gaseous emanations that objects like roses give off. I will use ‘smell’ in its nominal posi-
tion to refer to olfactory properties, or the properties presented in olfactory experience.
‘The smell of a rose’, then, refers to the distinctive property presented to us when we
sniff in the vicinity of a rose; the ‘rose odor’ refers to the collection of molecules given
off by any rose.
The remainder of paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I consider the question:
What are olfactory objects, the things that are presented in experience as smelly?
Although there has been recent debate about the nature of visual objects inspired by
Clark’s A Theory of Sentience, there is what we might call a ‘natural position’ on this ques-
tion – namely, that visual objects are ordinary objects like tables and chairs. The position
is ‘natural’ because it just seems obvious given a mere consideration of the phenomenol-
ogy of visual experience, I draw attention to the fact that, although we speak as if the
olfactory case mirrors the visual one in just this way, there is no ‘natural position’ on the
nature of olfactory objects. Drawing on other considerations of olfactory content, I argue
that olfactory objects are in fact odors.
In the second part of the paper, I turn to the question of what smells are. Recently,
inspired by Bennett’s phenol-thi-urea thought experiment, the philosophy of color has
been occupied in part by a debate between relationalists and non-relationalists. In
addition to exploring what has been said about the nature of smells thus far, I model an

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argument for relationalism about smell on a similar argument for the case of color. In
doing so, I draw attention to the challenges of assessing such an argument and, in turn,
highlight areas ripe for future contribution.

2. Olfactory Objects
In a recent book, Celia Lyttleton travels the world in a quest to discover the essential
ingredients of a perfume created just for her. She describes her memories of a childhood
in Tuscany as filled with
the dusty smell of geraniums, the citrus scents of potted lemon and orange trees,….[t]he split,
rotten-sweet tomatoes lying in the sun, the resinous green soapy smell of pine, the musty, mil-
dewy-sour smells of wine fermenting in the cellar, the piquant smell of the olive harvest and
the nectarous, cloying aroma of jasmine hanging limply in the heat of the summer (128).
What this vivid description betrays is our association of smells with objects – ordinary
ones like flowers and trees, as well as less ordinary ones like aromatic effluvia or, as I will
put it, odors. Indeed, we sometimes speak as if olfactory experience attributes properties
to these objects. We say that flowers have nice smells, that that their odors are fragrant.
In attributing smells to both ordinary objects and emitted odors, our thought about olfac-
tory objects mirrors our thought about visual objects.
At first, this latter observation might seem to settle the issue of what olfactory objects
are. Roses are red; flowers, and their odors, are sweet smelling. That roses appear to be
red just seems obvious. But is it so obvious that jasmine blooms, or their odors, appear
sweet smelling? Several philosophers have suggested that, despite the kinds of things we
say, they do not. Lycan, for example, claims: ‘[p]henomenally speaking, a smell is just a
modification of our consciousness, a qualitative condition or event in us’ (‘Slighting’
281), ‘lingering uselessly in the mind without representing anything’ (Consciousness 145).
Similarly, Chalmers observes: ‘[s]mell has little in the way of apparent structure and often
floats free of any apparent object, remaining a primitive presence in our sensory manifold’
(Conscious Mind 8). Both Lycan and Chalmers suggest that olfactory experiences are
purely sensational, that they are not directed at the world, let alone any particular things
in it. Understanding why they suggest this view is the key to understanding both the rea-
son for asking our question and the kind of answer it must get.
In order to get at the reason, let’s consider visual experience further. There is a way
that things look in visual experience. This is because visual experience – what we might
call the typical one, at least – presents a structured sensory field. Colors and shapes, for
example, are presented at more or less determinate locations in the visual field and, what’s
more, they can appear to be co-instantiated at those locations. That is to say, visual expe-
rience packages properties into ‘bundles’ and these bundles are the objects that we see
(or that appear to us in visual experience). So, strewn on my desk before me I see among
other things various pens and pencils, my mug, a set of speakers and a notebook. Each
appears to have a certain color and shape and occupies a specific place in the scene before
my eyes. Because it organizes and arranges properties in this way, visual experience allows
for demonstrative thought about objects.
The same does not hold for olfactory experience. Unlike visual experience, olfactory
experience exhibits very little apparent spatial structure. To be sure, like visual experi-
ence, olfactory experience can present multiple apparent properties. But it differs in that
it does not present these properties at determinate locations ‘before the nose’. So, for
example, consider the experience you have when you enter a room and smell newly

