I don't really want to pursue that line of questioning in thread, seeing as we both see it as a tangent. The only remarks I'll offer are there are differences in degree of police militarisation and the intensity of reliance upon police disciplinary function as part of societal structure. White supremacist terrorism is not analogous to anti-racist protests motivated to obtain policing and judicial reform, and the police response to each should clearly differ.

Worst of all is Trump, that only makes the public discourse become worse. — ssu

I think in terms of media influence Trump's a much smaller issue than Murdoch and the Koch Brothers. Trump's pretty much a pustule, he's not the infection. He itches and bursts and it's satisfying to squeeze him.

Not only that, but your politicians are basically prisoners of this stated discourse. It truly strangles genuine discussion. — ssu

Not actually living in America, I grew up in the UK and moved to Norway a few years ago. The UK's much closer to America than here, and has much the same issues, but the police are less militarised in the UK so there are less hospitalisations and deaths despite performing the same societal function. They still do shit like kettling and illegally detaining peaceful protesters (like with London's extinction rebellion), and illegally detaining activists under anti-terror laws... But at least Brits can expect police not to shoot them if they shout too loud, most of the time.

They also do predictive policing bollocks (that just concentrates police effort disproportionately in the poorest areas over time), the British state is even more of an overt surveillance state than America (the police film the public in London and put them through machine learning algorithms for facial recognition, there was a case where a guy stole a crate of beer and was watched continuously by surveillance for a 200 mile journey..)

So yes, the real reason is the discourse itself. It is poisoned far before the topic of actual police conduct and training is discussed. Far before that the opposing sides have retreated to their ideological castles and see each other in a worse light than before. And then ANY kind of understanding of the other sides view becomes a "surrender" of the values your side has taken itself to defend. — ssu

There is always the question of who has power to shape discourse and who doesn't. This follows degrees; if I started ranting my posts in the streets, everyone would see me as a crazy street ranter. Eventually the police would show up because I don't have a performance permit.

If you're a media institution, you have much more influence over the shape of discourse. You can select stories to publish, you receive donations from interested parties, you've got a major incentive not to bite the hand that feeds. As a media institution, you have major influence over the framing issues you're criticising. As a media institution funder, you have major influence over their decisions.

The playing field isn't equal. There are media components that work against the interest of protesters, and it is always leftists who work against them.

Is Englishness recessive?

Those guys said the "cops can't reach where they are"; they're not going to stop any police violence that way.

Was it racism? I don't know. I do know that racism is generated by it though. — frank

Where there are cops who are racist, they need to be weeded out. The notion that they're all racist is ridiculous.

I think you are thinking of racism as an individual attitude. Like it's held by a few bad eggs. A bunch of cops being violent racists ultimately isn't the problem in my book; though it certainly doesn't help. The problem (well, part of it) is that being a violent racist as a cop is not heavily disincentivised by the justice system. Formally? Yes it is disincentivised. Functionally? What legal disincentives there are are undermined.

If as a society you're in a place where people are formally equal under the law, but those formalities are mere formalities in function, that indicates that something big has to change.

The notion that no progress can be made within the US system is wrong and it's a damaging idea. — frank

I believe progress can be made on some things through socially acceptable channels. I think it's incredibly unlikely that without agitation like this (and subsequent organising) you'll ever see new laws implemented, organisational structures regarding justice administration changed. How long do you expect these people to endure?

Your state of powerlessness is actually pretty analogous to theirs, right? You have no idea how you can go about changing things. If you needed to try and change something, you're about as alienated from social capital as they are; you have the same choices they have. Do fuck all, or do something that at least increases visibility and registers intent. You're advocating waiting and keeping the faith in the socially acceptable means of expression; you're in the same position as them, but not the same community.

You can endure for longer because you're not in the community. You aren't on the receiving end of how things are; but you're still living in a country where cops are assaulting journalists and peaceful protesters and in all likelihood they will not be punished. The cops aren't there to protect the protesters, they're there to quell what's seen as a threat to private property and national security. That their fellow cops turn a blind eye to a few bad eggs assaulting journalists is indicative of their interests; it benefits their disciplinary function if no one can provide evidence to hold them to account.

If the American state saw the immediate need expressed by the protesters as valid; there would already be talk of reforms, there would have been actual reforms years ago. What actually happens is that cops show up to impede a vital function of democracy, a media narrative calling these protesters looters, savages, selfish shows up, and this creates a public consensus of issue framing that displaces attention from the substantive injustices the protests are trying to address. The same thing happened in Ferguson, which I'm sure was an isolated incident and a few bad eggs, who should've been doing the moral thing and enduring their pain forever in silence.

