AUTHOR=Varma Sashank 

TITLE=The subjective meaning of cognitive architecture: a Marrian analysis

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=5

YEAR=2014

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00440

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00440

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Marr famously decomposed cognitive theories into three levels. Newell, Pylyshyn, and Anderson offered parallel decompositions of <italic>cognitive architectures</italic>, which are psychologically plausible computational formalisms for expressing computational models of cognition. These analyses focused on the <italic>objective meaning</italic> of each level – how it supports computational models that correspond to cognitive phenomena. This paper develops a complementary analysis of the <italic>subjective meaning</italic> of each level – how it helps cognitive scientists understand cognition. It then argues against calls to eliminatively reduce higher levels to lower levels, for example, in the name of parsimony. Finally, it argues that the failure to attend to the multiple meanings and levels of cognitive architecture contributes to the current, disunified state of theoretical cognitive science.</p>