Plato himself was an extramissionist. Unlike Empedocles, his theory had a clearer logic behind the mixing of internal and external light: as Nightingale writes, the two kinds of light were believed to share a kinship, and “because of this kinship, the light coming from the eye is able to coalesce with the light of the sun to form … a single beam of light,” which is the ultimate light of vision through which objects are perceived. Finally, the image is distributed out of the physical world to the soul of the observer by this light. Plato’s theory is at its core much the same as Empedocles’s, and shares its deepest flaws (mainly, a lack of evidence or reason to believe that there is such an internal light or, if it does exist, that it plays a part in the process of vision). That being said, it has some appealing nuance that might lend a modern reader to view it more favorably than that of his predecessor
Plato himself was an extramissionist. Unlike Empedocles, his theory had a clearer logic behind the mixing of internal and external light: as Nightingale writes, the two kinds of light were believed to share a kinship, and “because of this kinship, the light coming from the eye is able to coalesce with the light of the sun to form … a single beam of light,” which is the ultimate light of vision through which objects are perceived. Finally, the image is distributed out of the physical world to the soul of the observer by this light. Plato’s theory is at its core much the same as Empedocles’s, and shares its deepest flaws (mainly, a lack of evidence or reason to believe that there is such an internal light or, if it does exist, that it plays a part in the process of vision). That being said, it has some appealing nuance that might lend a modern reader to view it more favorably than that of his predecessor