A Game of Trail. Reflections on the affective power of scents

In the last decades, the olfactory system fell under the microscope of scientific and philosophical analysis. In virtue of this research, we gained a better knowledge of the functioning of the olfactory system. However, a detailed analysis of the affective dimensions regulated by the sense of smell, able to weave together the threads spun by different disciplines is still missing. Indeed, my thesis aims at providing a comprehensive framework of the affective power of scents. To carry out my philosophical analysis I employed an empirically informed methodology. I interconnected a rigorous examination of research carried out in cognitive science and neuroscience with phenomenological analysis gathered from first-person experiences, literary analyses, and several case studies gathered from cultural history and ethnography. To guide my research, I decided to rely on an affective-enactive approach. In virtue of this dynamical model, I was able to emphasize the role played by embodied interactions with the world in the unfolding of our perceptual experience. This vantage point allowed me to regard olfactory experience as inseparable from the organism experiencing it. The physiological state of the organism, its motor actions, its dispositions and expectations, the actions performed, the affective states, the contextual cues, are all elements that crucially contribute to the emergence of the olfactory experience. I argued that smells are not ephemeral fragments of the phenomenological world experienced by the organism. Nor are they in the business of detecting chemical properties floating around the subject. Rather, smells are constrained and shaped both by the situation in which the subject is immersed and by its previous experience. As a result, they are endowed with a personal meaning based on the history of the organism experiencing them. They help us to attune to changes happening in the chemical environment that surrounds us by disclosing specific modalities of interaction, highlighting the affective relevance of certain affordances, and prompting specific states of action readiness: they support the organism in structuring a context relevant to its needs and preferences. Smells, therefore, come out as particular perspectives the organism adopts towards the world: as affective self-organizing patterns that dynamically unfold as the agent interact with its surroundings. By adopting this stance, I was able to address several problems regarding the nature of perception and emotion.