The consensus legitimises; by sweeping under the rug, as you're seeing live happening in your own thoughts; the institutionally sanctioned violence against these protesters (and now journalists!) by comparing it to their own community crime problems. The president's expressed wish for all of them to be shot isn't weighing heavily on people's minds, but a Target store being attacked is. It's been "a few bad eggs" forever, it's been "condemn violent protesters" forever; and the police keep killing and the things that keep the protesters' problems going are never addressed.

It's a double standard. All the things which vindicate the protesters' concerns are managed out of the media attention economy quickly, all the things which condemn the protesters but "formally support their right to protest peacefully" are emphasised. This is part of how the double standard functions. It will never be stated, as part of the justification narrative against the legitimate concerns and democratic expression of the protesters it functions in the background. This is what a disciplinary mechanism on the level of ideology looks like; it manages attention away from the concerns of protesters. Part of its function is that it can be immediately disavowed if pointed out; it is not designed to hold together rationally; it's been generated as a counterpoint, someone who raises it can disavow using it because their discussion partner failed to understand, it's working as intended.

How long would you wait and pray in these conditions? It's only been about 400 years.

No, I'm trying to stick to what facts I believe.

(1) There's a long history of cops killing black people under ultra suspicious and avoidable circumstances; so much so it happens uproariously every year. At some point it becomes a pattern - it's been a pattern for a long time.
(2) Put that in a political and economic context; the groups that are disproportionately effected by such brutality are also severely economically disadvantaged; their schools are worse, their neighbourhoods have less money, they have much less social capital to leverage into organisational influence, nevermind political influence.
(3) Put that in a political context where minority communities are gerrymandered so their votes matter less, in a context where no politician they could vote for actually would implement or even study targeted measures that would mitigate the disadvantages they have.

All of those things together put minority communities in the US into a massive pressure cooker; they don't get political representation, they have no easy means of getting political interventions useful for them, at least one of the parties they could vote for benefits from them having less representation, they are deprived of economic advantages; they work worse jobs, their lives are harder, and all the socially acceptable channels they can use to make themselves heard fall on deaf ears.

In their history, it takes them fighting for their own rights to get heard. Be it Garvey, MLK, Malcolm X or the Panthers; they're all addressing the same issue in different ways; the hitherto unsolved problem of systemic injustice against minority communities in the US, and their alienation from any socially acceptable means of addressing it. This is an alienation from justice.

MLK wanted the same opportunities and representation for everyone; minority votes get gerrymandered into irrelevance, the current POTUS is aware that mail voting empowers communities that struggle to join polling lines for various reasons and Tweets about it; getting massive approval. Imagine you live in a context where your fellow citizens are happy that your community's democratic powers are weakened. There is formal equality under the law, but no functional equality under its enforcement. There is formal equality in political representation; but political parties gain from doing what they can to undermine minority votes.

(If you've ever read self reports from POCs in heavily policed communities in the US you'll probably get more idea of the sheer terror and necessay adaptations, I remember reading somewhere that kids get lessons from their parents in how to avoid getting the shit beaten out of them or worse by cops)

Garvey, Malcolm X and the Panthers were more radical; they believed that since their communities were in no position to gain political leverage which could then be turned into functional equality, their communities should self organise and seize it for themselves. It is no coincidence that doing that gets you watched and disrupted by the FBI.

Imagine that every time you bring up that the law and its enforcement function differently for your community, someone will always bring up that you're formally equal under the law so what's the big deal? And time passes, a few months go by and another unarmed community member dies to a cop. and the cop walks off with a light sentence or no charge at all. I bet you'd be angry.

I'm for protesters arming themselves for the same reason I'm for them using video cameras; it forces a lethally armed police force with a history of brutality against minorities in situations like these to be able to be held accountable. Cops are not minority communities' friends, they show up in force whenever those communities start looking like they're trying to gain more political autonomy.

And I get super duper frustrated with the eternal impetus of centrist commentators to wait and work through official channels; there's just no forum in which even the problems of minority communities will even be recognized as problems, because addressing them requires systemic changes.

The Panthers doing armed policing of police is part of what got the state to panic so much they made COINTELPRO, it's a good start.

Not a shootout and not one group of protesters fighting another angry group. — Marchesk

I meant specifically; why do you think that 2nd amendment gun nuts aren't out protesting with their guns already, when they've seen journalists being fired on, peaceful protesters being assaulted, people being fired on while standing in the doorway to their own private property?

