The direct and indirect realist differ in respect to what they directly perceive. For the direct realist, we directly perceive all that’s in our periphery. For the indirect realist, we directly perceive some kind of sense data. So I doubt they would both agree that they directly sense the color green.

I’m not sure a direct realist position entails the argument that just by knowing an effect we are directly able to know its cause. Would you explain?

My issue is that these models are nowhere to be found, so I am unable to say anything of the sort is constructed, at least until such models can be instantiated. The representational theory of perception, that we are constructing models of reality and viewing them, implies that something is viewing the representation—but again, this viewer needs to be instantiated. This is why I ask the indirect realist to reify this model and reify this little viewer so we that we can better understand their natures. What are these models? Who is viewing these models? Who perceives what?

Until then I would prefer to say that the perceiver is modified, for instance by ingesting hallucinogens. He sees things differently than he usually would because he himself is different than he usually would be. I think this approach would better describe the difference in character of phenomenological experience between veridical experience on the one hand, and illusions and hallucinations on the other. In other words, if we describe how the perceiver and not the perceived are different, we’ll come to a better understanding of illusion and hallucination in general.

Anyone who understand taxation to be immoral has to contend with Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel’s argument against “everyday libertarianism”, which they describe as the common inclination “to feel that what we have earned belongs to us without qualification, in the strong sense that what happens to that money is morally speaking entirely a matter of our say-so”.

According to the authors this is a “conceptual problem”, later viewing it condescendingly as a confused delusion. They explain:

“There is no market without government and no government without taxes; and what type of market there is depends on laws and policy decisions that government must make. In the absence of a legal system supported by taxes, there couldn’t be money, banks, corporations, stock exchanges, patents, or a modern market economy—none of the institutions that make possible the existence of almost all contemporary forms of income and wealth.

It is therefore logically impossible that people should have any kind of entitlement to all their pretax income. All they can be entitled to is what they would be left with after taxes under a legitimate system, supported by legitimate taxation— and this shows that we cannot evaluate the legitimacy of taxes by reference to pretax income.

The Myth of Ownership
Murphy and Nagel

In following their reasoning one can end up at a cross-road, maybe a dead end. There is no government without taxes, and no taxes without government. There is no market without government, and no government without a market. At what point on this circle should we jump on and jump off?

They explain in the following passage:

The tax system is not like an assessment of members of a department to buy a wedding gift for a colleague. It is not an incursion on a distribution of property holdings that is already presumptively legitimate. Rather, it is among the conditions that create a set of property holdings, whose legitimacy can be assessed only by evaluating the justice of the whole system, taxes included. Against such a background people certainly have a legitimate claim on the income they realize through the usual methods of work, investment, and gift— but the tax system is an essential part of the background which creates the legitimate expectations that arise from employment contracts and other economic transactions, not something that cuts in afterward.

The circle is squared. The tax system is not an “incursion on a distribution of property holdings that is already presumptively legitimate”. It is not something that cuts in after our transactions and takes our property. Rather, the tax system creates the “legitimate expectations” that, like a feeling, “arise from our transactions”. The system is in the background, just there, perhaps everywhere, providing us all with the conditions that create a set of property holdings, like nature itself. So who cares if they take your income? In fact, your pre-tax income was never yours to begin with.

We can first contrast “everyday libertarianism” with Nagel and Murphy’s “everyday statism”, the feeling that what we have earned belongs to the state without qualification, in the strong sense that what happens to that money is morally speaking entirely a matter of the State’s say-so. In doing so it makes clear that there is a competing property claim between everyday libertarianism and everyday statism. Whose income is it?

The authors state that it is “logically impossible” that someone should have entitlement to their pre-tax income. Without a system supported by taxes there wouldn’t be markets and income in the first place. The question-begging character of Everyday Statism begins to reveal itself upon a cursory glance at history.

It isn’t true that the tax system is not an incursion on legitimate property holdings. It is, in fact and in practice, “something that cuts in after”. In America for example, the 16th amendment, which gives congress the right to levy income taxes, didn’t arrive until the 20th century. Until then “pre-tax income” was just “income”, and income in the form of remuneration distributed between consenting adults was a legitimate property holding, and a legal one. The government “cut in” to the distribution of legitimate property holdings by giving themselves the constitutional right to do so.

If there is no market without a government, why was the second law of the United States a tariff? Why would they lay duties on imported goods if there was not already a market? We know why. There was a market, a distribution of wealth, of property holdings, and the government was willing to restrict the market in order to get some of it, to pay debts, to fund wars, or otherwise to take from people their income in order to benefit the state.

The conceptual and moral problem for Everyday Statism is this: the tax system is an active and ongoing incursion on a distribution of property holdings that was already presumptively legitimate. It is not an essential part of the background. It is something that cuts in afterword, imposed upon the background, and upon all dealings which have heretofore been legitimate.

In your first post you’ve already explained quite well where you think the issue lies, and I’m satisfied by your definitions of direct and indirect realism: “It’s about whether the properties of whatever we're going to call the perception are given by the external world (directly), or via the internal world (indirectly)”.

