I am interested in exploring here the significance of the sense of touch in relation to human/personal identity. I will be using, however, an unusual angle, namely sex-bots and their place in human sexuality. 

While I may not have a firm position on the use of sex-bots, I certainly do not belong to the group of AI enthusiasts who believe that having sex with robots/AI is unproblematic and/or desirable. My own take on that is informed by the feminist outlook on gender imbalance when it comes to sexual relations. 

I will take the premise that the formation of human-type consciousness requires the faculty of touch, which in turn, is central for the development of feelings such as compassion and empathy, both of them at the heart of care relationship. One of the focal points of the current project is the exploration of peripersonal space, which is central for the formation of self. A part of the great importance of peripersonal space comes from its ties to “self-location and body ownership”, without which touch would be inconceivable.

At the same time, empirical research seems to favor a bimodal visuo-tactile neural system which allows for both multisensory integration as well as for affective responses to the environment (negative, associated with danger, and positive, associated with safety). It appears, then, that the sense of touch is at the very foundation of our (human) perceptivity. I am very sympathetic to the idea that low-level mechanisms, of tactile association, for example, feed into higher- level mechanisms such as object-recognition. 
If the sense of self is constructed from the bottom-up, then, not just the interaction but also the use of any type of bot, especially a sex-bot, will have a profound impact on the way we, humans, feel about, and interact with the world. Interacting with other bodies, especially automated non-organic bodies, changes the way we feel about our own bodies. I will engage with such conceptual constructs as “network of desires” and “posthuman desires” in order to elucidate my position on human-robot touch. My tentative conclusion is that perfecting the exoskeleton and overall appearance of the bot/sex-bot to resemble more and more that of an organic being, especially an organic human being, will not resolve the tensions surrounding the complicated space and role of touch in the formation of the sense of (human) self.