Stinking Philosophy!: Smell Perception, Cognition, and Consciousness

A philosopher who is also a neuroscientist, Benjamin Young addresses here not only how we perceive odors (which are tightly entwined with flavors), but how we think about them, how we categorize them, talk and write about them, and even what they reveal about consciousness.

Smell, Young says, was long neglected in philosophical discussions of perception and consciousness, despite its power to reveal important aspects of how people perceive the world.

He readily admits his book is not intended for general readers but addressed to those already acquainted with ongoing debates about mental representation as well as chemosciences and the philosophy of cognitive neuroscience.

If you’re wondering whether your prior reading has prepared you for this approach, we offer a few subheadings to help you gauge your comfort level with the discussion vocabulary:

• Olfaction’s Foundational Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Status

• Intentional Inexistence

• The Neural Realization of the Compositionality of Concepts

• No Olfactory Awareness without Qualitative Consciousness

Not the place to begin an exploration of smell perception, perhaps, but a place to arrive when your journey has exposed you to new horizons.

Paperback.