If the right to form an armed blockade of a public building is there, why can't the communities do so in in public? Why is the knee jerk response to suggestions of these communities bearing arms dismissal and panic whereas for a bunch of white nutjobs blockading a political building the POTUS could not have been more enamored?

Good question but best if they stay home. — Marchesk

What do you think the answer is?

It was like 2 weeks ago that a bunch of conservatives in the US took heavy weaponry to a political building. The president approved, everyone defended their right to bear arms. The cops did nothing to stop them. The threats they saw to society were vague, nebulous, undefined. Everyone protected their right to free speech. Then everyone forgot.

Now, the same people are boggling at suggestions for minority communities to arm themselves in the face of the criminal justice system failing them, again. They can't whisper into the ears of those with legislative influence, they're never in the same rooms, they don't have enough money. Their society has failed them over and over again. They face a very real threat. Cops are firing on journalists. Cops are assaulting protesters. The president wants protesters shot.

Think about it. That threat to journalists covering a protest. The ability for cops to assault protesters; unprovoked. The media being blase about a country's leader wanting protesters to be shot. Everyone thinks it's just a minority issue, but they still live in a state where police can fire on journalists covering a protest and hospitalise protesters when not even plausibly acting in self defense. Every person in America has skin in the game when the basic functioning of its democracy is threatened, and it is threatened.

The police are assaulting journalists. The police are assaulting peaceful protesters. This is the pipe dream the 2nd amendment gun nuts have stockpiled for, it's come true.

But they're not in the streets, I wonder why?

Your "source" edited out the white storeowner charging a black skateboarder with a fucking sword.

If you're going to straw man it, sure. — Marchesk

Child: Mummy I had a dream where I was just a big ball of pink goo in a jar!
Parent: That's ok dear, it wasn't real.
Child: That's a petitio principi.

Thought experiments remind me of children's fantasies.

Child: Mummy I had a dream where I was just a big ball of pink goo in a jar!
Parent: That's ok dear, it wasn't real.
Child: It was scary.
Parent hugs child.

Philosopher: I have a thought experiment where I'm just a brain in a jar.

That's ok dear, that's ok.

OR -- philosophy is ontological while science is ontical. That's not the same thing, no, but you can't do one without the other. — Xtrix

Tangent, but; do you think there are interesting philosophical questions about the metaphysics of objects that don't strongly emphasize human interaction with the objects, or the fact that it's a human asking the question?

From anyone whose nation became independent by enacting the phrase "Give me liberty or give me death!", admonishments against all violence ring hollow.

You don't get given political freedoms, you have to establish them. This was true in the slave colony revolts, true in America's civil war (to the extent it was about slavery), true in Malcolm X making the less radical policies of MLK acceptable to the establishment by comparison and it's true now. Let's hope their agitation is successful.

The real shame is that the troops and cops will show up to stop democracy at work, and POCs are absolutely civil when you compare that to the structural alienation from justice in which they live and have to cope with. Why, if more of those protesters were inspired by those "American patriots" the founders, they may've been much more violent in their insistence on their right to liberty.

"He who smelt it dealt it"

Even pointing out that voter fraud is barely a thing is to distract from the only point that matter: Trump is trying to disenfranchise an entire swathe of his population. — StreetlightX

:up:

I have the futile hope that through repeated exposure to research @Chester will learn to be less gullible.

The UK's Electoral Commission on the extent of UK voter fraud and postal votes:

Electoral fraud is not widespread across the UK and reports of significant
fraud are focused in specific places in England, concentrated in a small
number of local authority areas. We do not believe it is likely that fraud has
been attempted in more than a handful of wards in any particular local
authority area.

...
We do not recommend restricting the availability of postal voting in Great
Britain. The impact on the overwhelming majority of electors who find postal
voting a convenient and secure method of voting would not be proportionate
to the potential integrity benefits. There are, however, some changes we want
to see made to existing processes in order to make postal and proxy voting
more secure, including continued urgent action by ROs and police forces in
areas where there is a higher risk of allegations of electoral fraud and
changes to stop campaigners handling absent voting materials, including
absent voting applications and blank or completed postal ballot packs.

And the link you provided consists entirely of anecdotes. It answers no questions regarding the scope of fraud.

Edit: and dude, , that person was clearly not a protester. They walked towards a shop wearing identity obscuring clothes including a gas mask, made sure to walk with their umbrella low to cover the mask's face hole, left, and then were violent towards a protester with a camera.

