ABSTRACT
David Marr (1982) provided an influential account of levels of description in classical cognitive science. In this paper we contrast Marr’s treatment with some alternatives that are suggested by the recent emergence of connectionism. Marr’s account is interesting and important both because of the levels of description it distinguishes, and because of the way his presentation reflects some of the most basic, foundational, assumptions of classical AI-style cognitive science (classicism, as we will call it henceforth). Thus, by focusing on levels of description, one can sharpen foundational differences between classicism and potential non-classical conceptions of mentality that might emerge under the rubric of connectionism.
