bodily sensation and tactile perception

Bodily Sensation and TactilePerception

louise richardson

Christ Church, University of Oxford

When we perceive tactually, we also have bodily sensations. For

instance, when I pick up a cup of coffee, as well as perceiving the

cup by touch, I have sensations of pressure and heat in my hand.

This, I take it, is uncontroversial. It’s also natural to say that touch

is a particularly ‘bodily’ sense—at least, it is bodily in a way that

vision and hearing aren’t. One way to fill this out is to say that we

perceive tactually by having these bodily sensations. On this view, tac-

tile perception is indirect—bodily sensations mediate touch. But it’s

difficult to describe the sense in which touch is thus mediated, and

the lack of a convincing account of this mediation is an obstacle to

accepting this way of spelling out the peculiar bodiliness of the sense

of touch. In this paper, I offer an account of the role of bodily sensa-

tion in touch.

I argue in section 2 that the mediation of touch by bodily

sensation is disanalogous from other paradigm cases of mediated

perception. For example, it doesn’t involve perceiving something by

perceiving a part of it, such as its surface. And neither is it plausible

that the possession of some cognitive attitude, or the having of an

experience in another modality is required in order to perceive, tactu-

ally. In section 3 I offer a view of the role of bodily sensation in

touch that is a ‘simple’ one in that, according to this view, it does

not require anything other than the occurrence of certain kinds of

bodily sensation for one to perceive, tactually. In the remaining

sections of the paper (4–6) I defend and develop this simple view,

arguing that it can accommodate what’s right about some other views

of the role of bodily sensation in touch, whilst avoiding their

limitations.

BODILY SENSATION AND TACTILE PERCEPTION 1

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1. Bodily sensation

Since my aim is to describe the role of bodily sensation in touch, it is

appropriate to begin by thinking about these sensations themselves.

I emphasise in this first section that it is a virtue of my account of the

mediating role of bodily sensation in touch that it does not entail any par-

ticular philosophical view of these sensations. It is consistent with any

view that respects a basic phenomenological datum: the bodiliness of

bodily sensation.1 It is this datum that Martin has in mind when he writes:

When you feel an ache in your left ankle, it is your ankle that

feels a certain way, that aches. Now ankles are no less compo-

nents of the physical world than are rocks, lions, tables, and

chairs. So at least to first appearance, bodily sensation is no

less concerned with aspects of the physical world—in this case

one’s body—than are the experiences associated with the

traditional five senses (Martin 1995: 268).

This ‘first appearance’ ought to be preserved by any account of bodily

sensation. One view that does not respect this datum is the view that

bodily sensations are mere sensations. A mere sensation is an experi-

ence with no apparent object distinct from itself—an experience that is

not ‘of’ anything.2

But the ‘first appearance’ of bodily sensation is not just that it is of

something distinct from itself: it is that it is of one’s body. In other

words, bodily sensations seem to be located in, and only in the body.3

Let’s rephrase this as the claim that I’ll call (S), so we can easily refer

back to it later:

(S) Wherever one feels a sensation, so one’s body seems to extend to

that point in space.4

To assert (S) isn’t to deny that one can feel sensations that seem to be

located in regions that aren’t in fact occupied by the body. That would

1 By ‘bodily sensation’, I mean some sort of conscious experience, and not subpersonal

representation of the body. As Michael Scott has pointed out, this sort of inform-

ation is involved in perception in all modalities (2001: 151).2 McGinn 1982: 8 argues that pain is mere sensation. Smith (2002: 126) suggests that

this is how we commonly regard all bodily sensations.3 We talk about bodily sensations as if they are experiences, for example, of ankles

and fingertips. But we also talk about them as that of which we are aware when in

pain, or itchy and thus as themselves having bodily locations. I will shift between

these two ways of talking, as we usually do. (See also Ayers 1991: 215)4 See Martin 1993: 210.

2 LOUISE RICHARDSON

be false, as the ‘phantom limb’ experiences of amputees show. In saying

that bodily sensations only seem to be located in the body we claim

that amputees are subject to illusion or hallucination: their bodies seem

to extend further than they do, or they seem to have body parts that

they do not have. And (S) is not supposed to be merely as-a-matter-of-

fact true of our sensations. It is, as O’Shaughnessy puts it ‘all but

impossible to comprehend a claim concerning sensation position that

detaches it from actual or seeming limb’ (1982: 162).5

Any view that accepts (S) will be a broadly perceptual view: a view

according to which when one has a bodily sensation, one perceives

one’s body. But there is room for a number of different such views, dif-

ferentiated from one another by how they think of the further qualities

that distinguish one sensation from another, over and above location

in some part of one’s body. I have in mind here qualities such as pain-

fulness, warmth and pressure. One view of these qualities is that they

ought to be understood as representing one’s body as being some

mind-independent way—hot, for example, or in the case of pain,

damaged.6 Call this the ‘thoroughly representational view’. But other

views of bodily sensation are also consistent with their being intrinsi-

cally bodily and thus these views are broadly perceptual too. For exam-

ple, a sensation of pain in one’s ankle might be considered a way in

which one is related to one’s ankle—the painfulness, on this view, is

the intentional mode of one’s perceptual representation of it.7 Or, one

might think that whilst bodily locations are represented perceptually,

other qualities are qualia—non-representational qualities rather than

qualities that one’s body is represented as having.