Their motives are not likely to be in support of the protesters, their motives are likely to be media management... So that people like you can talk about the protests turning to wanton vandalism; facilitating a dismissal of the protests by its conduct but not its concerns.

You know what you champions of personal responsibility and self determination can do? You can make sure that your public speech is well reasoned, well sourced, well justified. You do that, and people won't call you on your bullshit, because you won't have confused your mouth with your asshole as a teenager and learned to like the taste.

You do that, and when in this hypothetical future you are obviously imagining an org like Twitter "fact checks" you based on false, partisan information, you'll have recourse to complain.



He's already banned.

I'm done now.

Twitter fact checked Trump. Trump was misleading. That's it. That happens on the forum every day,

All you're doing now is trying to get me to go down a split hair so that the facts get lost in the fog. Not playing that game.

Does this really need explaining?

If someone points out that what I'm saying is false, and provides a factual source that contradicts me, it's fine. It doesn't matter if it's Twitter that does it, it doesn't matter if it's a forum member that does it. I want people to correct me when I'm wrong.

The fucking POTUS can't handle that so hard he's supporting censorship of social media platforms. And you dupes are happy because it's being defended in terms of freedom of speech.

You know you're caught in a contradiction, so all you're doing now is trying to reframe all the exchange we've had in terms of you being freedom loving (and supporting Trump's censorship of Twitter) and me being authoritarian (and thinking that's Twitter's call, and I'm glad that they're doing something towards how terrible its discourse is). You don't want to make the point in an argument, because you know you're inconsistent, so you're making it by trying to control the conversation towards a narrative favourable to you.

You gave not a single fuck when Twitter was culling Isis propaganda. Not one.

Absolutely.

No. I would use my own speech to say why it is wrong. — NOS4A2

Just what happened to Trump.

Holy shit the double think is real.

Yes you do, you want the company to change its behaviour to not express themselves in the way they see fit. You want them to manage their business in accordance with your moral intuitions. You have criticised both of these in the past, on the basis of limiting freedom of speech. You've expressed that you see both as protected activities under freedom of speech.

I'm not surprised you don't see the contradiction; you don't seem to care about the arguments you make, you only seem to care about what the arguments support or rebuke,

You're condemning Twitter's freedom of speech, this is wrong. You want to limit it.

The owners of a service should be able to shape it as they see fit. You've used this in argument, passionately, many many times. You are not consistent.

@Isaac

I rewrote some of the original post to be, I hope, clearer.

This is that long post. The aim of it is to try and move towards the source of disagreement between forum direct realists (represented by @jamalrob, @unenlightened and I) and forum indirect realists (represented by @Michael, @Marchesk {maybe, now} and @Isaac).

So it seems to me that the disagreement between direct and indirect realists is regarding the type of relation between perception and the environmental object it regards, and the properties of this relation. I think it is crucial to keep in mind that there can be more than one type of relation between a body and the objects in its environment.

The overall framework I'm going to adopt for this is one of active perception; roughly stated: active perception is an account of perception in which perception is goal oriented and part of every perceptual feature is a proposed collection of environmental interventions which are in accord with those goals. To put super special emphasis on this; the goals and environmental interventions are part of perception, and our perceptual features are laced with (summaries of) them. For those coming from a phenomenological perspective, the goals and environmental interventions might fruitfully be thought of as Gibson's affordances or Heidegger's for-the-sake-of-which. For those coming from a more analytic perspective, such goals and environmental interventions may fruitfully be thought of as a kind of theory-ladened-ness of perceptual features concerning theories of practical activity and environmental development given our interventions within it.

A key term there which I've not talked about is perceptual feature. Roughly what that is is a salient element of an instance of perception; an object under a viewpoint relative to a task in an environment, the shifting weight of a hammer prompting counterbalancing muscle contractions along the arm to ensure the nail is hit, the duck or the rabbit in the duckrabbit. Generally, they might fruitfully be thought of as a goal-oriented model or representation of something in the environment. In visual terms, they are like pictures insofar as they represent environmental features, but they are unlike pictures insofar as they promote and are part of activities; they are not just corpuscles of propositional content, they are saturated with normatively informed expectations of environmental development relative to our tasks.

In these terms then, the distinction between direct and indirect realism that I wrote for Michael and he approved of:

(Direct realism (content) ) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.
(Indirect Realism (content) ) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.

