Olfactory perspective

Smell lacks informational richness, as I ve said. I think it also lacks intramodal robustness. We cannot easily see how one could entirely by smell check and recheck an ostensible external object s identity or character by gaining successively different olfactory perspectives on that object. The idea of an "olfactory perspective" makes little sense unless founded on an extraneous mode of sensing. (The same object could exhibit different smells in different parts and from different directions, but we could establish this only by distinguishing the parts using some sense other than smell thus, the perspective in question would not be purely olfactory.)... 

I think we should concede that a Sanford world might make sense of the notion of (purely) olfactory perspective. But Sanford worlds are fantasy, not even science fiction, and very likely nomologically impossible. 

Laurent, G. (1999). A systems perspective on early olfactory coding Science 286 723-726. 

Islam, Z., Harkema, J.R., Pestka, J.J. (2006). Satratoxin G from the black mold Stachybotrys chartarum evokes olfactory sensory neuron loss and inflammation in the murine nose and hxam. Environ. Health Perspect. 114 1099-1107. 

Laurent, G. A systems perspective on early olfactory coding. Science 286, 723-728 (1999) Laurent, G., Stopfer, M., Friedrich, R.W., Rabinovich, M.I., Abarbanel, H.D.I. Odor encoding as an active, dynamical process Experiments, computation, and theory. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 24, 263-297 (2001)... 

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