Sense Perception in Aristotle and Mullā Ṣadrā

The Problem of perception has always been an important philosophical issue since ancient times. Ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, extensively discussed the tools and conditions of perception. Aristotle, for example, explained the external and internal perception of the soul in his two treatises of On the Soul and On Sense and Sensibilia. Among the perceptive faculties of human beings and animals, sense perception holds a particular station. This is because one’s first encounter with the external world happens through this faculty. In order to clarify sense perception, he refers to and discusses the external faculties of the soul (touch, sight, taste, hearing, and smell) and the informative data they provide. He believes that sense perception must be intertwined with the intellect in order to result in knowledge. Muslim philosophers have also discussed sense perception and most of their views are similar to those of Aristotle. Through propounding the soul’s creation of forms, Mullā Ṣadrā distanced himself from Aristotle and managed to introduce a new theory in philosophical psychology. In this paper, the author examines and compares Aristotle’s and Mullā Ṣadrā’s approaches to the problem of sense perception. In doing so, he firstly defines the soul and its faculties and, then, investigates external faculties in the views of both philosophers. Finally, he deals with the important discussion of the epistemological aspect of sense perception.