Cookies

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue.

Department of Philosophy

Staff

Publication details for Prof Matthew Ratcliffe

Ratcliffe, M. (2013). Touch and the Sense of Reality. In The Hand: An Organ of the Mind. Radman, Z. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. 131-157.
  • Publication type: Books: sections

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenology of touch. Philosophical discussions of perception are generally vision-centric. Despite this, some philosophers have indicated that touch is, in some way, a more fundamental mode of access to the world. By drawing critically upon work by Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hans Jonas, I develop a position of this kind. I argue that touch is partly constitutive of a background sense of reality and belonging that other forms of sensory experience presuppose.