Levels of Analysis
Marr treated vision as an information processing system. He put forth (in concert with Tomaso Poggio) the idea that one must understand information processing systems at three distinct, complementary levels of analysis. This idea is known in cognitive science as Marr's Tri-Level Hypothesis:
- computational level: what does the system do (e.g.: what problems does it solve or overcome) and, equally importantly, why does it do these things
- algorithmic/representational level: how does the system do what it does, specifically, what representations does it use and what processes does it employ to build and manipulate the representations
- physical level: how is the system physically realized (in the case of biological vision, what neural structures and neuronal activities implement the visual system)
Read more about this topic: David Marr (neuroscientist)
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