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baked cookies. As you stand there waiting for the cookies to cool, the property you
experience does not appear at any particular location before you. (I will, for the sake of
argument, assume that only a single property is presented. But, as I will discuss below,
the same point applies for a circumstance in which multiple properties are presented.)
Rather, the smell simply pervades, undifferentiated in space. Empirical studies have sug-
gested that, in highly controlled circumstance, humans can localize odor sources (von
Békésy; Porter et al.). But this can only be achieved in a laboratory environment and
does not represent the typical experience of the human subject in her environment. For
this reason, I will set these achievements aside in what follows.
The typical olfactory experience is like what we might call an atypical visual experience
– that is, the experience we have when we look at an undifferentiated colored expanse like
a blank wall or a cloudless summer sky. Both the typical olfactory experience and the atypi-
cal visual one present properties at undifferentiated locations. But the two experiences dif-
fer in an important and interesting way. In the olfactory case, the addition of other
apparent properties into the scene does not bring with it additional spatial differentiation.
Consider, for example, what it is like to try and mask a nasty smell with air freshener – the
smell of fish with lemon freshener, say (Batty, ‘A Representational’; ‘What the’). More
often than not, this strategy doesn’t work; you are left smelling both the fish smell and the
lemon smell. (I have been told that this works; but it has never worked for me.) But it isn’t
as if these properties are presented at any particular location before you. So, for example, in
a circumstance in which a much larger lemon odor completely covers its fishy counterpart,
your experience doesn’t report on this arrangement. Nor would it report that the lemon
odor almost covered the fish odor but nevertheless fell short of doing so. In each case, you
simply smell that the lemon and fish smells are instantiated. What these two examples show
is that olfaction cannot solve the Many Properties Problem – namely, the problem of dis-
tinguishing between scenes in which the same properties are presented but in different
arrangements. Vision can solve this problem and it does so by positing objects and those
objects are presented at distinct locations in the visual field.
It is for these phenomenological reasons that Lycan and Chalmers make their respective
remarks about olfactory experience. As I have put it elsewhere (‘A Representational’;
‘Scents’), unlike visual experience, which offers up a wealth of apparent three-dimensional
objects, olfactory experience is just plain smudgy. To be sure, we may get up and move
around to determine where smells are located and where they are not. But taken minimally,
olfactory experience only ever allows one to determine that properties are instantiated –
not where, and by what, in particular. At any instant, smells appear to be simply ‘here’.
It is commonplace to think that visual experience is world-directed and, in particular,
that it has representational content. We can think of the content of a perceptual experi-
ence as the way that the world appears to a subject when she has that experience. It is
natural, then, to think that there is a phenomenological constraint on the assignment of
content to an experience. We have seen that that olfactory experience does not afford us
the ability to refer to particular objects; it only ever attributes properties to some single
‘something we know not what’. What we know, then, is that olfactory content is not
object-involving. According to the object-involving view of content, particular objects
enter into the content of experience. (For proponents of this view for visual content, or
those sympathetic to its motivations, see Burge; Campbell; Martin; McDowell.) In the
case of olfactory experience, there never is a particular object present; so, such a view is
ruled out. According to the abstract, or existentially quantified, view of content, how-
ever, no particular object enters into the content of experience. (For a proponent of this
view for visual content, see McGinn.) If we think that olfactory experiences have

