What the Nose doesn't know: Non-veridicality and Olfactory experience

We can learn much about perceptual experience by thinking about how it can mislead us. In this paper, I explore whether, and how, olfactory experience can mislead. I argue that, in the case of olfactory experience, the traditional distinction between illusion and hallucination does not apply. Integral to the traditional distinction is a notion of 'object-failure'- the failure of an experience to present objects accurately. I argue that there are no such presented objects in olfactory experience. As a result, olfactory experience can only mislead by means of a kind of property hallucination. The implications of my arguments are twofold. First, we see that accounts of representational content can- not always be based on the visual model. And, secondly, we see that we must recast the notion of non-veridicality, allowing for a notion of non-veridical experience that is disengaged from any particular object.