It’s certainly not a winning strategy, and wouldn’t change the results of any election. I think that’s largely the point of refusing to vote.

It’s more a conscientious objection. But it has the potential to effect serious change. In some cases non-voters are a large enough constituency to make moves outside of elections and with other means than the vote, so it’s not a complete waste. The problem is probably organizing other non-voters.

I said there is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer, between man and the rest of his environment, between A and B. Light is of A which is directly perceived by B, man.

If sense data is of A it is of the rest of the environment. If it is of B it is of man. And if it is of either world or man, it is identifiable, detectable, and measurable. If it does not lie in either, but is a mediating factor between both, where is the evidence for this?

Do you think we directly perceive the light but indirectly perceive apples?

You're not addressing the question. According to your account we don't directly see apples because air, light, and glasses are a mediating factor between the apple and you. Deflecting by saying that we directly experience the light doesn't say anything about whether or not we directly see the apple.

I’ve answered the question already. We directly perceive apples through light. I don’t think we’re viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light, like we would on indirect mediums like photos and televisions.

How is this relevant to direct or indirect realism and phenomenalism?

I’ve read Stirner and Proudhon and reject both egoism and socialism. I gravitate more towards people like Herbert Spencer, Albert Jay Nock, HD Thoreau, HL Mencken, who are probably more literary than philosophical.

That’s an interesting point about eventually rejecting anarchism, though. I myself haven’t taken the plunge because I’m not quite sure man can govern himself just yet.

That’s what I was looking for. Thanks. I don’t follow too much anarchist literature. There’s often too much collectivism in it for my tastes.

That’s right. We experience light, air, glasses, apples, heat, gravity, pressure, the tree, the leaves and so on. We directly perceive the environment. There is no mediating factor between the environment you experience, and you the experiencer. I’ve said this a few times now.

Then you admit that our visual perception of an apple is mediated by air, light, and sometimes glasses or contact lenses. Therefore, by your own account, we don't directly see apples.

I’m not sure that is the case. We directly perceive apples through light. I don’t think we’re viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light.

Yes, which is to say that our sensory systems elicit different sense-data.

What sense-data? It’s better to say the biology is different. Then you can point to actual differences.

Air, light, glasses, and contact lenses aren't made up mediums.

Exactly. Sense-data is.

And what does it mean to "see something differently"? It means that we experience different sense-data. I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. The colours we experience are the medium by which we indirectly see the photo of a dress.

You experience the image your way, I experience it my way. Our bodies are different and occupy different positions in space and time. There is no need to evoke “sense-data” or some other medium to explain it when there are actual things that can account for these differences.

But there's a number of mediums between the apple and the sense receptors in our eyes (air, light, sometimes glasses or contact lenses), so by your own account it isn't direct. You now seem to mean something else by "direct". What is it?

You’re confusing a actual medium in the world with the mediums made up by indirect realists.

We don't know yet, the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved. Regardless, there is something which is sense-data, whether physical or not, as proved by the fact that you and I can look at the same photo of a dress and yet see different colours.

It only proves that we see it differently, not that something called sense-data is an emergent phenomenon from the brain.

But do we see the apple directly?

In terms of direct realism, yes.

Sense data is an emergent phenomenon, brought about by brain activity. If you're asking me to point to something that is physically situated between the apple and someone's eyes then your request is misguided.

Does it have a physical structure or chemical make-up? Can we put some of it under a microscope?

The air, light, glasses, and contact lenses are the medium between the apple and one's eyes. Hence why, according to your account, seeing an apple isn't direct.

Of course I’m not speaking of sight only. But you keep limiting it to sight. Nonetheless, we see everything in our periphery, including light, air, glasses, etc. directly.

You can't dismiss the medium of sense data by saying that you can see someone pick up and and eat an apple. As I have repeatedly said, your claim here is irrelevant to the discussion.

Point to me the sense-data. No sense-data appears between observer and observed. Sense-data is irrelevant if it cannot be shown to exist.

Again, viewing things in the world such as air, glasses, light, and so on is direct realism.

The mediums I speak of are the ones that are assumed, made up without evidence. Sense-data is another such medium.

Then explain to me how someone else picking up and eating an apple shows that no medium is involved when they see an apple.

No medium appears at any point in the scenario. The evidence for a medium is zero.

Good point. Maybe the problem is more with representative democracy than voting itself. In America, at least, some constituencies are massive. The conceit that one person can represent the will of that many voters is pure humbug.

“It is compulsory by law for all eligible Australian citizens to enrol and vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums.”

https://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/

Seems clear cut to me.

True voting isnt synonymous with politics, but I would say its a necessary part of the political system in Canada or the US. Aren’t you opting out of a system based on votes when you refuse to vote? I would compare it to playing baseball but refusing to take the field. Not really playing baseball then. (And likewise the baseball field is not synonymous with baseball).