It would be problematic, I think, if an account of touch entailed that

we must accept one of these broadly perceptual views of bodily sensa-

tion: which of these views is correct is a difficult question that ought to

be decided on quite other grounds. It is a good thing then that the

account I shall give here of the role of bodily sensation in touch is

neutral amongst these views.

2. The indirectness of touch

On any broadly perceptual view of bodily sensation, the claim that

such sensation plays a mediating role in touch implies that we perceive,

5 This does not rule out that there might be creatures, even some humans, who have

sensations of which (S) is not true. Moro et al’s (2004) asomatognosics may be such

subjects. For detailed philosophical discussion of asomatognosia, see de Vignemont

2007.6 Tye 1997.7 Crane 2003.


tactually by perceiving our bodies. But, as I will argue in this section, this

mediation is disanalogous from other paradigm cases of perceptual indi-

rectness. Thus extant philosophical accounts of the kind of indirectness

these cases involve will not be able to explain how we perceive things tac-

tually, by having bodily sensations. I will consider three sorts of cases.

Firstly are cases of (especially visual) perception that involve perceiv-

ing some object o, by perceiving some part of o; for example, seeing a

plane that’s passing overhead by seeing its underside (Jackson 1993:

19). 8 The indirectness of touch with respect to bodily sensation is not

in general to be understood as perceiving something by perceiving part

of it, though we can of course perceive parts of our own bodies by

touch. The hand that holds my cup, for example, and in which I feel

sensations of warmth and pressure, is not a part of the cup that I

perceive, tactually.

An example of the second sort of case is seeing that the neighbours

are at home by seeing the smoke coming from their chimney (Dretske

1969: 154). In this case, it is true to say that we have seen our neigh-

bours by seeing some other thing, the smoke. But seeing the neighbours,

here, is seeing that, where what follows the ‘that’ is some proposition

involving my neighbours: that they are in. This is an example of what

Dretske calls epistemic seeing, or seeinge (specifically, it’s an example of

secondary epistemic seeing). My seeinge that p entails my having some

belief—in the most straightforward case, with the content that p. It is

not plausible that perceiving, tactually, by perceiving our bodies is indi-

rect in the way that this sort of case is. Many cases of seeing (the non-

epistemic ones) do not entail the perceiver having any particular beliefs.

It would be very strange to think that unlike vision all touch is episte-

mic—that there is no non-epistemic tactile perception.

The third sort of case is exclusively non-visual. In hearing, smell and

perhaps taste, we perceive some objects or phenomena that can only be

perceived in a single sense: sounds, smells and if it’s natural to think of

‘tastes’ as individuals, in the way that we think of sounds and smells,

then tastes too. Perception of these sense-specific phenomena mediates

whatever contact we make with more everyday things such as lumps of

cheese and barking dogs. For example, we perceive the cheese, by per-

ceiving the smell it produces, or the dog, by hearing its bark. There is

no equally plausible candidate for a sense-specific object that mediates

all visual perception.9 Some cases of perceiving an everyday object by

8 Campbell (2004) argues that one cannot make sense of the claim that this sort of

case is indirect or mediated perception. See also Clarke 1965.9 Which is not to deny that some philosophers have thought that there is a sense-spe-

cific object of vision; see, for example, Perkins 1983.

4 LOUISE RICHARDSON

perceiving a sense-specific one might best be thought of as epistemic

perception—analogous to perceiving that one’s neighbours are in by

seeing the smoke from the chimney. For example, we only smell that the

cheese has been brought into the room when we smell (non-epistemi-

cally) its smell.10 But it is difficult to accept that auditory perception of

the sources of sounds is always epistemic perception. I’m going to

describe a recent account of the way in which we hear sound sources by

hearing the sounds they make, and then explain why the indirectness of

touch is disanalogous to this, too. However, this account of auditory

indirectness will provide some materials we will use in the account of

tactile indirectness to be given in the next section.

According to Matthew Nudds (forthcoming), auditory experience is

modality-specific in that the objects and features in terms of which it is

individuated can only be perceived by a single modality, namely, hear-

ing. On Nudds’ view, only sounds and their features are relevant to the

individuation of auditory experience. Clearly, on any perceptual view

of bodily sensations, they are not modality-specific, and neither is

tactile experience. Bodily sensations are partly individuated by the

body-parts they represent, and body-parts can be perceived in other

ways: you can see as well as feel your hands. This is relevant to the

disanalogy between the two cases, and we’ll return to it, but first

we need to describe how, according to Nudds, we can perceive

sound-sources by hearing the sounds they make, despite the modality-

specificity of auditory experience.

Nudds’ account employs work by Matthew Soteriou on mental

states and experiences, where these latter are considered to be mental

processes.11 In particular, he draws on Soteriou’s account of the

relationship between these two sorts of mental item. We’ll draw on the

use Nudds makes of this account of Soteriou’s in the next section. So

it’s worth spending some time on it here. Processes (such as experi-

ences) and states (such as mental states) occupy time in different ways.

They have, as Steward puts it, different temporal shapes (1997: 72–3).