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representational content – as we ought to given the role they play as part of a system that
guides behavior and action – the most plausible view about the content olfactory experi-
ence that respects this constraint is that it has the following form: there is some x here
and x is F, G, and so on. If there is nothing at the perceiver that is F and G (and so on),
then the experience is non-veridical. In other words, olfactory experience has a very
weak form of abstract content. It only ever represents that a single ‘something or other’
has certain smells. Let’s call this the abstract view.
Time to take stock. On the abstract view, olfactory experience predicates properties to
objects – or, better yet, object. But it is otherwise silent on the nature of these objects.
This places olfactory experience in contrast to the typical visual experience, where it just
seems obvious that the properties it presents are those of apples and oranges, tables and
chairs, and so on – ordinary objects, that is. In the case of olfactory experience, it is not
obvious what olfactory properties are in fact properties of. The natural next question is:
given that some olfactory experiences are veridical, what objects have the properties those
experiences present? That is: What are the olfactory objects? A more focused reflection
on one’s olfactory experience will not provide the answer to this question. Still, consider-
ations other than introspective ones suggest that they are odors.
Why not ordinary objects? If we accept that the abstract view is definitive of olfactory
content (i.e., that phenomenological content is definitive of perceptual content), then this
view about the nature of olfactory objects isn’t very plausible (Batty, ‘A Representational’;
‘What’s that’). To see that this is so, we need only consider an extremely common olfac-
tory circumstance. To modify a previous example, consider how you can have an olfactory
experience – the smell of a fish dinner, say – even though the object that you think of as
responsible for the smell is long gone or far away. You come home from work and, even
though the fish has long been consumed and any trace of it has been washed away or taken
outside to the trash, you smell fish. Given that your olfactory experience represents that
properties are instantiated by something or other here, if olfactory objects are things like
fish, your experience must be non-veridical. The fish is not around you; it’s either been
consumed or is outside in the trash bins. But it doesn’t seem right to conclude that this
experience is non-veridical. This is supported by the fact that this kind of circumstance is
not uncommon. On a hot summer’s day, with windows open wide, you might smell the
rotting garbage outside. If you live in an industrial town, you might smell the pulp of the
paper mill from your home on a daily basis – even though the pulp itself is not around
you. Given the ubiquity of these kinds of circumstances, the view that olfactory objects are
ordinary objects makes for an implausible amount of olfactory misperception.
To be sure, we say that we (still) smell the fish; but we also say that smells linger long
after certain objects are gone (the fish, in this case). And this latter way of speaking fits
nicely with a view that avoids assigning such widespread error to olfactory experience.
This is the view that olfactory objects are odors – collections of molecules in the air.
What the fish case suggests is that olfactory experience presents us with properties of
something in the atmosphere. Smelly objects (or that the ones we say smell) are those
whose molecules are volatile enough to evaporate from their surfaces and enter the air.
(This explains why, at room temperature, we cannot smell iron and steel. At room
temperature, their molecules are not volatile.) So, the fish is merely the source of an
olfactory object, not the olfactory object itself. The object is the odor it produces. Reid
made the same observation. According to Reid, ‘all bodies are smelled by means of the
effluvia they emit’ (25). These effluvia are the ‘volatile parts’ (25) of odorous bodies.
More recently, Tye (Consciousness, ‘Representationalism’) has suggested that the properties
we perceive in olfactory experience are properties of odors.

