Touch as a special spatial sense

Ophelia Deroy (Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München, Institute of Philosophy, University of London)

Is touch special when it comes to our perception of spatially

 extended objects? Certainly, the claim that touching an object, or estimating

 its length by touch is more reliable or objective that seeing the

 same object or estimating its length by vision, is difficult to support

 in the light of our scientific understanding of perception. Both senses

 can be misleading, or accurate, depending on contexts. In this talk, I

 suggest that the distinctive character of touch still shows at a

 subjective level, as we are more certain of what we touch than what

 we see. I will argue also that this distinction regards spatial

 estimates, and not temporal ones.