8 MB - University of Toronto Magazine

“We’ve given up the idea that the
world is composed of four elements.
Why do we hold on to Aristotle’s view
that there are just five senses”
Advances in science are not only doing away with how we
view the senses, but how we view philosophy itself. Since
the invention of the scientific method, a chasm has opened
between the two disciplines. And unless philosophy works
to keep up, a good deal of what we’ve traditionally thought
risks invalidation.
“When philosophers start telling you how it is, I start to
get worried,” says Smith. “Especially if they’re talking about
the mind, or language or emotions, and they don’t look at the
relevant recent science on these topics.” He points out that
many outmoded philosophical views are vital links in a
chain that is still snaking through history towards the truth.
But if these views are no longer tenable, we should no longer
teach them as gospel.
“We’ve given up the idea that the world is composed of
four elements. Why do we hold on to Artistotle’s view that
there are just five senses” Smith asks. “Somehow this is
a bit of folk ideology that still remains.”
Neuroscience has revolutionized philosophy. Technology
such as fMRI offers a picture of the self that seems to contradict
the fragile and unreliable accounts of it we like to give
each other.
It may seem a broad statement, but Macpherson reminds
me how fundamental these questions are to philosophers.
“One of the big philosophical questions that everybody
knows is, how do I know that the world around me really
exists, and is as I take it to be That question arose because
people thought: well, maybe I’m just hallucinating it all.
Maybe I’m in the Matrix, and sentient machines are tampering
with my brain.”
So if science is discrediting much of what philosophers
used to think about the nature of perception, why should
philosophers participate in this debate at all Matthen says
that the examination of subjective experience – how it feels
to be human, regardless of what any lab test might tell us –
is still very much the province of philosophers, and has
always been a significant area of study. Our preference for
viewing the world unscientifically may be annoying and
frustrating. But it’s also key to understanding who we are.
Smith agrees. “We all know the sun isn’t really moving,
but we still talk about it ‘setting.’ How do we connect the
lived experience, the way things seem to us, with what’s
really going on It’s the job of the philosopher to do that.”
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would
appear to man as it is, infinite.” Since William Blake wrote
that over 200 years ago, many (most famously, the writer
Aldous Huxley) have tried to alter their perceptual experience
with drugs. But instead of stumbling through a drugged haze,
some modern-day Huxleys are now tweaking their senses
with different kinds of substances.
One of these is miraculin, a derivative of a west African
berry that strips lemons of their acidity and makes them
taste as sweet as peaches. Miraculin has more serious uses
too. People undergoing chemotherapy – who often find that
food tastes unpleasantly metallic – can use it to positively
alter the flavour of what they eat.
Flavourless jelly beans, sweet lemons and wine that smells
like gasoline: it’s not hard to believe Smith when he says that
sensory research is “a lot of fun.” Those attracted to it are
quirky sorts, preoccupied with questions that wouldn’t trouble
most of us. “One of the things that’s really nice about this
work,” says Matthen, “is that everything you do, even if it’s
terribly mundane, suddenly takes on more meaning. You
might notice that when you’re driving, you don’t have to see
the corners of your car to know where they are. The car
responds to your own movements and when it does that, it
becomes integrated into your own bodily sense.”
Being most concerned with questions of taste, scent
and flavour, Smith admits to having acquired an overdeveloped
sense of smell. “I can’t turn it off!” he laughs. “I walk
into rooms and I smell people, or the rooms themselves;
when people walk by I’m noticing their different sensory
fingerprints.”
Isn’t that unpleasant Not at all, he says. “You think: all
of this was going on, and I’ve been missing it. To put yourself
back in touch with your animal nature, your senses, your
contact with the environment is wonderful. You feel healthier,
more complete.”
Back in Toronto, Constantine Caravassilis is working on
something very special to him: a huge, colour-coded musical
project, which he plans to finish in two or three years.
“Instead of preludes and fugues in D major or C minor, we’ll
have preludes and fugues in green or orange,” he says.
He uses software that converts his piano’s sounds to string
sounds, and shifts them into a lower range. When that happens,
his synesthesia kicks in and his mind erupts in colour,
tastes and emotions. “With the part I’m working on now,
I’m trying to stick with beige,” he says. “But it’s very difficult.
I’ll spend days on just three bars, and then all of a sudden
my fugue subject wants to turn red! So that’s the challenge.
I have to find a way to keep it going . . . in the same colour.”
Cynthia Macdonald (BA 1986 St. Michael’s) is a writer in Toronto.
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