Processes unfold over time—they have temporal parts, or stages. A

mark of something’s being a process is that the word we use to denote

it occurs in the progressive. States do not occur or unfold, but obtain

for a period of time—they do not have temporal parts. The words we

use to denote states do not usually occur in the progressive. Take the

(non-mental) state: being red. My door might be red for a period of

time (say, a year) but I would not say that what my door is doing, or

that what is happening to it over the course of the year is that it is

10 See Smith 2002.11 See also O’Shaughnessy, especially Chapter 1, Section 2, and Steward 1997, Ch3.


being red, or ‘redding’. This is in contrast with, say, the kettle’s boiling,

which is a (non-mental) process. ‘Boiling’ would be a sensible, gram-

matical answer to the question of what the kettle’s been doing this last

few minutes, or of what’s been happening in it. Experiences then are

processive, like boiling, whilst mental states are analogous, in the ways

just outlined, to being red.

Soteriou argues that mental items with representational content are

states. ‘It seems to S that p’ is a typical locution used in talk about

representational content.12 This way of picking out the item with repre-

sentational content indicates its being a state rather than a process. For

example, the use of the progressive seems inappropriate—‘it is seeming

to S that p’ is a peculiar answer to the question of what S is doing, or

what is happening to her. We do, however, say things like ‘S is having

an experience such that it seems to her that p’. This looks like it

involves our saying that we’re having an experience (rather than a

state) with a certain representational content—contra the claim that the

aspects of mind with content are states. But Soteriou thinks not. On

closer consideration, he says,

It appears as though we are individuating an unfolding

perceptual occurrence in terms of some relation it bares to some

perceptual mental state with the representational content that

p—i.e. the mental state picked out by the phrase ‘it seemed to

S that p’ (2007: 551, my italics).

It’s Soteriou’s account of the relation that the occurrence (the experi-

ence) bears to the state that Nudds employs in his account of the kind

of indirect perception that is involved in perceiving the sources of

sounds.

On Soteriou’s account, the mental state with representational con-

tent (in terms of which we pick out the experience) obtains in virtue of

the occurrence of that experience. The ‘in virtue of’ here does not

denote that the experience causes the state. Think, rather, of the way in

which the temperature of a cup of water, obtains in virtue of the

occurrence of certain processes—ones involving the motion of the

water molecules. The processes aren’t causal antecedents of the water

temperature, yet there’s still some obvious respect in which the water

has the temperature it does ‘in virtue of’ the occurrence of these

processes. It’s in something like this respect that, Soteriou suggests, a

mental state with representational content obtains in virtue of the

12 As Soteriou points out, all this can be said in non-representationalist terms (2007:

565, n34).

6 LOUISE RICHARDSON

occurrence of a mental process, in this case, an experience. Nudds

adopts this account of the relation between experiences and states to

explain how we perceive sound sources, by hearing the sounds they

make.

On Nudds’ view, the state that represents the sound source is an

amodal state: it obtains partly in virtue of the occurrence of the

(modality-specific) auditory experience, but is also dependent on the

perceptual system having further information which might come from

other modalities, if, as is usually the case, we are perceiving in other

modalities at the same time as we hear. Thus, the obtaining of a state

that represents a sound source will depend not just on the occurrence

of an auditory experience, but also on what other non-auditory

experiences one has at that time.

This kind of indirect perception is not epistemic—it is not perceiving

that. And neither is it (like the first group of cases of indirect percep-

tion we considered) perceiving something by perceiving some part of it.

This is what makes the ‘Nuddsian’ account a helpful starting point for

the account to be given here of the indirectness of touch with respect

to bodily sensation. As we have seen, this tactile indirectness is not epi-

stemic, and neither is it, in general, perceiving something by perceiving

a part of it. But neither can it be of exactly this Nuddsian variety. For

one, as we have said, bodily sensation is not modality-specific—in

bodily sensation we perceive the body, which can also be perceived in

other modalities. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to

think that experience in a different modality is required for one to per-

ceive tactually.13 If the view that tactile perception is mediated by bod-

ily sensation is to be plausible some other account must be given of it.

In the next section I offer such an account. I will draw on features

of Nudds’ account of auditory indirectness, which we have discussed in

this section. But I shall argue that in the tactile case, unlike the audi-

tory case, neither experience in another modality, nor any cognitive

attitude, nor anything else is required for bodily sensations (of certain

kinds) to provide for touch. These bodily sensations, I shall argue, suf-

fice for tactile perception. So the account I offer is a simple one in that

it takes there to be nothing more required for one to perceive, tactually

than the having of certain bodily sensations.

3. A simple view

It will be helpful to return, initially, to the subject of section 1: the

phenomenal character of bodily sensations. I want to point out a

13 O’Shaughnessy (2000, Ch.24) argues that touch, alone amongst the senses, could be

had in the absence of any other perceptual modality.


difference in character between some of these sensations. Identifying

this difference will help us to see, later in this section, how some bodily

sensations can suffice for tactile perception. We said in section 1 that in

order to respect the phenomenal bodiliness of bodily sensation, we

ought to accept a broadly perceptual view of them. I emphasised that

this leaves open how to construe the qualities, over and above bodily

location, that distinguish one sensation from another: qualities of pain-

fulness, pressure, warmth and so on. One view of these qualities is the

one we called ‘thoroughly representational’. On this view, all qualities

of bodily sensation represent one’s body as being some mind-indepen-

dent way. Whilst remaining uncommitted to this, or any other broadly

perceptual view, we can distinguish between those sensations for which

the thoroughly representational view seems plausible, and those for

which it is, on the face of it, implausible.