Yes, refusing to participate would be opting out of the system, in a way. But it’s more like refusing to play baseball but having to remain in the dugout.

What do you mean by this? If you’re saying that apples directly stimulate our sense receptors then except in the case of touch this is false; apples don’t directly stimulate the rods and cones in our eyes, so visual perception under your account isn’t direct.

Or do you mean something else?

“Direct” in the sense that we directly perceive the environment, including the lights, smells, touch, taste, of apples. “Indirect” in the sense that we perceive the environment through some kind of medium.

You’re right that it entails little more than avoiding the polls, except for wherever compulsory voting is in order. But voting isn’t the same as politics, so I would not say refusing to vote entails not being political.

For someone like the OP author who openly wants fascism and corporatocracy, and defends the likes of Donald Trump to the bitter end -- all why pretending to denounce the state -- should most certainly not vote. Their non-voting is a deliverance.

More lies. I openly oppose fascism every time I oppose your political activity.

Protest voting is still voting. I don’t want to stand in their lines and go along with their charade.

I would not want to see a withdrawal from the legal right to vote, only to retain the legal right not to vote.

In a way the vote, at least in elections, is to afford someone the privilege to govern over you. It is also to afford someone the right to represent you, as if such a feat was possible. It seems to me that the refusal to bestow these rights and privileges is the first step to unlinking oneself from their deeds.

Yes it is and for the same reasons I already stated. There is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer, so the experience is not indirect.

I have read the article, and if you want to quibble about definitions be my guest. The thread is about phenomenalism. I’m speaking of “Perceptual Directness”, section 2.1.3 in your article. We either directly perceive the world or we do not.

But I can watch you directly eat an apple. There is literally nothing between the experienced and the experiencer prohibiting one from directly experiencing the other.

I’m not sure how that is the case, so I’ll say “no”.

You’re assuming that the apple is being presented in something called experience. But there is no evidence of such a place, let alone that apples appear in them.

Sure it is. I’m watching him experiencing an Apple directly.

It’s not a desire for change that motivates me but a conscientious effort to refuse participating in what I view as an evil arraignment. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum.

There are other senses, though.

Does air prohibit us from directly experiencing air?



He's blind. He cannot see the apple.

Surely you can name or point to what prohibits direct experience.

Bodily interaction is not phenomenological experience. The former being direct says nothing about the latter being direct. A blind man can pick up and eat an apple, therefore picking up and eating an apple is not evidence that someone has a direct visual perception of the apple.

It is experience viewed objectively, from a view independent of any phenomenological account. From this view, to watch a blind man directly eat an apple on the one hand and say he is not experiencing the apple directly on the other is absurd. There is neither the evidence nor the reason to suppose that he is experiencing it indirectly.

And seeing someone pick up and eat an apple shows nothing that supports Direct Realist Presentation.

It shows that he is directly interacting with an apple. Nothing appears to be mediating his experience or perception, or otherwise hindering his experience of the apple. The contact between him and the apple is direct, therefor the experience is direct.

If a schizophrenic says he is hearing voices, yet others do not, we can confirm that he is in fact not hearing voices or any other sounds from anyone’s mouth, but that something else is occurring somewhere in his biology.

Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Dir

An apple is an ordinary object.

But he’s touching it, destroying it, consuming it. At no point are the interactions indirect, so we need not say the experience is indirect.

If you watch someone eat an apple, what does the evidence show regarding the directness of his perception?

At times, the empirical needs to set the boundaries for the creative mind.

We can easily witness any person and the objects he interacts to see how direct perception really is. It’s so direct that some of the objects, like apples, can be consumed, physically entering the so-called inner world and passing through it. So we can put the directness of perception, or at least interaction, to the side.

Since the indirect realist neither has the periphery or range of sense to examine what is really going on during perception we can say his “experience” is invariably a limited and impoverished view of his own biology. His eyes and ears don’t point inward, and thus needs other instruments, other people, to fill in the blanks where his senses cannot reach. For example, all it takes is one or two other observers to confirm that a person is hallucinating or dreaming.

So why the indirect realist prefers the limited and impoverished view of his own biology is the real question.

The psychologist JJ Gibson has some good ideas about perception. Two good books, well worth the read, are The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception and The Perception of the Visual World.

The issue is direct vs indirect experience. Physically, we can directly experience only the five senses. We directly experience the idea of a tree and indirectly experience the tree as a physical object. (An analogous situation is seeing a tree on a computer monitor. All we can see on a computer monitor is light.)

Think "brain in a vat". Or the movie, The Matrix. Both make a similar point.

The matter of identity rears its head again and again. All of what you said could be true if you identify as a brain, a mind, or some other small and limited observer existing within the body. But everyone in the entire world can see that you are no such entity.