The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch

Contents

Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xv 1 What Is Touch? 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Examples of Human Touch 4 1.3 Divisions of Tactual Experience 6 1.3.1 Cutaneous (Tactile)/Haptic 6 1.3.2 Active/Passive 7 1.3.3 Control/No Control 7 1.3.4 Body Directed/Object Directed 8 1.3.5 Intensive/Geometrical 10 1.3.6 Discriminative/Emotional 10 1.3.7 Stereognosis/Prehension 11 1.3.8 Implicit (Background, Recessive, Unattended)/Explicit (Foreground, Forward, Attended) 12 1.4 Summary of Terminology 12 1.5 Sensory Individuation 13 1.6 Touch and Multisensory Perception 14 2 The Unity of Human Touch 17 2.1 The Challenge 17 2.2 Clarifying the Challenge 20 2.3 The Functional Dissociation Criterion 24 2.4 The Shared Content Criterion 27 viii Contents 2.5 The Multiple Stimulus Criterion 30 2.6 Unisensory Experience 32 2.7 The Unity of Touch 39 2.8 Looking Ahead 43 3 Exploratory Action in Touch 45 3.1 Introduction 45 3.2 Feature Binding 46 3.3 Sensory Exploration 54 3.4 Temporal Extension 60 3.5 Grouping, Segmentation, and Recognition 62 3.6 The Evolution of Exploratory Action in Touch 64 3.7 Passive and Uncontrolled Touch 67 3.8 Action and Perception 69 4 Touch and Bodily Awareness 77 4.1 Introduction 77 4.2 Preliminary Clarifications 79 4.3 Causal Dependence 80 4.4 Noncausal Dependence 82 4.5 Inferential Dependence 86 4.6 Experiential Dependence 89 4.7 Strong Experiential Dependence 92 4.8 Informational Bodily Dependence 94 4.9 The Duality of Touch 100 4.10 The “Directness” of Touch 104 4.11 Conclusion: General Bodily Dependence 108 5 Tangible Qualities 111 5.1 Introduction 111 5.2 “Basic” Sensory Qualities 112 5.3 Intensive Features 114 5.4 Intrinsic Spatial Features 121 5.5 Complex Tangibles 127 5.6 Armstrong’s Account 131 Contents ix 6 Distal Touch 137 6.1 Introduction 137 6.2 Perceptual Reference 138 6.3 The Contact Thesis 141 6.4 The Apparent Contact Thesis 142 6.5 Some Problematic Cases 144 6.6 The Connection Principle 147 6.7 Mediated Contact Thesis 150 6.8 Varieties of Distal Touch 155 6.8.1 Tactual Filling In 155 6.8.2 Volume Touch 156 6.8.3 Indirect Touch 157 6.8.4 Tactual Projection 157 6.9 Where Do We Represent Distal Touch Objects as Located? 159 6.10 Conclusion 164 7 Pleasant Touch 165 7.1 Introduction 165 7.2 Two Kinds of Perceptual Affect 166 7.3 Touch as Affect Presenting 173 7.4 Emotional and Pleasant Touch 174 7.5 An Account of Pleasant Touch 179 7.6 Conclusion 187 Notes 189 References 203 Index 215 ...