Learning to smell: on the shifting modalities of experience

ABSTRACT

How can one learn to perceive? The study of an expert training shows how olfactory learning combines two operations and modalities of experience: firstly, it rests upon doubt and the questioning of perception to turn its undisputable evidence into a changing plurality. Secondly, perception is reconstructed and stabilized according to a set of chosen constraints, thanks to a perpetual control and reworking of the inadequate perceptions.

This analysis brings us to reconsider the interpretation of the notion of “attention”. Trainees focusing on their perception do not make it more salient, precise and detailed, as per the representational interpretation of perception. They question it. In so doing, they foster a surge of “shades” and make it plural and variable. Attention denotes here a process of perceptual destabilization, through doubt.

Additionally, in the cases studied, the reflexivity that enables learning shows deconstructive aspects: through doubt, the surrounding world turns from self-evident to changing and plural. This does not fit the usual constructive character of reflexivity, as in “mind-” or “self-building” processes, for instance. At the core of the learning process, the shifting modalities of perception seem to open the door to a larger variety of understandings of reflexivity and their correlative selves.

KEYWORDS:

• Perception
• phenomenal perception
• perception learning
• doubt
• uncertainty
• attention
• reflexivity
• modes of experience

Acknowledgments

I wish to address warm thanks to all four anonymous reviewers for their penetrating remarks. I am also very grateful to D. Howes for his proofreading of the English. Special thanks also to the Fromageries Bel for financing part of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Von Ehrensfeld (1922), Koffka (1935), Köhler (1939, 1929), Wertheimer (1923).

2. The two categories are not exclusive. Perception can be seen as a partly socially constructed representation of the external world. Sternsdorff Cisterna (2014) for instance, sees wine lovers as trying to “recognize” the preexisting smells of a wine, which are then filtered and transformed through language and social “values”.

3. Foi perceptive in French.

4. In his inventory of the modes of existence, E. Souriau warns the reader in a similar way: « To grasp the phenomenal existence, it is necessary above all, let us repeat, to avoid conceiving of the phenomenon as a phenomenon of something or for someone » (Souriau [1943] 2009, 119).

5. Noses formulate perfumes or food aromas whereas sensory expert panels are commonly used for sensory quality control in a wide range of industrial productions.

6. Though I did not ask her, the panel leader was probably applying some emerging guidelines regarding the design of the tasting sheets. More or less at the same time, Wilson et al. (1993) and Vickers et al. (1993) contributed to the early questioning of the peculiarities of “hedonic sensitivity” in order to explain why simple hedonic ratings differed from analytically constructed global assessments. Later, this point on the design of the test sheets has been addressed in a less physiological and more cognitive approach: “The important principle here is to ask overall acceptability first, before specific issues are raised. These issues may not have been on the person’s mind and may take on false importance if asked before the overall acceptance question” (Lawless and Heyman 2010, 363). Prescott, Lee, and Kim (2011) similarly understand the difference as an effect of attention (“synthetic attentional approach”).

7. Spontaneity as the term is used in this article does not refer to an impossible socially and culturally virgin physiological perception but rather to the “degree” of reflexivity of experience. Control of reflexive thinking is not straightforward, as shown in the experimental economics experiment conducted by (Teil and Muniesa 2007).

8. Common understanding does not imply a common liking scale or detailed meaning for each assessment.

9. It is also called “mechanical”, “automatic” or “unthought-of” and sometimes described as “bodily”, an expression that stresses the absence of mind in its production, which is impossible of course.

10. This situation is hardly ever seen in everyday life, but wine lovers who repeatedly participate in blind tastings are used to it.

11. The audition training of medicine students reported in Rice (2010) went about things similarly: “Dr Coltart encouraged his students to focus and ‘listen into’ the sounds the stethoscope produced” (Rice 2010, S49).

12. This word aims to extend the word “unforeseen” to encompass other senses, such as the sense of smell, as in the French word pressentir.

13. I also tried another exercise consisting in trying to “anticipate” the odor of a vial before smelling it.

14. Even though they are kept in the fridge, the odorous solutions of the vials oxidize, evaporate and evolve with time.

15. I also switched to other odorous “languages”, such as those used in enology.

16. I use this word in the pragmatist sense (see James [1912] 1996).

17. This expression, which is also the title of the book, has been translated in English by “logic of practice” and does not convey the “unthought character” of the “practical sense”.

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Geneviève Teil

Geneviève Teil is a researcher at the National Institute for Agronomic Research (Paris). She studies taste and quality related issues and more generally the coexistence of humans and non-humans.