Senses and Constructed Response

                                         

In big bold letters in my notebook from Professor Kirkpatrick's visit is the phrase "DETECTION TO PERCEPTION TO INTERPRETATION," which is basically a map of how our brains process the input from our senses so that they can be responded to. Detection and perception are biologically fascinating, but I'm more interested in interpretation, because it is the step where value is decided -- if a scent, taste, touch, etc is good or bad. The perception of a sensory experience is important for this judgement, but all perception is colored by interpretation.



The example professor Kirkpatrick used was smoke. In most cases, it would be most advantageous for the smell of smoke to trigger a danger response. However, this is not my response. I smell smoke as I walk through the my neighborhood or the nearby woods and my nostrils flair. I am savoring the smell, not running from it. I love to have fires and so I associate the smell of them with friends, family, and general merriment. All of my experiences with smoke have been pleasant so to me smoke is pleasant, even if it is a sign of fire, which I should associate with danger (but don't for the same reasons).



What really caught my attention, however, was Saul's question about the interpretation phase -- how language is changed in the brain from a collection of sounds or marks to meaning, and the answer is the same as it is with smoke -- interpretation through previous experience. With language, we can externalize thought so that another can experience it with their senses and re-internalize it. We detect the sounds or marks that comprise language, perceive their presence, then interpret those marks or sounds through our previous experience, which includes the understanding of language. Of course a person who doesn't know how to read, or is listening to a language they don't know, will have no previous experience with which to interpret the input. They will still detect and perceive the shapes or sounds with the appropriate sense, and will probably be able to recognize (through previous experience) that it is a language, but will not be able to understand it.

What the example of language is really good at illustrating is how instantaneous the three steps seem to the person who is experiencing. Language is a constructed system, but it is so ingrained that the mind can't help but use it as a filter for interpretation. I can't see or hear a word and not interpret it. Even when hearing a language your mind is not familiar with, your brain will often still try to find meaning in it through the system it knows.

Because of the degree to which interpretation is a result of constructed association, I think that what Deborah Green sets out to do in "The Aroma of Righteousness" is important. Scent is an unavoidable part of life (and has been throughout history) As the example of language illustrates, social conditioning plays a huge roll in how we interpret what we perceive. Therefore, a huge part of understanding the people of a certain time and place should come of interpreting how they feel about and respond to certain certain input. This is why we study a culture's art or music to better understand its people -- because what a society enjoys is a result of what that society has constructed as good or bad. This same line of study, however, is neglected in smell, in part no doubt because smells are ephemeral (there is no works of art when it comes to smell that will be preserved for millennia) and because of the lack of respect Western academia attributes to smell (for the reasons Green describes in her introduction). However, smells are still important. Much can be understood by studying a cultures odors -- which odors they found pleasing, which they found offending, and (as Green pursues,) which were associated with authority and which with the erotic. By understanding how a people respond to odors, we can begin to understand why they respond that way. Since interpretation is a result of social conditioning, interpretation is a result of social conditions, and it is through an understanding of social conditions that we can come to better understand a society. And yet, we regularly ignore and overlook what could be an important clue to the past. Personally, I think that stinks.