How much realist are we ? investigating the degree of alignment between our perception and the objective reality

The issue of perception and its relationship with external reality is one of the old issues in philosophy that has received more attention, especially in recent centuries, with the emergence of issues related to epistemology. This issue has also been studied in contemporary cognitive sciences. The most important studies in this field belong to researchers in the field of visual perception. More traditional theories in this field claim that the perceptual apparatus will be effective when it can represent external reality as accurately as possible, and therefore the logic of evolution and natural selection must have led to the creation of reality-consistent perceptual systems. But on the other hand, there are extremist theories, such as Interface Theory of Perception, which claim that, contrary to traditional theories, natural selection leads to the evolution of the perceptual system in such a way that our perceptions have nothing to do with external reality. We have shown in our previous work that neither traditional theories nor Interface theory are entirely correct, and the optimal state is for our perceptual apparatus to provide an approximation of reality.

In this study, we intend to obtain an estimate of the maximum accuracy of this approximation by using mathematical modeling of various perceptual devices in the framework of Agent-Based Modeling.

In this study, we have shown that even with strict conditions, our perceptual system can represent approximately 50% of reality. Also, by increasing the perceptual categories for the reality-approximating species to a level close to 40%, this species will still have a greater survival advantage than the interface species, and the precise realistic species.

Contrary to the interface theory of perception, in terms of realistic environmental conditions, not only evolution allows the survival of species that there is some kind of  homomorphism between their perception and reality, but even the possibility of the formation and survival of perceptual systems approximating reality to a reasonable extent.