The chapter “Association and the Projection of Memories” is the second of Merleau-Ponty’s multi-chapter introduction to The Phenomenology of Perception. In the introduction Merleau-Ponty presents a brilliant critique of both empiricist and rationalist approaches to perception. Both, he argues, reduce the perceptual given to simple atom-pixels of sense data, or pure intuition. Where the empiricist and rationalist differ is in how this ‘raw’ input is then formed into the complex world of meaningful objects before us. However, Merleau-Ponty argues that, from this starting point, both approaches beg the question: whether by an associative reflex of cognition, the projection outward of memories, or the subsumption of the raw sense data under a concept in a judgement, these procedures presuppose that this apparently simple, atomic data is already meaningfully structured such as to be able to solicit ‘appropriate’ memory projections, or subsumptions under concepts. Thus, the phenomenon of perception is not in the least explained by the atomizing of the sensory given coupled with a cognitive supplement of the subject, but instead needs to be approached as first and foremost being given in terms of significance. The most elementary perceptual constellation is not the ‘pixel’ of color sensation, but the irreducible complex of a figure on a background, neither ‘inter-cutting’ the other…