Epistemic representation, informativeness and the aim of faithful representation
Synthese 190 (2):219-234 (2013)
| Abstract | In this paper, I take scientific models to be epistemic representations of their target systems. I define an epistemic representation to be a tool for gaining information about its target system and argue that a vehicle’s capacity to provide specific information about its target system—its informativeness—is an essential feature of this kind of representation. I draw an analogy to our ordinary notion of interpretation to show that a user’s aim of faithfully representing the target system is necessary for securing this feature. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Models Representation Interpretation Surrogative reasoning Informativeness | |||||||||
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