Investigating the matter of ocular abstraction (with emphasis on the argument of refusing impression major in the minor) From the point of view of transcendent wisdom and neuroscience

Eyesight is one of the five superficial senses that has always been discussed in Islamic philosophy in such a way that each of the three important schools of Islamic philosophy has proposed specific and different theories about it. Transcendent Wisdom - which is the main school in modern Islamic philosophy - considers eyesight as an abstract thing and the result of the creation of the soul. According to this view, the material conditions of eyesight are specific to the advantaged of the soul. One of the arguments presented to prove this claim is the refusal of impression major in the minor; the argument was made in response to the theory of impression, which was based on ancient physics. In the present study, an attempt has been made to analyze and study how to observe and see images in a rational way and using new empirical evidence. In this regard, using the findings of neuroscience about eyesight, the strength and application of the argument of refusal major in the minor has been investigated and in the end it has been concluded that the findings of neuroscience reject the view of ancient physics regarding impression. However, these findings still do not explain all the features of eyesight. At the same time, Mulla Sadra’s argument about eyesight’s abstraction can be applied to the new sciences, and the findings of neuroscience are basically not an obstacle to abstraction in the Sadra sense.