I mean… arguable…
It is often quoted that the retina is the only directly visible part of the brain.
(not my interpretation)
The retina is considered to be brain tissue.
(yet again, not my idea)
From that point it’s up to you to ignore or not the hardware around the sensor itself.
The retina is indeed capable of sensing some light intensity and wavelength without lens and iris.
Surely you could argue about the sharpness of the image (if that was recognisable at all) -
I would perhaps mention about the development of babies vision
and the ‘resolution’ of the eyes of a snail.
If I want to squeeze the last drop out of this metaphorical
I might look for a very primitive eye on the scale of evolution that was not more complicated then a brain an optic nerve and some sort of retina without much stuff around.
Almost like a pinhole camera.
Spoiler: not the lens turns the image, but the hole.
Overall: Fair enough, it needs reduction. And sometimes a mirror, or another person.
And it’s somewhat parallel with hair and nail…but maybe more interesting would be to find out if plants can “see” because of chlorophyll? 
I am somewhat convinced: I could be any side of this debate, depending on the number of gin-tonics I consumed before.