Imagine you’re a chef and you walk into a grocery store. Rather than looking at the fruits and vegetables for what they really are, you evaluate them based on their usefulness in your dishes. Maybe that apple would make a delicious pie, or that pepper would add the perfect kick to a stir-fry! In the world of perception, this idea is called ‘strict-interface’ perceptual systems. But here’s the twist: our perception doesn’t just have one goal like cooking a meal. It serves multiple goals, like finding potential weapons or determining kindling for a campfire. And our perception does all of this automatically, without us consciously telling it what to do. So, the more flexible our goals become, the more accurate our perception must be. This has big implications for how we see the world! Based on evolutionary simulations, researchers have found that as the number of independent utility functions increase, the line between ‘interface’ and ‘veridical’ perceptual systems starts to blur. Even though nature only cares about how well our perceptual systems help us survive and thrive, the fittest systems may actually represent the world more accurately than we thought!

Abstract
How veridical is perception? Rather than representing objects as they actually exist in the world, might perception instead represent objects only in terms of the utility they offer to an observer? Previous work employed evolutionary modeling to show that under certain assumptions, natural selection favors such “strict-interface” perceptual systems. This view has fueled considerable debate, but we think that discussions so far have failed to consider the implications of two critical aspects of perception. First, while existing models have explored single utility functions, perception will often serve multiple largely independent goals. (Sometimes when looking at a stick you want to know how appropriate it would be as kindling for a campfire, and other times you want to know how appropriate it would be as a weapon for self-defense.) Second, perception often operates in an inflexible, automatic manner—proving “impenetrable” to shifting higher-level goals. (When your goal shifts from “burning” to “fighting,” your visual experience does not dramatically transform.) These two points have important implications for the veridicality of perception. In particular, as the need for flexible goals increases, inflexible perceptual systems must become more veridical. We support this position by providing evidence from evolutionary simulations that as the number of independent utility functions increases, the distinction between “interface” and “veridical” perceptual systems dissolves. Although natural selection evaluates perceptual systems only on their fitness, the most fit perceptual systems may nevertheless represent the world as it is.

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