Epistemic representation, informativeness and the aim of faithful representation

Agnes Bolinska

pp. 219-234

in: Christopher Pincock, Marion Vorms (eds), Models and simulations 4, Synthese 190 (2), 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.