The only difference between us here, I think, is when I write of perception I do not include the “actions toward it (speech, interaction, etc)”, “reciprocal action”, like conversing about trees, which are no doubt “given” by “the internal world”. These to me are not acts of perception, though I suppose that’s debatable. I am only speaking of raw, sensory experience, acts such as seeing, hearing, smelling, and so on.

I do not dismiss that “anything happening inside the body as not the object of [my] questions”, but I deny that anything happening in the body is the direct object of perception, “the perceived”. Rather, these are the actions of the body, “the perciever”.

Anyways, I hope that clarifies.

The reason I wanted to conceptually remove the perceiver from the man—in your example, the brain—and place it on a table is to imagine if it can perceive.

The brain in a vat, for example, assumes the brain is a perceiver that can still perceive even if removed from the rest of the body, but then goes on to include in the scenario some sort of life-suspending liquid and electrical inputs, to act in the place of the body. In this I think they show that the rest of the body is required for perception to occur, but rather than admit it, they attempt to disguise it by replacing it with some synthetic organism.

But I’ve seen real brains in vats and would be speaking nonsense if I said either of them still perceived. Brains cannot live, let alone perceive, on their own. So perception is an act of an organism, brains and all.

I appreciate the background. Consider me a representative of the Charvaka school.

Yes, but from different perspectives, and here the matter of perspective is significant, surely. Nobody will say that an image of a grimacing face is the same as the first-person experience of pain, would they?

You’re right. No one would. But the pain is no doubt contingent on some physical aspect of the being that experiences it, and therefor that aspect is visible from both perspectives. Unfortunately the person does not have transparent skin and his eyes do not point inward, so it is no wonder he seeks another’s input.

No you’re not. You’re seeing an external image of an inner process. If you were in pain you would see your expression of pain in the mirror, but you wouldn’t see the pain in the mirror.

I have been conditioned to believe that the act of seeing and that which sees is the same thing. I can see my eyes at the same time I use my eyes to see. Seeing and pain are activities of the very same body that stands before the mirror.

It’s moved on since Locke and Berkeley too. Then again I just read a book called “The Case Against Reality” by a prominent cognitive scientist utilizing much the same arguments. If analytic philosophers were able to think about anything other than words or sentences now and then, they might notice that it hasn’t really moved on.

If there is no distinction between perceiver and perceived then it seems to me indirect realism is redundant.

You see a reflection of the eye in the mirror, but you do not see the act of seeing.

Sure I do. I am seeing. I see myself. Therefore I see myself seeing.

It’s true; I do assume that perspective because I can witness both perceiver and perceived from outside their relationship, and see only direct interaction. But I also assume it subjectively because I can find no intermediary between me and the rest of the world. Whether through thick-headedness or naïveté, I cannot pretend that that is not what is occurring and assume some other relationship.

Depends what you mean by 'mediate'. Again, if you don't want to make a distinction between conscious mediation and subconscious mediation then the distinction between direct realism and indirect realism will be irrelevant. The distinction is very much about such a distinction.

I’m trying to distinguish between the perceiver and what he perceives. Perception is either mediated by the perceiver, and thus direct, or it is mediated by something else, thus indirect. I think this problem can be illuminated by answering the question, “who perceives what”?

What does the perceiver directly perceive? When I see a photo of a tree, I indirectly perceive the tree, but directly perceive the photo, for example.

Anything internal is me, though. What else mediates it?

In my mind the “internal stages” are a part of the perceiver and thus mediated by him. I don’t see why we need to include some other intermediary. If there is no intermediary the perception is direct.

I’m staring at a flower pot right now and I fail to recognize any impoverishment in what I perceive, nor how memory is informing it. I’ll look into it, though.

Yeah I assumed sense-data, ideas, representations, or whatever else is posited as a perceptual intermediary exists within the perceiver for the simple reason they cannot be found anywhere else. If you can suggest a better location I’m all ears.

I have no satisfying answer to the argument from illusion. But if perception is decidedly direct, it seems to me that any hallucination or illusion is the result of some act or reflex of the perceiver and not of the perceived. I don’t think any of this precludes direct realism.

You’re right. I also challenge them to instantiate who and what are the objects of this relationship.

For me, a thing only perceives modifications of itself. And as the self is self-identical, there is no intermediary. If a bomb goes off two feet away from you, but it doesn't alter your body in any way, you haven't perceived it. That's my suggestion anyway.

That’s where I’m at too.

It was my understanding that for indirect realism there is a perceptual intermediary between perceiver and perceived. If there is none then the distinction between direct and indirect realism is redundant.

I know that’s not what you’re saying. I just want to know what John is directly perceiving to the indirect realist. If John is not directly perceiving the tree, what is it that he directly perceives?

Then who or what perceives the tree?

I suspect that he directly perceives all of the above, and everything else within his periphery.

So what does the indirect realist perceive?

I don't disagree with this, but I would put the emphasis differently. Yours is on the tentative nature of rights, their conditionality. Mine is on my judgement that the only way to proceed morally is to act as if it were true. Philosophers do that all the time.