Take, for example, a sensation of cold in my hand. This is a sensa-

tion for which, confining ourselves to its conscious character, the thor-

oughly representational view is plausible. When you have a sensation

like this, you do not just have a funny feeling of who-knows-what in

your hand. Rather, you capture the way things seem in this case by

saying that your hand seems some mind-independent way, namely,

cold. A bodily sensation like this we can classify, adopting Armstrong’s

terminology, as transitive. To have a transitive sensation is for it

to seem, on the face of it, that one’s body or part of it is some mind-

independent way. (Armstrong 1993: 309) A full characterisation of the

phenomenal character of the sensation of cold picks it out in terms of

a state that represents your hand as cold. There is no more basic, less

committal way to characterise it than that, which is not also a less full

characterisation. Most significantly, if the sensation did have a less

committal description then it wouldn’t be a sensation of cold.

Not all bodily sensations are transitive in this way. Of other intransi-

tive sensations it does not seem right to say that one’s body is repre-

sented as being some mind-independent way— at least if we reflect just

on their conscious character. Take, for example, a headache. There is

no mind-independent way my head seems to be, just in having a head-

ache. In virtue of having a headache, I am not in a state that represents

my head as being some mind-independent way. There is a less commit-

tal description of the phenomenal character of this sensation than one

that refers to a state representing a mind-independent quality, such as

being damaged. One less committal description would just be that my

head hurts.

Now let’s turn to the sort of bodily sensation that occurs when you

perceive tactually, as when you put your hand on a table in front of

you and perceive its surface. Hopefully, the foregoing discussion of

8 LOUISE RICHARDSON

transitive and intransitive sensations will have prepared the way for us

to see how such a sensation can suffice for tactile perception. It is

sometimes objected that this sort of sensation is difficult, if not impos-

sible, to attend to. It can, Reid says, be had by

…pressing one’s hand against a table, and attending to the

feeling that ensues, setting aside, as much as possible, all

thought of the table and its qualities, or of any external thing

(1983: 37).

Such a sensation, on Reid’s view, is very difficult to make ‘a distinct

object of reflection’. According to Reid, nature intends such sensations

as ‘signs’ for the presence of external things, and, these things being

that with which we’re usually interested, we can only with great diffi-

culty pick out the sensations themselves. But we can still, he thinks,

pick them out. We can agree that it’s not impossible to pick out the

bodily sensation in this example. But it is, I think, much easier than

Reid allows. For he assumes that that in order to attend to the bodily

sensation in this case you must attend just to the way your hand feels

independently from any relation it seems to bear to anything else, includ-

ing the table. This assumption is not obviously warranted. Another,

and much easier way to pick out how your hand feels when you put it

on the table is in a relational way—a way that makes reference to your

hand’s seeming relation to the table.

If we drop Reid’s assumption we might characterise the sensation as,

for example, one in virtue of which my hand seems as if it is resisting

pressure from something beyond my body. This is the most natural

way to describe how my hand seems to me in this case. And it’s also

the most basic, least committal way to describe it that still fully cha-

racterises how things seem to me. If the sensation did have a full but

less committal description then it wouldn’t be a sensation of pressure,

just as we said that if the (transitive) sensation of cold had a less com-

mittal description it wouldn’t be a sensation of cold. The point, more

generally is that those bodily sensations that provide for touch will be

ones that require this kind of ‘relational’ description. They will be

sensations that can’t be described without mentioning the seeming

presence of some object beyond one’s body. These sensations will be

the ones that suffice for tactile perception.

We can explain this in more detail by returning, for the purposes of

comparison, to Nudds’ account of how we perceive the sources of

sounds, by hearing the sounds they make. We saw that his account is

phrased in terms of the relationship between the occurrence of an

auditory experience, and the obtaining of an amodal state that


represents the source of the sound. The state obtains partly, but not

just, in virtue of the occurrence of the experience. That its obtaining

requires something else, in addition to the occurrence of the auditory

experience is related to the fact that auditory experience is, at least on

Nudds’ view, modality-specific: the phenomenal character of auditory

experiences can be fully specified in terms of sounds and their features.

Note though that more than one state can obtain in virtue of the

occurrence of an experience. In audition, there is a state that obtains

in virtue just of the auditory experience (a state for which the occur-

rence of the auditory experience suffices) that represents just sounds

and their features. The things represented by the state for which the

auditory experience suffices are the things that the experience is indi-

viduated in terms of. They are things such that if there didn’t obtain

in virtue of the experience’s occurrence a state that represented those

things, then it would have been a different experience that occurred.

The obtaining of the state that represents the sources of sounds

requires further information to be had by the perceptual system, in

addition to the auditory experience’s occurrence. And the things repre-

sented by this state are not things that are involved in the individua-

tion of that experience.

Now, tactile perceptual states obtain in virtue of the occurrence of

some bodily sensations—experiences of the body. But bodily sensa-

tions, unlike auditory experiences, aren’t individuated in terms of

objects and features that can only be perceived in one modality. For

one, they are as of the body, and so of something that can be perceived

by sight, too. But, I have suggested, they are also, sometimes, individu-

ated in terms of extra-bodily objects. The sensation you have when you

touch the table would be a different sensation if it was one that we

could describe, fully, without mentioning some extra-bodily object.