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Of course, one might resist this conclusion and claim that things like fish are, or are
among, the olfactory objects. For example, Lycan (Consciousness) agrees with Tye; but he
also suggests that odors are not the only olfactory objects. As I mentioned earlier, Lycan
holds that what we call ‘source objects’ are also olfactory objects. According to Lycan,
olfactory experience represents both odors and ordinary objects. At a first level of repre-
sentation, olfactory experience represents odors; at a second level, it represents ordinary
objects. The abstract view, then, is in no obvious tension with the first thesis of Lycan’s
view. Both get the result that the experience you have when you return home and smell
the fishy smell is veridical. This is because there is a fishy odor in the room. Where
Lycan’s view departs from the abstract view is in its second thesis. According to Lycan’s
second thesis, your experience might very well turn out to be non-veridical at its second
level of representation – and plausibly so. He states:
I think it is fairly plausible to say that in the first case – that of experiencing the [fish] smell in
the absence of any [fish]—I am representing both correctly and incorrectly, the odor correctly and
[fish] incorrectly (Consciousness 148, emphasis in original).
Given that we are happy to accept a certain amount of error about the sources of odors,
Lycan’s view encompasses a nice compromise position. But it is important to note that it
doesn’t do so at any expense to the abstract view. As I hinted at earlier, it would seem
that Lycan’s second thesis (at least) leans on a notion of content free of ties to phenome-
nology. I have argued that, phenomenologically speaking, olfactory experience reports
that there is something or other around you that has certain properties. But, as we have
seen, ordinary ‘source’ objects need not be around you – and yet we would want to say
that, in circumstances like these, your experience is in some sense veridical. They might
be outside in the trash, or even across town. If we consider phenomenological content
alone, then we must conclude that ordinary objects do not enter into a characterization
of such content. Still, this conclusion by itself does not rule out additional notions of
content free of ties to phenomenology. And, considering Lycan’s remarks about the phe-
nomenology of olfactory experience that I quoted earlier, I take it that Lycan’s second
thesis (at least) represents one such view.
Whether we take the abstract view as definitive of olfactory content or instead pur-
sue a compromise or ‘mixed’ view such as Lycan’s, interesting questions remain about
the nature of the odors themselves. For example, what are the persistence conditions
of odors? Because molecules outlast odor-particulars, it is particularly interesting ques-
tion to ask when, and how, a particular odor ceases to be. Similarly, we can ask how
odors are individuated. How do we characterize their boundaries? Do they have to be
present in certain concentrations and configurations and, if so, what are the constraints
on these concentrations and configurations? Related questions arise when we consider
mixing. Suppose again that you spray lemon air freshener to try and mask the smell of
fish in your kitchen. This is a case in which the lemon odor mixes with the fishy
odor. After you spray the air freshener, is there now a single odor with a complex
property or the same two odors in an overlapping location? These are all interesting,
and necessary, questions to consider in future philosophical work on the nature of
olfactory objects.

3. Olfactory Properties
A second topic to consider is the nature of the smells themselves. Although very little
philosophical work has been done on olfaction, this is an area of research that seems

