Category: Matthew Fulkerson: The First Sense

In my final post here, I would like to present some material from the final chapter of The First Sense on pleasant touch. Perceptual experience is often more than merely descriptive or informational; it is also often evaluative and motivational. Offering an account of this component is critical to our understanding …

Touch seems like a paradigm contact sense. In order to experience things through touch it seems necessary that we be in direct contact with them. I argue that this is false. We can and often do experience things not in direct (or even apparent) contact with our bodies. We do …

Active or haptic touch typically involves externally directed experiences of things in the world. We experience through touch tables, chairs, breezes, cups, dogs, microwaves, even other people. Such experiences are directed at ordinary material objects and their properties, just like vision is typically directed at external objects and their features …

First let me thank the wonderful people here at Brains for asking me to blog over the next couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to it. I was recently asked to summarize my philosophical interests and approach in a single sentence. I was put on the spot, but I …