Can be recast to:

(Direct realism (feature) ) The properties of a perceptual feature of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.
(Indirect Realism (feature) ) The properties of a perceptual feature of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.

But notice that perceptual content is construed as merely descriptive; is the red of the perceptual feature I have of the apple the same as the colour properties of the apple? We would not be able to answer questions of identity and non-identity of properties regarding all facets of the perceptual feature simply because there is no (to use Lockean terms) primary quality of the apple that could be identical to my desire to eat it.

There is, however, still the question of whether the descriptive content of a perceptual feature is identical with some primary quality of the apple. This doesn't make too much sense for the reasons @jamalrob and @Marchesk discussed:

I think jamalrob is arguing that how an object looks, tastes, feels only applies to perception. There's no such thing as what an object looks like without someone seeing it. The indirect realist goes wrong by assuming there is, and then proposing the additional mental intermediary. But there's no need for the intermediary if the act of seeing is what something looks like.

If that sort of argument works, then the debate is rendered moot. There's still a realist question of what objects are independent of perception, but they aren't like perception — Marchesk

But there are still relevant questions like; what qualities of the apple promote the generation of the (descriptive component) of my perceptual features of it? And in that space of questions, it seems fine to talk about red and rods and cones and of a relationship of representation/summary/codification between the perceptual features I have of the apple and of the apple's properties.

We can also talk about the argument from hallucination in those terms; specifically what is being short circuited or bracketed in asking the question is that the descriptive content of my perceptual features can be present (through some bodily process) without the environmental and sensorimotor conditions that generate the perceptual feature in normal circumstances. The argument seeks to change the conditions of environmental exposure (by removing them) without changing the descriptive component of what perceptual feature is being generated.

But notice first that that argument removes two vital components of active perception;

Active accounts of perception have exploratory and goal-directed environmental interventions as part of the perception itself. In that regard, hallucinations, or the argument from dreaming, are effectively not forms of perception because two necessary components of perception have been denied of it. Only the relation or absence of relation of descriptive content remains.

I think that the realists here would find the above paragraph very cononsonant with their direct realist intuitions. But why? I think the intuitions that forum direct realists have regarding directness regard the character of relation between perceptual feature and what it regards. Recall that environmental interventions really do change things in the environment; the underlying intuition is that our perceptual features when including the exploratory/goal-oriented component are in direct causal contact with the environment. Causal contact persists even while making representational/inferential mistakes; in any instance of perception our sensorimotor systems are in direct causal contact with the environment, be that contact more or less adequate for our purposes The inferential summary that our perceptual features are leverage sensory and interventional exploration of our environment; eg moving one's head to change the field of view. Because of this, for the causal covariance of a typical instance perception to be ensured, our sensorimotor systems must be in direct causal contact with the environment..

Specifically for Isaac: the interventions we enact are not causally separated from environmental hidden states, even if the inferential summary of environmental properties are. When there is a successful modelling relationship between a perceptual feature and what it regards; or an intervention and our overall model of the causal structure of our environment; the overall perceptual state we're in, and its perceptual features, are indeed informative of our environmental objects. But informational dependence in that sense is not the same thing as saying the properties of the apple in total are existentially dependent upon our perceptions of it.

For indirect realists; the proof of indirectness is inferential representation.
For direct realists; the proof of directness is causal contact.

This is as expected; our perceptions are difference sensitive, and exploratory interventions make environmental and bodily differences to change the environment and the generated inferential summary we have of it through the collage of our perceptual features in an event of perception.

Have I missed the point, or is this exactly what you're trying to get at by saying that the two sides seem to disagree about what the problem is? — Isaac

:up: Didn't miss the point at all.

This post is mostly an attempt to get us closer to disagreeing about the same thing. It isn't the one I said I'd write for Michael here, which will take a lot more effort.



:up:

It's my guess that people whose intuitions (on the forum) align with direct realism see the distinction between direct realism and indirect realism much differently from how the indirect realists see it.

Ultimately I think it depends on what metaphysical intuitions regarding perception we have. We (forum direct and indirect realists) definitely disagree about something, and we definitely disagree about the substantive content of the debate.

As such I don't think it can be at all right to say that experience does not result from neural activity. It is fairly certain that what we experience is the output of several neural corticies, none of which directly transfer (unmodified) the content of their input. — Isaac

I think the shift from "perception" to "experience" in your post is a key point in the discussion. If our "experience" results from the neural circuitry and bodily comportments and self modelling that constitutes perception, experience is then conceived as an "output" of perception; whereas my intuition is a perceptual experience is a component part of perception.