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particularly rich with questions – and ones that truly set the nature and status of olfactory
research apart from that of vision.
It would be misleading to say that there has been any debate about the nature of
smells. Two philosophers have dealt with this question more-or-less explicitly: Thomas
Reid and, more recently, Moreland Perkins. Both draw on themes from Locke. Most
introductory philosophy texts will tell you that Locke identifies smells, colors and so on
with dispositional properties – in particular, dispositions to cause certain kinds of ideas
in us. To go with the textbook, then, is to interpret Locke as a dispositionalist about
smells. Although this dispositionalist interpretation of Locke is widely accepted, there is
another school of thought according to which he was a projectivist about smells, colors
and so on. Recently Peter Alexander and Michael Jacovides have each argued that
Locke held that colors and smells are properties of ideas. They are what Locke referred
to as ‘ideas of Secondary qualities’ – manifestations of these dispositions. Because Locke
clearly thought that it is ordinary objects such as violets that appear to be colored and
smelly (Essay II, viii, §13), Locke was, on this interpretation, an error-theorist about
smells. Ideas are smelly; but experience mistakenly ‘places’ these properties on things in
the world.
Many of Locke’s contemporaries, including Reid, interpreted him as a projectivist. As
a way of avoiding what he found so displeasing in Locke, Reid denied the Lockean
act ⁄ object theory of perception.
According to Reid, what contemporary philosophers refer to as perception, in actual
fact, consists of two distinct acts of mind: sensation and perception (Essay; Inquiry). On
Reid’s view, when you sniff in the presence of a rose, you have both a rose sensation
and a perception of that rose. On the Reidian picture of olfaction, rose sensations are not
mental objects, as Locke would have had them; rather, they are mental ‘happenings’, or
events. Moreover, sensations are not in the business of representing anything. A rose sen-
sation is a mere affectation, as Reid put it, or, as contemporary philosophers might put it,
a raw feel. But, although olfactory sensations are not world-directed themselves, they
cause other states – namely, beliefs about the instantiation of the rose smell – that are.
These are perceptions. According to Reid, the objects of olfactory perception are odors.
According to Reid, the property of an odor that is presented in olfactory experience is
some power, quality, or virtue, in the rose [for example], or in the effluvia proceeding from it,
which hath a permanent existence, independent of the mind, and which, by the constitution of
our nature, produces the sensation in us (43).
Although it is not clear here whether Reid espouses dispositionalism or a form of physi-
calism about smells, he is most certainly not a projectivist and, in turn, an error theorist
about olfactory experience.
More recently, Perkins has argued for the projectivist picture that Reid rejected. Per-
kins agrees with Reid that odors are, in some sense, olfactory objects. Odors have prop-
erties that we detect, which he refers to as sensible qualities. But, according to Perkins,
we only ever perceive these sensible properties indirectly. Sensible properties are disposi-
tional properties – dispositions of objects to cause certain experiences in us. The direct
objects of olfaction are these experiences. Experiences have properties Perkins refers to as
sensuous qualities. We perceive sensible qualities (dispositions of odors) via our acquain-
tance with sensuous qualities (properties of experiences). And Perkins identifies smells
with these sensuous qualities. In order to argue for this, Perkins tells us that the properties
presented in olfactory experience are those properties that directly engage our attention
when having such an experience. According to Perkins these properties cannot be sensi-

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ble qualities of an odor – i.e., the disposition of the odor – because a subject can only
become aware of such a disposition through being aware of its manifestation – namely, a
certain experience. Any property that directly engages our attention, then, must be a
property of that experience. But, as Perkins also claims, these properties do not appear to
be properties of one’s experience. Rather, ‘[o]lfactory perception itself, imagined as artic-
ulating its immediate content, declares the sensuous, olfactory quality – which is how the
odor smells to us – to be the character of [an] odorous effluvium’ (67). According to Per-
kins, then, smells are qualia. The properties that external things seem to have – namely,
smells – are mistakenly attributed to these things in olfactory experience. Perkins, then, is
a projectivist and, in turn, an error-theorist about smells.
Following Reid, we might reject such a view on the grounds that it is against common
sense. And unless we have exhausted all other available realist views, it seems that an
error-theory of olfactory experience ought to be avoided – and for the same reasons that
a view according to which olfactory experience is not world-directed ought to be
avoided. Widespread error on the part of the olfactory system does not accord with its
being a functioning olfactory system and this is a consequence we ought to avoid both
for intra- and inter-species considerations.
Still, those who hold that olfactory properties are external to the mind face some chal-
lenges – especially if they wish to defend non-relational views against relational ones.
According to relationalism, smells are constituted by relations between objects and per-
ceivers. Dispositionalism is one such view. Non-relationalism, on the other hand, main-
tains that smells are perceiver-, or mind-, independent properties. In the debate about
color, the typical form of non-relationalism is physicalism; the less typical is primitivism.
Color physicalism is the view that colors are physical properties of objects. Most often it
is claimed that they are reflectance properties. Color primitivism is the view that colors
are irreducible, sui generis, properties of objects. Although the debate about smell is in its
infancy, we can define each of these views for it. Given that olfactory objects are odors,
the most natural physicalist view is that smells are molecular properties – specific configu-
rations of types of atoms, say. Smell primitivism is the view that smells are irreducicible,
sui generis, properties of odors.
The most common argument for relationalism in the color domain is the argument
from perceptual variation. We can model just such an argument for smell (Batty, ‘What’s
that’). There can be significant intersubjective differences between the ways that perceiv-
ers smell certain odorants to be (see e.g., Lawless). If these differences are rife and involve
significant shifts in subjective response, then the non-relationalist about smell is in trou-
ble. Unless theorists have a principled reason to favor one class of perceivers over another
– which relationalists argue they do not – it is difficult to see how they can avoid relativ-
izing the nature of the olfactory properties to a perceiver (or set of perceivers). Still, if
the differences in subjective response are minor, the threat to non-relationalism dimin-
ishes. As Byrne and Hilbert note in the case of color, cases of shifted spectra (e.g., a color
chip appearing unique green to Paul and bluish green to Mary), are of little ecological
significance. Sometimes the visual system is pushed to the limits of its resolution. When
it is, we should expect that the system will make minor mistakes like this. Given this,
they argue that the argument from shifted spectra poses little threat to a non-relationalist
view of the colors. It is plausible that one of Paul or Mary is wrong (or indeed that they
are both wrong). As long as the shifts are minor, the same response is available for the
case of olfactory ‘shifted fragra’. That is, the response goes, when the olfactory system is
pushed to its limits, we should expect that it will make minor mistakes. The crucial
question for both the relationalist and non-relationalist is, then: What is the extent of

