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Simplicity, Cognition and Adaptation: Some Remarks on Marr's Theory of Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Daniel Gilman
Daniel Gilman*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

David Marr's theory of vision has been a source of both fascination and confusion for many in cognitive science. There has, of course, been substantial technical interest in the particulars of Marr's model. But beyond this we have seen his work cited in debates about the nature of mental representation and computation, the structure of cognition, the role of theoretical knowledge in perception, how and indeed whether one ought to apply results from cognitive science to antecedent questions in epistemology. Marr's theory is cited in such debates because it is widely seen as a successful, rigorous account of a large scale cognitive/perceptual process (if not as the successful such account). But it has been suggested that Marr's theory might be mistaken as a whole; that Marr might have been wrong not just about one or several of the sub-mechanisms of vision, and not just in offering an incomplete account, but wrong in his basic approach to the study of vision.

Type
Part XI. Philosophy of Psychology and Perception
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 454 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Any early version of this material was presented at the 9th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Thanks to those in attendance, and to Mark Detweiler and Ron McClamrock, for their helpful comments.

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