In this article the characteristics of olfactory consciousness, viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal (P /access (A) distinction, are examined relative to the major senses.
The function of the causal principle of the homogeneity of the species is precisely that of ensuring that, say, when visual system and visible object come together, it is visual consciousness rather than auditory or olfactory consciousness that arises [for a detailed analysis of the complex issues surrounding the attainment of cessation, see Griffiths 1986, 66 and passim].
The review details several qualitative differences in both olfactory P consciousness (shifts in the felt location, universal synesthesia-like and affect-rich experiences, and misperceptions) and A consciousness (recovery from habituation, capacity for conscious processing, access to semantic and episodic memory, learning, attention, and in the serial-unitary nature of olfactory percepts).
Another principle of classification leads to a list of 18 elements (dhatus): five sense organs, five objects of those senses, mind, the specific object of mind, and six kinds of consciousness (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactual, and purely mental).
Contemporary literature on consciousness, with some exceptions, rarely considers the olfactory system.
Lycan's suggestion that olfactory experiences are apparent as modifications of one's own consciousness depends heavily on the aspatial phenomenology of olfactory experience (Lycan 2000, 278 82).
Not many would deny that, although pains, visual sensations, olfactory sensations, auditive sensations are very different experiences, nonetheless they all exhibit a common property called "phenomenal consciousness".
The problem of consciousness is often called "the problem of qualia" because states with a strong phenomenal character like pains, visual or olfactory sensations are states that introspectively seem endowed with a strong intrinsic subjective quality.
For one thing, it includes olfactory surprises.
