Sofia Livi

Interoception – the perception of the body’s internal state – has received growing attention in the past few decades. Yet, its conceptual foundations remain underexplored. This paper aims to expose conceptual limitations in dominant accounts of interoception, which are typically either viscerocentric or internalist. I argue that current philosophical definitions of interoception fail to accommodate the bidirectional feedback loop between olfaction and metabolic regulation. Olfactory cues can influence metabolic processes, and metabolism can recalibrate olfactory perception from its earliest stages. Towards this goal, I open three lines of reflection. First, interoception should not be understood as purely descriptive; it involves a prescriptive, regulation-oriented dimension. Second, its functional scope extends beyond homeostasis to encompass allostasis, integrating environmental cues into predictive bodily control. Third, the sharp divide between interoception and exteroception is questionable and warrants further assessment, given that sensory processes, including olfactory ones, regulate and are regulated by the body’s internal milieu. While these considerations remain open questions, they call for revising existing models to better capture interoception’s integration into broader architectures of bodily regulation.

We introduce the concept of ecological plasticity and develop it through the case study of human olfaction. Extending the model of plasticity to the ecological discourse, we define ecological plasticity as a principle of systemic relationality according to which an agent takes on a form by interacting with a complex affective reality while, reciprocally, giving it a form. The concept of form is here conceived as a synthetic unity that encapsulates the possibilities of existence, sensibility and interaction of an agent immersed in a complex world of other agent-forms. An agent is always aesthetically and affectively immersed in a complex or ecological system: a body is that which is affected and assumes form within a complex affective reality, which is, in turn, co-formed in this process. This perspective, in contrast with static morphology, contributes to configuring a dynamic eco-affective ontology, as body forms are experientially and affectively renegotiated in loops of co-individuation, impeding a clear distinction between activity and passivity, subject and object. Those concepts are illustrated and crafted with reference to olfactory perception, as olfaction discloses an embodied and reciprocal field of co-affection. Via the perception of smells, bodies make sense of their environment, and this shaping cannot take place without the same bodies being touched, affected, and thus renegotiated.

This paper examines the relationship between breathing, olfactory experience, and the sense of self. By employing the concept of posture, I explore the proprioceptive dimension of breathing within the complex framework of olfaction. The link between respiration and smell is analyzed phenomenologically, situating it within broader discussions on selfhood and embodiment. Ultimately, this research highlights how breathing and smelling are integral to our posture – our distinctive way of being in the world.

Riassunto: Lo statuto della psicologia come scienza speciale è l’oggetto del dibattito pluridecennale intercorso tra Jerry Fodor e Jaegwon Kim. La questione epistemologica delle leggi delle scienze cognitive si intreccia inestricabilmente con riflessioni di tipo metafisico sul dilemma mente-corpo: se Fodor ammette la validità delle leggi psicologiche, considerate irriducibili alle leggi della fisica, il fisicalismo riduzionista di Kim esclude invece tale possibilità. Così, il dialogo tra i due paradigmi funzionalisti delinea una serie di snodi problematici relativi sia allo status delle proprietà mentali, come alla possibilità di una scienza che possa aprirsi alla inter-specificità, o alla trasversalità delle strutture di implementazione. Centrale, nel dibattito, è la nozione di realizzabilità multipla: tale argomento, che viene addotto a sostegno di un certo grado di autonomia del mentale, viene da Kim giudicato, invece, essenzialmente aporetico. Parole chiave: Filosofia della mente; Scienze cognitive; Realizzabilità multipla; Funzionalismo; Fisicalismo riduzionista Fodor, Kim and the autonomy of cognitive sciences: The status of psychology as a special science is the main topic of the debate between two of the most important philosophers of mind in our times: Jerry Fodor and Jaegwon Kim. The epistemology of psychological laws is inextricably intertwined with the metaphysical quarrel over the mind-body problem. Fodor argues for the validity of psychological laws and their irreducibility to physical ones, whereas Kim’s reductive physicalism rules out their validity. Therefore, the dialogue between these two functionalist paradigms covers a range of open questions concerning the status of mental properties within a physicalist framework, as well as questions concerning the possibility of cross-species cognitive sciences. The notion of multiple realization is a pivotal point in this debate: it should indicate that the mind enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, yet Kim judges it to be aporetic in nature. Keywords: Philosophy of Mind; Cognitive Sciences; Multiple Realization; Functionalism; Reductive Physicalism

In this paper, I investigate how the affective component of smell can be implicitly biased and, more broadly, I provide reasons for the importance of taking into account the affective component of perceptual implicit bias. After introducing the notion of perceptual implicit bias, I delineate the case of affective perception for the sense of smell: since olfactory experience typically has a strong affective load, affective properties should, in those cases, be considered part of the perceptual states themselves. Next, I explore why certain smells are perceived to be pleasant or unpleasant, defending the hypothesis that the cultural setting of the perceiver plays an important role in determining the perceived pleasantness of smells. Then, I argue that some instances of affective olfactory perception should be conceived as cases of implicit bias, conditioned by the cultural context of the perceiver. Lastly, I sketch general considerations on the importance of including the affective component in the study of implicitly biased perception.