I tried highlighting this here:

But I would say that an indirect instance of active perception would have its percept as an output of the process of active perception; as if the process of perception produces phenomenal and mental content associated with perceptions; in a diagram, perceptual relation→→phenomenal and mental content of perception. The associated intuition is a sequential ordering of perception to perceptual content (related to post-hoc thematisation/schematisation as jamalrob channeled photographer with in another thread)

Conversely, I would say that a direct instance of active perception would have its percept as a component of the process of active perception; as if the phenomenal and mental content associated with perception is a part of the perceptual modelling relation between body and environment; in a diagram, phenomenal and mental content of perception ⊂⊂ perceptual relation. The associated intuition is that perceptual content (the phenomenal/mental stuff) occurs within a relational event of perception. — fdrake

But my account above doesn't seem to be how our forum indirect realists see the distinction between the two. Which seems closer to:

(Direct realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards..
(Indirect Realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards. — fdrake

Also @unenlightened.

@jamalrob

What do you see the opposition between direct and indirect realism as? I offered this as @Michael's:

(Direct realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards..
?
And this indirect realism:
(Indirect Realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards. — fdrake

And Michael broadly agreed.

Yes, that looks about right. It seems consistent with how naive realism is summarized here: "the character of one’s experience is explained by an actual instance of whiteness manifesting itself in experience" (and where such "whiteness" is a property of the external world object).

I don't think that external world properties manifest themselves in experience in this way. I only think that external world properties are causally covariant with the character of one's experience. Sugar doesn't manifest itself in taste-experience; it only elicits a sweet taste (for me, at least). — Michael

Aight, I'll try and write a post in those terms then.

Would you say this characterises direct realism:

(Direct realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards..
?
And this indirect realism:
(Indirect Realism) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.
?

Perhaps what the salient parts of the disagreement are depend on what camp you're in? A difference that looks different from both sides.

The surface of the apple reflects light at a certain wavelength, that light stimulates the eyes, the eyes send a signal to the brain, the visual cortex of the brain is activated, and we have an experience that we describe as "seeing a red apple". So I suppose I would say that the relationship is simply causal (a term I've seen elsewhere on the topic is "causal covariance"). — Michael

I can agree with that. What do you think I should disagree with in it?

That's why I think that your approach (and unenlightened's approach, and jamalrob's approach) seem to sidestep the substance of the disagreement. We want to know if the properties present in experience (a red colour, a sweet taste, a round shape) are (independent) properties of external world objects or if they're properties only of the experience (whatever it is that experience is). — Michael

We want to know if the properties present in experience (a red colour, a sweet taste, a round shape) are (independent) properties of external world objects or if they're properties only of the experience (whatever it is that experience is).

The red I see is not by itself a property of the apple. Granted.

Nevertheless; the red I see is not independent of the properties of the apple.

The properties of the apple inform my perceptions of it. But they do not fully determine my perceptions of it. The perceptual content I have is part of a modelling relationship between myself and the apple, so the perceptual content is independent of neither; even though the apple properties are not existentially dependent upon my perception.

My expectations of what the apple properties are are dependent upon previous experience and the apple, though! If my perception of the apple is accurate, my perception of the apple is informative of its properties, and so its properties are not (statistically) independent of my perceptual content and actions regarding it. How my perception works in general is not dependent upon the apple's properties.

I meant to ask you when you made this distinction before; what do you see as the relationship between the apple properties and the red I see?

What would constitute indirect for a direct realist? Going back to the neural implant, let's say when you close your eyes the implant receives radio signals from a camera mounted on a robot moving about some environment. The implant translates that to electrical signals the brain can interpret as images, and the result is a visual perception of what the robot camera is recording. — Marchesk

I can't answer for direct realism generally. But I would say that an indirect instance of active perception would have its percept as an output of the process of active perception; as if the process of perception produces phenomenal and mental content associated with perceptions; in a diagram, perceptual relation$\rightarrow$phenomenal and mental content of perception. The associated intuition is a sequential ordering of perception to perceptual content (related to post-hoc thematisation/schematisation as @jamalrob channeled photographer with in another thread)

Conversely, I would say that a direct instance of active perception would have its percept as a component of the process of active perception; as if the phenomenal and mental content associated with perception is a part of the perceptual modelling relation between body and environment; in a diagram, phenomenal and mental content of perception $\subset$ perceptual relation. The associated intuition is that perceptual content (the phenomenal/mental stuff) occurs within a relational event of perception.