A bodily sensation, like an auditory experience, can be responsible for

the obtaining of more than one state. For example, when I pick up my

cup, I can be said to be in a state that represents my body as being

some way, and in a state that represents the cup as being some way.

And both these states obtain in virtue of the occurrence of the same

bodily sensation. But in this case (unlike the auditory case), the sensa-

tion suffices for the occurrence of both these representational states.

And the things represented by both these states (for which the occur-

rence of the sensation suffices) are things in terms of which the sensa-

tion is individuated. If one of these states did not obtain, then the

experience (the sensation) would not be the same sensation.

On this simple view of the role of bodily sensation in tactile percep-

tion, as on Nudds’ model of auditory indirectness, the mediating role

of bodily sensation in tactile perception does not require that the

10 LOUISE RICHARDSON

perceiver have any particular cognitive attitude. But unlike the auditory

case, nor is it necessary for the obtaining of a tactile state that the sub-

ject perceive what they touch in some other modality. Nothing, in fact,

in addition to the bodily sensation, is required in order for there to be

tactile perception. The mediation of touch by bodily sensation is, on

this view, somewhat unusual. In many instances of perceiving that we

call indirect there is an experience that could occur in the absence of

the state that represents what is indirectly perceived.14 For example, in

the case of seeing that the neighbours are in by seeing the smoke from

their chimney there is an experience of the smoke: an experience the

character of which can be fully characterised without any mention of

the representation of the neighbours. This experience is then in an intu-

itive way ‘prior’ to one’s perceiving that the neighbours are home. On

the simple view, the bodily sensation that suffices for tactile perception

is not prior to the obtaining of the tactile perceptual state in this way:

in having the bodily sensation, one, as it were, already perceives tactu-

ally. In the kind of indirect or mediated perception that characterises

classical indirect realist or representative realist theories of perception,

there is, as Fish puts it, ‘an epistemic asymmetry at the heart of the

perceptual relation’: one’s relation to that which is perceived mediately

is, on such theories, less secure than is the relation you bear to the

directly perceived thing. The simple view is not an indirect theory of

tactile perception in this, classical, sense. Nevertheless it still makes

sense to say that bodily sensations mediate touch in that one never per-

ceives an object by touch without having a bodily sensation, and the

reverse is not true (it is not the case that one never has a bodily sensa-

tion without perceiving an object, tactually).

In the rest of this paper I defend and develop this simple view.

In sections 5 and 6 I argue that it can accommodate what is right

about some related views of the role of bodily sensation in touch, as

well as a range of cases to which these views are not easily extendable.

Before that, in section 4, I show that the view can be defended from

one natural-seeming objection.

4. An initial objection

It might strike you as odd to suggest that we can both respect the phe-

nomenological datum discussed in section 1 and propose that bodily

sensation suffices for touch. In this section I argue that the inconsis-

tency is only apparent. Recall, from section 1, the claim we called (S):

wherever one feels a sensation, so one’s body seems to extend to that

14 Fish (2004) argues that this is true of all indirect perception.


point in space. It is natural (though, I will argue, mistaken) to think

that accepting (S) commits us to a further claim, (S2):

(S2) The only locations of which we are aware in having bodily

sensations are apparently bodily ones.

And herein lies the objection. When we perceive tactually, we are often

aware of things that occupy locations not seemingly occupied by the

body. Consider my tactile perception when I poke a suspicious object

with a stick. The suspicious object doesn’t seem even to be very near to

my body, never mind in location occupied by it. And even when I do

away with the stick, and just place my hand on a table, the table seems

to extend beyond the surface of my hand, and thus to occupy locations

that do not appear to be occupied by my body. But given (S2), no bod-

ily sensation would be able to reach far enough to provide, all by itself,

for touch.

Troubling though this objection on first glance might appear, we can

escape it. For our espousal of (S) does not commit us to (S2). More

exactly, it doesn’t commit us to (S2) so long as we accept a certain

account of what makes it the case that bodily sensations have their

bodily locations. This account is Martin’s (see his 1992; 1993; 1995;

1997).

We said, in section 1, that (S) is not just as-a-matter-of-fact true of

our sensations. The sensations of creatures of whom (S) was not true

would be all but inconceivably different from our own. This is why

Martin says that the bodiliness of bodily sensation cannot be some

positive feature that the sensation has, over and above its felt quality

and location (1995: 270). If it were, then the falsity of (S) would be eas-

ily conceivable. So, Martin suggests that the bodiliness of sensation,

…is not independent of the felt location of the sensation. The

sense one has of the location of sensation brings with it the

sense that the location in question falls within one of one’s

apparent boundaries. (1995: 271).

In explaining the way in which this is the case, Martin rejects the claim

we’re calling (S2). He argues that bodily sensations feel to have loca-

tions that are ‘internal’ to the body only in that they incorporate a

sense of there being regions of space ‘external’ to the body: i.e. only in

that (S2) is false. So for him, not only does our espousal of (S) not

commit us to (S2), it precludes our being so committed. We need to be

aware, in some way, of locations external to the body in order for our

bodily sensations to seem to be internal to it.


