Direct Inference:Indirect Inference::Direct Perception:Indirect Perception?

Many or most of the 20th century giants of U.S. legal scholarship in the law of evidence in the took the position that there is such a thing as direct or immediate inference; some of them said, for example, that some types of tangible evidence present information directly to the senses and do not require any inference about such information by a human observer. Some legal writers and many philosophers, however, have challenged this view or have taken a different view. I belong in this latter fraternity. In my (two-volume!) 1983 revision of the first volume of Wigmore's classic treatise on the law of evidence I said that "there is no such thing as direct evidence." (Ironically, Wigmore took a quite different position: he coined a phrase -- "autoptic proference" -- to describe how tangible things present themselves immediately to the senses. [Today no one uses Wigmore's neologism except to poke fun at Wigmore.])

I had thought that this disagreement about the existence or nonexistence of direct inference had been put to bed. But perhaps I am wrong. There is today a controversy still among psychologists and other serious students of perception about the existence or non-existence of direct perception. See, e.g., Claire F. Michaels and Claudio Carello, Direct Perception (1981), which is available at http://ione.psy.unconn.edu/~psy254/MC.pdf. (Professors Michaels and Carello call the study of direct perception the "ecological approach.")

What do you think, Gentle Reader?

Consider this question: Even if there is such a thing as direct human perception of the world, is there much or any direct perception or direct inference of or from the evidence presented in legal proceedings such as trials?

My question more precisely stated: Even if direct perception or direct inference occurs in trials, is it ever the case that direct perception or direct inference suffices to establish a legally-material factual proposition in a judicial trial or other legal proceeding?

Er, ..., you can perhaps see which way the wind is blowing in this writer's brain.