David Marr

David Marr was a pioneering cognitive scientist who advanced our understanding of how the mind processes information. He proposed a framework suggesting that mental processes can be viewed as computations—like a computer processing data. Marr set out three levels to analyze this: the computational level (what the system does), the algorithmic level (how it does it), and the implementational level (the physical realization). His work emphasizes that understanding mental representation—the way the mind encodes information—is essential for grasping how we perceive and interact with the world, making him a key figure in the philosophy of mind and functionalism.