Smellscapes and diachronic olfaction

Abstract

According to a common view, olfactory experiences lack well-developed spatial content. Nevertheless, there is also an important opposition to such a restricted perspective on olfactory spatiality, which claims that a view ascribing only rudimentary spatial content to olfaction arises from a narrow focus on short and passive olfactory experiences. In particular, it is claimed that due to the active and diachronic aspects of olfaction, olfactory experiences represent ‘smellscapes,’ i.e., spatially organized arrangements of odor plumes. This paper considers the thesis that olfaction represents smellscapes by distinguishing weaker and stronger understandings of smellscapes. Weak smellscapes are odors standing in allocentric spatial relations, while strong smellscapes, in addition, are odors located at places having specific sizes and shapes. It is argued that only weak smellscapes are plausibly represented by human olfaction.