The authors claim that Lakoff’s (1993) metaphor PERCEPTION IS CONTACT is not necessary. On examples from English and Chinese they show that most of his examples of the PERCEIVING IS TOUCHING as a subcase of PERCEPTION IS CONTACT are attributable to THINKING IS MOVING/OBJECT MANIPULATION, and most of his examples of the PERCEPTION IS RECEPTION as a subcase of the PERCEPTION IS CONTACT metaphor are attributable to EMOTIONS ARE PHYSICAL FORCES making Lakoff’s metaphor unnecessarily overgeneralized. The description and explanation of the analysed examples are better and fuller if unidimensional synaesthesia is replaced by multisynaesthetic considerations.