Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T08:14:43.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marr's Computational Theory of Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Patricia Kitcher
Patricia Kitcher*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

David Marr's theory of vision has been widely cited by philosophers and psychologists. I have three projects in this paper. First, I try to offer a perspicuous characterization of Marr's theory. Next, I consider the implications of Marr's work for some currently popular philosophies of psychology, specifically, the “hegemony of neurophysiology view”, the theories of Jerry Fodor, Daniel Dennett, and Stephen Stich, and the view that perception is permeated by belief. In the last section, I consider what the phenomenon of vision must be like for Marr's project to succeed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

For valuable discussions about various issues in this paper, I am grateful to Jay Goldman, Philip Kitcher, Joseph Owens, Mary C. Potter, William Thompson, and Albert Yonas. I am also grateful to three referees whose criticisms and suggestions led me to make a number of needed revisions.

References

REFERENCES

Ballard, D. H., and Brown, C. M. (1982), Computer Vision. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Barrow, H. G., and Tenenbaum, J. M. (1978), “Recovering Intrinsic Scene Characteristics from Images”, in Hanson, A. R. and Riseman, E. M. (eds.), Computer Vision Systems. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. S. (1980), “A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research”, The Journal of Philosophy 77: 185–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, P. S. (1982), “Is the Visual System as Smart as it Looks?”, in Asquith, P.D. and Nickles, T. (eds.), PSA 1982, vol. 2. East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 541–552.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. S., and Churchland, P. M. (1983), “Stalking the Wild Epistemic Engine”, Noûs 17: 5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1971), “Intentional Systems”, The Journal of Philosophy 68: 87–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1983), “Intentional Systems in Cognitive Ethology: The ‘Panglossian’ Paradigm Defended”, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6:343–390, see pp. 380–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1981), “Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Psychology”, in Representations. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M.I.T. Press, pp. 225–253.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1985), “The Modularity of Mind (Précis)”, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1980), The Panda's Thumb. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J., and Lewontin, R. C. (1979), “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B205: 581–598.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1984), “In Defense of Intentional Psychology”, The Journal of Philosophy 81: 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1985), “Narrow Taxonomy and Wide Functionalism”, Philosophy of Science 52: 78–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1976), “Early Processing of Visual Information”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B275:269–294.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982), Vision. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Marr, D., and Nishihara, H. K. (1978), “Representation and Recognition of the Spatial Organization of Three-Dimensional Shapes”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B200:269–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prazdny, K. (1985), “Detection of Binocular Disparities”, Biological Cynbernetics 52: 93–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Putnam, H. (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning‘”, in H. Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 215–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1980), “Minds, Brains, and Programs”, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1983), Intentionality. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stich, S. P. (1983), From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case against Belief. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Todd, J. (1984), “The Perception of Three-Dimensional Structure from Rigid and Nonrigid Motion”, Perception and Psychophysics 36: 97–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ullman, S. (1979), The Interpretation of Visual Motion. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Eckardt, B. (1984), “Cognitive Psychology and Principled Skepticism”, The Journal of Philosophy 81: 67–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warrington, E. K., and Taylor, A. M. (1978), “Two Categorical Stages of Object Recognition”, Perception 7: 695–705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watt, R. J. (1985), “Structured Representation in Low-level Vision”, Nature 313: 266–267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed