The Role Of Natural Constraints In Computational Theories Of Vision

The thesis examines the philosophical implications of the computational theory of early vision developed by Marr. According to Marr, early visual processes consist of sequences of modular computational mechanisms. These processes rely on functional relations between rates of change in stimulus magnitudes which result from certain contingent, global properties--natural constraints--of the physical world.;Marr argues that explanations of early vision must have three distinct levels of description: computational, algorithmic and physical. In Chapter 1 I defend the explanatory significance of this distinction in levels. In fulfilling its role in describing the dependence of visual processes on natural constraints, the computational level forms an autonomous level of description in the sense that it is unaffected by the computational steps at the other levels.;In Chapter 2 I discuss the implications of natural constraints for the issues of individualism and methodological solipsism. I conclude that Mart\u27s theory is nonindividualistic in the sense that visual content does not supervene on neural properties. However, this merely reflects the fact that different computational theories may be selected for the same system. Importantly, Marr\u27s theory does not violate methodological solipsism since interpretations within theories must supervene on neural properties.;In Chapter 3 I argue from the results of Chapters 1 and 2 that psychological explanation does not reduce to neurophysiology. This conclusion does not follow from the functionalist argument against physicalism, which is based on an incorrect account of computational theories. Rather the conclusion reflects the explanatory incompleteness of neurophysiological theories given the autonomous role of the computational level.;In Chapter 4 I look in detail at the arguments for a language of thought as they apply to early vision. I distinguish two versions of the language of thought hypothesis, one weaker than the other. I conclude that the stronger version, which claims that a cognitive system is program-using , is false of early vision because of the role of natural constraints. The weaker claim that cognitive processes employ symbolic transformations is true of the computational-level theory of early vision, but there is insufficient evidence to establish the claim at the algorithmic level