Mattens (2017) has argued that philosophers have typically focused too much on external objects and object perception in their work on touch. The fine-grained manipulation and exploration of objects with human hands is not, according to Mattens, the best way to think about touch. Instead, tactile awareness serves  primarily as a kind of protective signaling system that warns about incoming threats (cf. the Bodyguard Hypothesis defended by De Vignemont 2018). On this view, touch is primarily about bodily awareness, about what is happening with and to our bodies, and only derivatively about the nature of external object.