Is the Red That You're Experienced the Same as the Red That I'm Experiencing?

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There's a difference between variation and subjectivity. Subjectivity means just like it's in your head, there's no relation to objective reality. But variations, this means, well, there's a difference in perception, but we can link that variation to certain causal principles. And these can be studied objectively. So they're really, really recently was a series of studies showing that a lot of the perceptual variation in smell links to the high. The super extreme genetic diversity between humans with a sense of smell. Your factory system is one of the genetically most diverse systems. We're kind of missing the point of understanding how the senses work through smell.

We gather empirical evidence about the nature of the world through our senses, and use that evidence to construct an image of the world in our minds. But not all senses are created equal; in practice, we tend to privilege vision, with hearing perhaps a close second. Ann-Sophie Barwich wants to argue that we should take smell more seriously, and that doing so will give us new insights into how the brain works. As a working philosopher and neuroscientist, she shares a wealth of fascinating information about how smell works, how it shapes the way we think, and what it all means for questions of free will and rationality.

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Ann-Sophie Barwich received her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences, University of Exeter. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University Bloomington. She has previously been a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at The Center for Science & Society, Columbia University, and held a Research Fellowship at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Vienna. Her new book is Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind.

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