As a biomedical scientist the phrase that seems so stark in the original post is 'most philosophers of mind today are wholehearted direct realists'. Leaving aside the ways in which 'direct realist' can be made to mean almost anything, depending on the metaphysical layer underneath, this seems to suggest that most philosophers of mind today are ignorant of what is taught in first year undergraduate courses on both fundamental physics and physiology of perception. The direct realist view simply falls apart in the face of evidence. From what I can gather of Edmond Wright's position it is entirely justified in both content and associated exasperation. (I may find I disagree with other aspects but that is by the by.)
Are we entering a phase in philosophy when the fashion is to be so divorced from a broad-based knowledge of natural science that it is possible to retreat to a fairy tale metaphysic of 400 years ago? My recent experience would suggest not necessarily, if you go to meetings where like minds with some breadth of knowledge have gathered themselves together, but the idea that the 'the word on the street' is this dumbed down nonsense of direct realism is very worrying. 
I also worry about the way arguments are phrased in terms of -isms as if the whole thing were an issue of which football team one supports. The fact that the players can be changed to suit almost any circumstances seems to get forgotten. Every argument in philosophy seems to be dependent on the personal metaphysical substructure on which it is predicated by the person voicing it, and that often seems to be more important than the '-ism team' the argument putatively plays for. People need to give examples of specific arguments more.
I thought immunologists had tunnel vision. Is the philosopher now also someone who only knows about one metaphysical T cell receptor and not about the real real world as described by people like Niels Bohr and David Hubel?