I’m with you on this. My concern is that the whole thing opens itself to a withering criticism, for instance Bentham’s critique. The project of natural law was never the same since then and with devastating consequences. Perhaps there is a way to reestablish it on better footing.

Do you know of any cases of that?

I’m sure of it in my own case. With each passing day I get closer to it. Lysander Spooner is another.

I have portrayed natural rights as not existing. The behavior of granting rights, natural or otherwise, can exist, as I have already explained.

If the slave can claim his right to freedom, or in the case of natural rights, already has it, why is he in chains? If he can take the right or already has the right, no one needn’t afford it to him, and we can just go on with our day without intervening. In any case, when it comes to asserting rights, the slaver’s right to own the slave has won out over the slave’s right to freedom.

Your so-called balance and equality is might makes right. The slaver has the right to own the slave so long as he can claim and take the right. The slave has the right to freedom so long as he can claim the right and make an exit.

That’s right. The distinction is between so-called natural and positive law. In my mind positive law is circular and dangerous. But natural law is often seen as silly and superstitious, sometimes rightfully so.

Bentham believed a belief in natural rights would lead to anarchy because they contradict the very idea of government. I think he’s right on that.

I like what you said there. Though I do not agree that they are built in to any nature, human or otherwise, they are definitely reasoned from observing human nature.

But I maintain that Natural Rights, like any right, exists only in the heads and mouths of those who are willing to confer them. He observes and reasons about human nature, derives from it a sum of acceptable behaviors, confers the right to perform these behaviors to all people, and endorses and defends them thereby. The whole project of human rights is dependent upon the rights giver, which as already intimated, is everyone.

The more and more people believe in natural law, take it upon themselves to confer rights, the more and more we have natural rights. The less and less people do this, the less and less we have natural rights. At any rate, as soon as the natural lawyer disappears or otherwise stops conferring those rights, the rights are no longer conferred. We’ve seen this happen for instance in Germany where legal positivism became the handmaiden to Hitler’s power. Had there been some natural lawyers there I wager it would be a different story.

I think civil rights would fall under legal rights.

I believe in natural rights and natural law. I just don’t think we’re born with them. The opposite is the case. They must first be granted and defended.

I was anticipating the straw-men, quoting out of context, and quibbling. I guess there is no profit in good faith.

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Perhaps this is because you suspiciously left out the rest of the argument, for some reason terminating it where it cannot be terminated, leaving out clauses which clarified what I meant. When I said that “everything about my supposed rights depends entirely on the will of those who offered them to me”, I meant whether they will uphold or violate the rights that I supposedly have, as is obvious by what I said.

Willing is an action performed by a thing and not itself a thing. I’m not trying to suggest these people carry with them things called “wills”.

Good point.

Any attempt at distributive justice performed in a manner that utilizes injustice in order to achieve a just result is impossible. It can only compound injustice.

But I think there is a case for reparations as far as institutions are concerned. I believe reparations are owed to the descendants of slaves, for example, from the institutions that profited from stolen people and labor.

As these things go, the arguments for Social Justice become unintelligible when they are premised on methodological collectivism. It involves positing purely imaginary connections between disparate individuals over vast amounts of time and space. These connections, often derived from superficial facts, serve as a sort of mental framework. With it we can skip the seemingly impossible task of rectifying actual injustices and just let it all permeate, willy nilly, through these imaginary connections. Now we can believe people are the perpetrators or victims of crimes committed long before they were born, and other absurdities. But we fail to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving, and so there is nothing just about it.

If the goal of justice is to give people what they are due, it utterly fails in this regard. So we can suspect that rectifying past injustices isn’t the goal, but to seek a sort of public penance through which its advocates can receive absolution.

Each term represents the misapprehension of human biology, though I think Self is more applicable. Their referent is perpetually absent or hidden from any observer, so we literally and figuratively can’t quite put our finger on it. I would include in this “consciousness”. Why we posit these phantoms I am not certain, but we can be certain that we posit them in certain objects, and these objects are infinitely greater in size, complexity, originality, and value than any of these phantoms.

To me, organ donation is morally wrong if the donor does not consent. The same is true of human incubators, which is its own kind of organ donation. What if the guy wakes up? It’s no doubt rare but people have been declared brain-dead and nonetheless made full recoveries.

So I find the opt-out program is morally wrong and unjust. The utilitarian argument for “presumed consent”, in this case using human beings as incubators without their consent, whether for organs or children, requires too much faith in human infallibility and authority for me to be comfortable with. It illegitimately considers human beings as state property. The acquisition of the human being as property was unjust. For these reasons I wouldn’t make it past the first premise.

Presumably the bodies are kept alive in order to be used for the period of gestation. So there is the added question of: should these brain-dead people be kept alive, used as incubators, so that someone else may become a mother? Should they be kept alive so that we may harvest their organs should the need arise?

Spinoza made lenses for a living and was still able to produce some musings during his short life.

Those organizations (supposedly) are there to help others or preserve nursing and caring. If they are aware of someone who dies and their organs can help others, they can ask a judge to authorize organ donation on behalf of that person to preserve the health and life of others.

To me the judge isn't the sole proprietor of brain-dead human beings, so I would disregard his decision as illegitimate and unethical.