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olfactory perceptual variation and is it constituted by major shifts in perceived quality or

is it of the less troublesome minor sort?
It is well known among olfactory scientists that there are wide differences among indi-
viduals with respect to sensitivity to, discrimination of, and abilities for recognition and
identification of odorant stimuli (Lawless). Let’s set aside the last of these differences and
focus on the effect that the first two have on answering our question. We might think
that answering our question is easy in either case. If a perceiver is incapable of discrimi-
nating a certain odorant stimuli (either on its own or amongst others), her experience
does not vary with yours and mine with respect to perceived quality. Rather, she fails to
perceive the relevant property. So far so good for the non-relationalist; no perceptual varia-
tion. But things get more complicated when we consider differences in sensitivity. We
might be tempted to conclude that what we have in these cases is diminished olfactory
acuity and, as a result, a minor shift in perceived quality – not the significant change in
perceived quality required by the relationalist. But, as it turns out, such an inference is
not so easy to make.
In order to see why not, we must consider the implications of certain studies in olfac-
tory psychophysics. The widely accepted view of olfaction is one according to which the
qualitative character of a given experience does not depend alone on the chemical struc-
ture of the odorant stimulus; it also depends on the pattern of receptor output. Motivat-
ing such a view are studies on the variation of perceived olfactory quality with changes
in odor concentration. For example, at low levels of concentration, methyl heptinoate
smells like violets while, at high concentration, it smells foul (Gross-Isseroff and Lancet).
Similarly, diphenyl menthane smells like geranium at low concentrations and like orange at
high ones (Gross-Isseroff and Lancet). (For similar studies and results, see, e.g., Amoore;
Laing et al.; Rossiter; Vroon.) What results like these suggest is that odorants in increased
concentrations ‘recruit’ more receptors and, as a result, change the pattern of the resultant
receptor output. There ought to be no change in the types of receptors triggered. So, the
pattern of receptor output must play a role in perceived quality.
How, whether, and to what degree this affects our evaluation of perceivers with
diminished olfactory sensitivity depends on the physiological nature of the decreased sen-
sitivity. It is widely accepted that a diminished sensitivity to certain odors is a result of
diminished receptor density and ⁄ or receptor sensitivity. And, if this is the case, it is not
clear that what I have referred to as a ‘diminished sensitivity’ to certain odors involves
diminished olfactory acuity and, thus, a minor shift in perceived quality, as opposed to a
significant difference in perceived quality. For, as studies in the effects of odor concentra-
tion on perceived quality seem to indicate, a change in the pattern of receptor stimulation
can amount to a significant change in perceived quality. And such a change in pattern is
what we would expect in cases where, as a result of differences in receptor sensitivity
and ⁄ or density, subjects vary with respect to subjective response. Future work on the
philosophical implications of olfactory perceptual variation must focus on considering the
degree to which such diminished sensitivity exists and the degree to which it amounts to
a difference in perceived quality.
Still, a more basic second challenge faces anyone wishing to theorize about the nature
of smells and this challenge applies no matter what the basis of the alleged variation –
e.g., differences in sensitivity, discriminative ability or abilities for recognition and identi-
fication. In speaking of olfactory properties throughout this article, I have helped myself
to properties like the fish smell, the lemon smell and the rose smell. But there is a very
real sense in which philosophers interested in smells have yet to locate their subject mat-
ter. Although philosophers disagree about the nature of colors, they have a firm idea of