What remains to be explained is how we’re supposed to be aware, in

bodily sensation, of regions external to the body. Clearly, we are not

aware of these regions by having sensations that seem to be located in

them. If I were aware of the space, say, between my outstretched

hands, by having sensations there, then according to (S), this space

would seem to be part of the region occupied by my body, and thus

not a region extending beyond it. Space that seems to be beyond the

limits of my body is a space in which I couldn’t be feeling any bodily

sensation. The move Martin makes is to say that this is precisely the

way in which I am aware of this space. The sense I have, in bodily

sensation, of the contrast between regions internal to and external to

my body is a sense of the contrast between ‘where it is possible to feel

a sensation, the apparent limits of the body, and where one could not

be feeling a sensation, that which lies outside the body’ (1993: 202).

Bodily sensations incorporate a sense of the space that extends beyond

one’s bodily boundaries, as a space in which it is not possible to feel

any sensation.

The idea that bodily sensations incorporate a sense of the space

beyond one’s boundaries implies that in sensations those boundaries

themselves are in some sense manifest to us. But as Matthew Ratcliffe

points out (2008), those boundaries do not always, or even often, seem

to be determinately located. However, the sense of the boundaries of

the body that is involved in Martin’s account of the bodiliness of bod-

ily sensation does not require that the boundaries of the body should

seem to have determinate locations. He writes:

One has a sense that there are such boundaries—a sense one

would have even if one was not aware where the boundary

was (1995: 271).

What’s important is it seeming to one that one’s body does not take up

all the space there is—that one’s body seems to be bounded. This is

what gives us the sense of contrast between regions internal and

external to the body, and thus sensations with intrinsically bodily loca-

tions. This is consistent with not being able to tell where those bound-

aries are. Provided we accept Martin’s account of how bodily

sensations come by their intrinsically bodily locations, we can accept

(S) without (S2) and avoid the initial objection.

Martin’s account of the bodiliness of bodily sensation plays a part

in his account of the role of such sensation in touch. In the next section

I consider how the simple view presented here relates to this template

model. I argue that the simple view can accommodate what the tem-

plate model says about the cases of touch to which it applies, whilst


also being applicable to a range of cases to which that model cannot

be easily extended.

5. Mirroring ⁄matching

Martin’s template model of the role of bodily sensation in touch is

avowedly a development of O’Shaughnessy’s. Though there are some

differences between the two authors’ views, they need not concern us

here.15 The template model is most straightforwardly applicable to the

case in which one perceives something in virtue of it coming into con-

tact with a small area of skin (what O’Shaughnessy calls the ‘unit

case’). Here is what Martin says about feeling the rim of a glass that

one touches with a fingertip:

[T]he place where one feels the sensation to be shares certain

spatial properties with the object which impedes one’s move-

ment; it is in the same place in space. So the spatial location

that the sensation feels to have can provide an awareness of

the spatial location of the point on the rim which keeps the fin-

gertip there. (Martin 1993: 204, my italics)

Here, the bodily sensation that provides for touch does so by being

located at one’s boundaries—on the surface of the body. This is a dif-

ferent role for awareness of one’s bodily boundaries than that discussed

in the previous section. In this quotation, Martin envisages a role for

the shared apparent location of sensation and touched object in the

sensation providing for tactile perception. And this might be thought

to be a special case of a more general rule about the relationship

between how one’s body seems when one has a bodily sensation, and

the content of the tactile perceptual state that obtains in virtue of it.

Call this rule the mirroring ⁄matching claim. According to this claim, the

properties one perceives tactually, match or mirror those that one’s

body seems to have in bodily sensation, and this is how one perceives,

tactually, by having certain bodily sensations. It’s the mirroring ⁄match-

ing claim that makes ‘template model’ an apt title. A template (in the

relevant sense) is a model or standard that’s used for making copies or

replicas. On Martin’s view, the body is a template in that it is the

model or standard—the properties it seems to have in bodily sensation

are copied or replicated in touch.

15 For example, for O’Shaughnessy, to say that there is a role for sensation in some

variety of perception is to say that there is a role in it for sense data. He does not

think that tactile perception is mediated by bodily sensation, thus understood.


The mirroring ⁄matching claim, and thus the template model, is plau-

sible for some cases of tactile perception of spatial properties, of which

O’Shaughnessy writes: ‘awareness of the external spatial property

occurs through the mediation of a body awareness with matching

spatial content’ (2000: 667). It is plausible, then, for Martin’s example

of perceiving the location of the glass by having a sensation in one’s

fingertip. It’s also plausible when we think about perceiving shape by

touch, either by grasping, or by running one’s fingers round the edge

of an object. If I grasp the rim of a glass my grasp feels round, and the

cup feels round. And so, we might think, the one feels round because

the other does. Or, to take an example of O’Shaughnessy’s, when I run

my hand along the straight edge of a table, my hand movement feels

straight, and the table-edge feels straight. Again, it seems right that it

feels straight because my hand-movement along it does. The mirror-

ing ⁄matching claim is also plausible for some tactile perception of non-

spatial properties. We can perceive warmth by touch, and also feel it in

our bodies. It’s tempting to think that I feel the heat of my coffee cup,

because I have a sensation of that same property in the hand in which

I hold it: a sensation in virtue of which my hand and the cup are repre-

sented as having matching properties.

