The currently mainstream view is that, in normal conditions, our perceptual representations are largely accurate, as natural selection tends to favor epistemically reliable perceptual systems. This latter assumption has been questioned by Donald Hoffman and his collaborators by drawing on the formal tools of evolutionary game theory. According to their model, an organism whose visual system were tuned to objective reality would be driven to extinction. We argue that their model fails to take environmental modifications into due account, and we show that, once such changes are incorporated into the model, the latter will predict that an organism whose visual representations are at least partially accurate will in fact be more successful from an evolutionary point of view.

Does Evolution Favor Accurate Perception?

Adriano Angelucci;Vincenzo Fano;Gabriele Ferretti;Roberto Macrelli;Gino Tarozzi
2023

Abstract

The currently mainstream view is that, in normal conditions, our perceptual representations are largely accurate, as natural selection tends to favor epistemically reliable perceptual systems. This latter assumption has been questioned by Donald Hoffman and his collaborators by drawing on the formal tools of evolutionary game theory. According to their model, an organism whose visual system were tuned to objective reality would be driven to extinction. We argue that their model fails to take environmental modifications into due account, and we show that, once such changes are incorporated into the model, the latter will predict that an organism whose visual representations are at least partially accurate will in fact be more successful from an evolutionary point of view.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11576/2727451
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