Thermal Perception and its Relation to Touch

Abstract

Touch is standardly taken to be a proximal sense, principally constituted by capacities to detect pressure and thermal stimulation, and contrasted with the distal senses of vision and audition. It has, however, recently been argued that the scope of touch goes beyond proximal perception; touch can connect us to distal objects. Hence, touch should generally be thought of as a connection sense. In this paper, I argue that whereas pressure perception is a connection sense, thermal perception is not. Thermal perception is a proximal sense distinct from touch. One significant consequence of this is that it motivates an alternative explanation of how we detect the thermal properties of the things we touch and what they are.