But the template model isn’t easily extendable to all tactile percep-

tion. Michael Scott (2001) objects to it because we cannot identify any

quality of body that matches or mirrors that which we feel in the

object, in tactile perception of texture or weight. When I feel something

oily or slippery or heavy with my hand I do not (or at least, need not)

feel as if my hand is oily or slippery or heavy, nor is there any clear

sense in which I feel in my hand a quality that ‘mirrors’ oiliness, slip-

periness or heaviness. There are also cases of tactile perception where

the thing one perceives, tactually, does not seem to be at a location

shared by any sensation: consider touching an object with a numbed

finger, or the previously-mentioned case of poking a suspicious object.

The template model is, at best, difficult to apply to these cases of what

we can call ‘extended touch’. 16 In such cases what one feels, tactually,

does not seem to be at the surface of one’s body. What one perceives

by touch then does not seem to be ‘in the same place in space’ as any

sensation. The mirroring ⁄matching claim, and thus the template model,

is not applicable to these cases. It should be acknowledged that the

inability of the template model to deal with these cases might not be

best seen as an omission: neither Martin nor O’Shaughnessy intended

the model to be applicable to them. O’Shaughnessy, in particular,

16 Another example is perceiving the length, width, and shape of an object by holding

it and moving it about in one’s hand. For a review, see Turvey 1996.


seems to have seen the model as applying only to the ‘unit case’ of sta-

tic contact on a small area of skin, as well as to simple shapes per-

ceived via one’s identically-shaped movements (2000: 667).

Nevertheless one might try to extend the template model to extended

touch. Iriki et al (1996) found bimodal (vision and bodily awareness)

neurons in monkeys which appeared to encode the ‘schema of the

hand’. During tool use, the visual receptive fields of these neurons

extended to include the tool. This, they argue, suggests that the tool

was incorporated, temporarily, into the ‘hand schema’ in the monkeys’

brains. Perhaps something similar occurs in me when I poke an object

with a stick. But this wouldn’t give any reason to think that the stick

seems to be part of my body.17 Nor, therefore, does it help to extend

the reach of the template model. For one, the body schema is a sub-

personal representation of the body that plays a role in movement and

posture.18 That this schema is extended to include tools does not show

that one’s conscious representation of one’s body comes to include the

stick when one feels something at the end of it. And it certainly doesn’t

show that I feel sensations at the location where stick and felt object

meet.19 The sensation I feel is in my hand. So the template model, in

it’s commitment to the mirroring ⁄matching claim, does not, intention-

ally or otherwise, explain some cases of touch.20

The simple view, I think, can accommodate the truth in the template

model: it can say that which the template model says about non-

extended tactile perception of some spatial and non-spatial properties.

To see this, let’s turn, again to the case of touching something (a glass)

with my fingertip. According to the template model, I feel the glass,

and it seems to be where it is, because I have a sensation there at the

apparent location of the glass. On the simple view, this is correct: I feel

the glass because I have that sensation, and, no doubt, the sensation

having that location, in addition to its other qualities, is that which

makes it one that I could not have without being in a state that repre-

sents there being a glass there, at my fingertip. Of course, the simple

view also takes over from the template model the much more general

idea that one’s perceptual experiences of one’s body are that in virtue

of which one perceives tactually.

But the simple view does not put any particular significance on the

shared location of sensation and tactually perceived object which is a

17 This is Anil Gupta’s view (2006: 143).18 Gallagher and Cole 1995.19 Contra the title of Yamamoto and Kitazawa 2001 (‘Sensation at the tips of invisi-

ble tools’).20 Mattens goes so far as to say that the model ‘applies to precious little’ (2009: 120).


feature of this example, nor on matching ⁄mirroring content generally.

That’s why it can accommodate extended touch, too. If I have a

numbed finger and prod it against the glass I won’t have sensations in

that finger, but I will have sensations in the hand and arm to which it

is attached: sensations that result from the finger hitting the surface of

the glass and resisting the pressure it thus exerts. It is not at all natural

to say that the content of the state of perceptual awareness of my body

in this case matches or mirrors that of the tactile perceptual perception

of the glass. But, on the simple view, there nevertheless obtains, in

virtue of the occurrence of this sensation, a tactile state that represents

the glass at a location beyond the numbed hand. The sensation would

be a different sensation if it were not one in virtue of which this state

obtains.

Similarly for the case in which I poke an object with a stick and feel

that object there at the end of the stick. Here, the sensation suffices for

the occurrence of at least three states: a state that represents my hand

and arm as being some way, a tactile state that represents the stick held

in my hand, and a tactile state that represents the presence of some-

thing solid at the prodding end of the stick. The sensation would be a

different one if it didn’t provide for the obtaining of all these states,

and thus it suffices for their obtaining. Since the simple view has no

commitment to matching or mirroring content between the way one’s

body and the way the tactile object are represented when one has such

a sensation the fact that there is no such content in this case is no

obstacle. It should be clear how the simple view will accommodate tac-

tile texture and weight perception too.

In the next and final section I consider A.D. Smith’s account of the

role of bodily sensation in touch. Smith is the third of the trio of late-

20th and early-21st century philosophers who have written most on this

subject, the other two of whom we have been discussing in this section.

I will argue that the simple view can accommodate what’s right about

Smith’s view, too.

6. The Anstoss

Smith argues that central to touch is a phenomenon he calls the Anstoss.

