We discussed the series of Gresham Lectures by Professor Robin May on why we have emotions: see https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robin+may+emotions.  There are six lectures on emotions: Why we fear, laugh, hate, love and grieve, plus “Should we manipulate people’s emotions?" to be delivered on 20th May.  We think of emotions as mental states, but these lectures relate them to the physical activities in our brains and the reasons we have evolved them.  Fear moves us to fight or flight much faster than our rational brains can analyse the situation.  Laughter is connected to fear or uncertainty - it is a release when the brain catches up and resolves a strange set of circumstances.  Love can inhibit the fear response when we lower our defences to allow someone to get close to us.  We noted that the idea of embodied perception was put forward by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.