Abstract
Marr's account of the analysis of complex information-processing tasks as having three levels — the levels of computational theory, representation and algorithm, and hardware implementation — is reconsidered. I argue that the notion of “level” here runs together two distinctive sort of explanatory shifts — that of grain and that of contextual function. I then offer a revision of the account which avoids this problem, and suggest how this might play a role in the practice of theory evaluation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Broadbent, D. (1985), ‘A Question of Levels: Comment on McClelland and Rumelhart’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 114, pp. 189–192.
Fodor, J. A. (1974), ‘Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’, Synthese 28, pp. 97–115.
Fodor, J. A. (1987), Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press.
Glass, A., Holyoak, K., and Santa, J. (1979), Cognition, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley.
Kitcher, P. (1984), ‘1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences’, Philosophical Review 93, pp. 335–373.
Marr, D. (1982), Vision: A Computational Approach, San Francisco, Freeman & Co.
McClamrock, R. (in press), ‘Methodological Individualism Considered as a Constitutive Principle of Scientific Inquiry’, forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology.
McClelland, J. and Rumelhart, D. (1985), ‘Levels Indeed! A Response to Broadbent’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 114, pp. 189–192.
Oatley, K. (1980), Perception and Representation, New York, Free Press.
Pylyshyn, Z. (1984), Computation and Cognition, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press.
Simon, H. (1981), ‘The Architecture of Complexity’, in H. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, pp. 193–229.
Smolensky, P. (1988), ‘On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11, pp. 1–23.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McClamrock, R. Marr's three levels: A re-evaluation. Minds and Machines 1, 185–196 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00361036
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00361036