The Anstoss is ‘a check or impediment to our active self-movement: an

experienced obstacle to our animal striving, as when we push or pull

against things’ (2002: 153; Smith’s italics). One role that Smith gives the

Anstoss is as that which originally makes one aware of the distinction

between one’s body and the space which extends beyond it: the distinc-

tion that, on Martin’s view, is incorporated into all bodily sensation (see

section 4). Thus, Smith writes: ‘‘Dynamically encountering a resistant


body at one and the same time establishes a space in which both any for-

eign body and our own active body are first located.’’ (2002: 156)

Here, Smith is pointing out that we ought not to think that bodily

sensation, considered broadly perceptually, comes literally before tactile

perceptual experience. The experience of the Anstoss is, after all, a tac-

tile perceptual experience: an experience of encountering something

beyond one’s body. So if Smith is right that without having had this

Anstoss-experience there would be ‘no sense…of any bodily limits

beyond which things might be located’ (2002: 158) then to have any

bodily sensations requires that one has had at least one tactile experi-

ence. O’Shaughnessy too has argued that (intrinsically bodily) bodily

sensation ‘conditionally presupposes’ tactile perceptual experience.

Consistent with the simple view, we can accept that the capacity for

bodily sensation like ours, and the having of a sense of touch, are

coeval.

However, Smith gives another role to the Anstoss. In arguing that it

has this second role, Smith aims to show that the template model is

inadequate. And if it has this second role, the same criticism might be

levelled at the simple view, too. To see what this second role for the

Anstoss is, note first that not every bodily sensation, and not even every

bodily sensation occurring at the surface of one’s body, provides for

the obtaining of a tactile perceptual state. For example, ‘‘A throbbing

sensation at the end of my finger does not reveal the rim of the glass to

me, even if it is in contact with the glass.’’ (Smith 2002: 168)

This being the case, Smith thinks that we need to appeal to some-

thing in addition to bodily sensation to explain why tactile perception

occurs when we have some bodily sensations, and not others. On his

view, that to which we need to appeal is the Anstoss. When I press my

finger against the rim of the glass, on Smith’s view, I not only feel a

sensation at some location at the tip of my finger, at the place where it

makes contact with the glass. I also feel my movement checked. And

in feeling my movement checked in this way, I feel myself to be, Smith

says, ‘sensibly encountering a foreign body’ (2002: 154). So I feel some-

thing external to my body—in this case the glass—not just in virtue of

having a sensation of pressure in my finger, but because I also feel the

check to my active movement Smith calls the Anstoss. The Anstoss is

not present when I have just a tingling sensation in my fingertip, nor

in any other case of bodily sensation without tactile perception. And

this, according to Smith, explains why there is no tactile perception in

such cases. If Smith is right then, you might think, the simple view

must be false, since according to the simple view, bodily sensations of

certain kinds suffice for tactile perception: nothing other than the

sensation itself is required to perceive, tactually. So first of all, is Smith


right that we need to appeal to the Anstoss to explain why we perceive

tactually when we have some bodily sensations and not when we have

others?

Note, first, that the Anstoss is not always present when we perceive

tactually. Consider feeling the cool still air in the room. There is no

feeling of having my movement checked by something extra-bodily

here. Nevertheless, I do feel something ‘from without’, which is phe-

nomenally different from just feeling that my body is cool. And con-

sider, too, the experience of a fishbone caught in the throat (see Martin

1995: 272). There is little reason to deny that this experience is tactile,

yet I don’t seem to actively resist the pressure of the fishbone, in the

manner of the Anstoss, though it may seem to me that the ‘inner’ bod-

ily boundaries of my esophagus are (passively) resisting the pressure

that the fishbone exerts.

This is not to deny that there are a great many cases of tactile per-

ceptual experience in which we can identify the phenomenon that

Smith calls the Anstoss. And I think we can agree with Smith that in

these cases, it seeming as if one’s movement is checked by the thing

one touches is part of the explanation of why one seems to perceive

an extra-bodily object. But this is not to concede that something in

addition to the sensation is involved in the obtaining of the tactile per-

ceptual state. In the case in which I feel my movement checked, and

so feel the glass, the bodily sensation is one that (as we said in section

3) we must characterize relationally. We can’t describe its conscious

character fully without mentioning the body’s seeming relation to

something external to it, the glass. And the relation, in this case, and

many others, is that which Smith identifies; that of stopping it from

going any further. The throbbing sensation, in contrast, requires no

such relational characterization. No appeal to a state representing an

extra-bodily object is required in order to pick out this sensation. So

the simple view can accommodate the truth in Smith’s account of

touch, as, we argued, it can accommodate the truth in the template

model.

The simple, accommodating view of the role of bodily sensation in

touch for which I have argued here offers a way of fleshing out the

intuitive claim that the sense of touch is a peculiarly bodily sense.

Whilst information about the body no doubt plays some role in the

processing that underlies perception in all our modalities, it is not the

case that, for example, visual and auditory perceptual states obtain just

in virtue of the occurrence of bodily sensations. The relationship

between bodily sensation and the senses of taste and smell, may well be

more complicated—but working out what to say about this relation-

ship will have to wait for another occasion. Furthermore, looking at


indirect perception using the materials that Nudds, in turn, adopts

from Soteriou provides a profitable approach to other cases of indirect

perception, in all our senses: both those cases in which what one per-

ceives is something more than that in terms of which one’s experience

is individuated (as in Nudds’ auditory case) or, as in the case with

which we’ve been interested here, cases in which one’s experience yields

multiple perceptual states.21

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