We discussed Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on embodied perception based on a brief introduction to Merleau-Ponty in “the Yellow Book” and and a reference in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ (Section 4) and a video by Mark Thorsby on Merleau-Ponty   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4u1_MVaf0Q&t=367s  There is also an “In Our Time” episode on BBC Sounds at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002974s Merleau-Ponty was a psychologist, philosopher and educator who refuted the mind-body duality of Descartes and pointed out that we cannot stand outside the world but can only observe it as a part of it.  Perception is the starting point for all thought and action: it is not the mind decoding and making sense of data from the senses, but the whole body is involved. Maybe this is philosophy catching up with science: we have evolved, and simpler species have response mechanisms such as worms recoiling from light, and McGilchrist showed us we look for food or try to avoid becoming prey ourselves.  We know the brain could not react fast enough to enable us to catch a ball. We differentiate fast System 1 thinking from the higher effort System 2.  We look at the world with intentionality, identifying affordances and salience.  Merleau-Ponty gives us a more integrated place in our world and culture.