Mulla Sadra on the Indirect Epistemological Realism

In the contemporary epistemology, many theories have been advanced about the nature of perception and the way it represents the external world. As one of such theories, “epistemological realism” argues that knowledge of the external world is possible and this world exists independent from man’s knowledge; and, our knowledge is a description of this world. Epistemological realism may be classified under two groups: “direct” and “indirect”. At the first look, it seems that there are some common points between Mulla Sadra’s theory of perception on the one hand and each of direct and indirect realism on the other. When one reflects upon the case, however, he will find that there are some differences between them and because of Mulla Sadra’s special theory concerning ontology inevitably some sort of “indirect Sadrean realism” will emerge which will be explained in this paper. In the doctrine of “unity of the knower and the known object”, immaterial reality of knowledge has been introduced as an intermediate between the knower and the external known object; and, “the correspondence between the linear beings of essence” explains how the perception represents the external world. It will be argued in this paper that perceiving a material object in the light of perceiving an immaterial and Ideal being in a world other than the world of nature, even though it is internally consistent with other Sadraean doctrines, is somehow far from ordinary understanding of sense perception.