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what colors there are and of the qualitative relations they bear to one another. In the case
of color, we have a well-defined quality space with three primaries spanning a three
dimensional space – hue, saturation and brightness. Color theorists have located their sub-
ject matter; they know what they are asking after the nature of. At present, olfactory
research is far from being at the same stage.
Interesting questions remain about what smells there are – i.e., about what properties
are in the ‘smell catalogue’ and the similarity and difference relations they bear to one
another. This is evident in the fact that we do not, as of yet, have a structured quality
space for olfaction. Many systems have been proposed – for example, Linnaeus’ (see
Harper et al. for overview) that grouped smells into seven categories, Henning’s smell
prism with three dimensions and six primaries, and Crocker and Henderson’s four-
dimensional space with four primaries. No system has been found satisfactory; all have
been accused of oversimplifying olfactory experience. Indeed, many researchers have
begun to shirk a dimensional model complete with primary properties and have turned
to models that attempt to connect olfactory experience with physicochemical or other
stimulus characteristics. (For a recent discussion of these considerations see Wilson and
Steven Learning, ch. 2.) However, like many questions about olfactory perception, the
question of what properties are presented in olfactory experience and, as a result, how
we ought to model them remains an extremely controversial one. And uncertainty
about the nature olfactory quality space translates into uncertainty about how to evalu-
ate claims of variation among perceivers. Whether instances of variation involve major
or minor shifts in perceived quality must be assessed against a model of olfactory space
in which the similarity and difference relations between the smells are made clear. Fur-
ther empirical work needs to be done, then, before we can evaluate the debate
between relationalists and non-relationalists.

4. Conclusion
I have presented two areas of inquiry into perception and discussed the case of olfaction
with respect to each. From the discussion of each, we have learned two general things.
First, although there are some basic similarities between visual experience and olfactory
experience, there are significant differences between them that prevent us from making
easy generalizations from the visual case. Secondly, we have learned that much exciting
work remains to be done in the olfactory domain. Future philosophical work on olfaction
should focus on bringing the discussion to the breadth we see in the visual domain.

Short Biography
Clare Batty works primarily in the philosophy of mind. Batty’s current research is in
the philosophy of perception and focuses on olfactory experience. Her recent publi-
cations include ‘‘What’s that Smell?’’ (Southern Journal of Philosophy), ‘‘Scents and
Sensibilia’’ (American Philosophical Quarterly), ‘‘What the Nose Doesn’t Know:
Non-Veridicality and Olfactory Experience’’ (Journal of Consciousness Studies) and ‘‘A
Representational Account of Olfactory Experience’’ (forthcoming Canadian Journal of
Philosophy). She received her B.A. (Hons.) in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University
in 1999, and her Ph.D. from MIT in 2007. She has been Assistant Professor of Philos-
ophy at the University of Kentucky since 2007.

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Philosophy Compass ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1156 Olfactory Experience II

Note
* Correspondence: Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, 1415 Patterson Office Tower, Lexington,
KY 40506-0027, USA. Email: clare.batty@uky.edu.

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Philosophy Compass ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd