Synthese

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01995-9

Representationalism is a dead end

Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira1

Received: 22 May 2018 / Accepted: 19 October 2018

© Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Abstract
Representationalism—the view that scientific modeling is best understood in rep-
resentational terms—is the received view in contemporary philosophy of science.
Contributions to this literature have focused on a number of puzzles concerning the
nature of representation and the epistemic role of misrepresentation, without consid-
ering whether these puzzles are the product of an inadequate analytical framework.
The goal of this paper is to suggest that this possibility should be taken seriously.
The argument has two parts, employing the “can’t have” and “don’t need” tactics
drawn from philosophy of mind. On the one hand, I propose that representationalism
doesn’t work: different ways to flesh out representationalism create a tension between
its ontological and epistemological components and thereby undermine the view. On
the other hand, I propose that representationalism is not needed in the first place—a
position I articulate based on a pragmatic stance on the success of scientific research
and on the feasibility of alternative philosophical frameworks. I conclude that repre-
sentationalism is untenable and unnecessary, a philosophical dead end. A new way
of thinking is called for if we are to make progress in our understanding of scientific
modeling.

Keywords Scientific modeling · Representation · Epistemology of science ·

Pragmatism

1 Introduction

Many contributions to the philosophy of science literature highlight the central role
played by mediated or indirect forms of investigation. Rather than directly intervening
upon the various real-world phenomena they are interested in, scientists often build
and manipulate models that simulate those phenomena. Direct interventions are some-
times impractical, dangerous or even unethical. There are moral limits to how scientists

B Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira

gui.cogsci@gmail.com

1 Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, PO Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH, USA

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can use human subjects and animals in the lab, just as there are practical barriers to
direct experimentation on global climate change due to the phenomenon’s complex-
ity and spatio-temporal scale. In these and other cases, modeling enables scientists
in all disciplines to indirectly advance their understanding of real-world phenomena.
And not only are there different reasons for modeling, there are also many different
ways to do it, utilizing distinct methods and modalities. Diagrams, graphs, mathe-
matical equations, and concrete scale models have been used in science for centuries.
More recently, technological advances have led to the widespread use of computer
simulations and robotic models.
But how is it possible to learn through modeling? It is easy to see how mathe-
matical equations, computer simulations, and robotic agents could help advance our
understanding of mathematics, computing, and robotics, respectively. How is it that
building and operating models enables scientists to learn something not only about the
models themselves, but also about the real-world phenomena scientists are ultimately
interested in? In short, why is modeling epistemically valuable? The answer seems
obvious and intuitive: models can give us knowledge of their targets because they
represent those targets. That is, models are related to real-world target phenomena
in such a way that they can stand in for those targets in empirical research and that
the outcomes of modeling generate knowledge of the phenomena being modeled. It is
because they are representations of certain phenomena that mathematical equations,
computer simulations and concrete models are viable indirect routes to understanding
and explaining those phenomena.
This intuitive answer has, over the past couple of decades, shaped the literature on
scientific modeling and brought to the forefront of philosophers’ attention a number of
problems relating to the nature of representation and the role of misrepresentation in
science. Explaining what representation is and how it works turns out to be no trivial
matter. Philosophers generally agree that modeling is a legitimate means to knowledge,
and they also generally agree that the intuitive answer above is right, i.e., modeling
is epistemically valuable because models stand in a special relation to their targets
(namely, one of representation). But how to support this representationalist intuition?
What is it about representation that makes it epistemically valuable in the way we take
it to be and that justifies attempting to analyze model-based science in representational
terms? Some theories of representation stand out as the most influential, but none has
escaped criticism unscathed. And the continued development of revamped or brand-
new theories to correct what was wrong with their predecessors seems to only multiply
the disagreement about what representation is and how it works.
In a situation like this, when an intuitive view gives rise to problems no one appears
to be able to solve, it is wise to at least entertain the possibility that our intuitive
view was mistaken. This is what I do in this paper. I begin, in Sect. 2, by giving a
brief overview of recent controversies in order to make explicit the representationalist
assumptions that pervade the literature. I identify representationalism as a method-
ological stance that is based on a twofold assumption comprised of an ontological
component and an epistemological component, and I argue that these components
create serious challenges for making sense of the role that misrepresentation (e.g.,
idealization and abstraction) is said to play in science. I then provide a two-part argu-
ment against representationalism inspired by the “can’t have” and “don’t need” tactics

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used in a different debate about content in philosophy of mind (see Hutto and Myin
2013; Myin and Hutto 2015). My goal is to show, first, that we cannot have a repre-
sentationalist approach to scientific modeling, and, second, that we do not even need
one. The “can’t have” argument, presented in Sect. 3, proposes that representational-
ism does not work because, in any way of fleshing out the view, its ontological and
epistemological components undermine one another. The “don’t need” argument, in
Sect. 4, proposes that, regardless of whether representationalism is tenable or not, rep-
resentationalism is unnecessary: pragmatic and conceptual considerations suggest that
we can address what is philosophically interesting about scientific modeling without
getting into the representationalist quagmire. Representationalism is a familiar way of
thinking about model-based science, but it is a philosophical dead end, and we have
good reason to pursue alternatives.

2 Representationalism and the perplexities of misrepresentation

How can building and manipulating models generate knowledge of some target phe-
nomenon? What makes this question particularly puzzling is the fact that, as many
philosophers point out, models always contain idealizations and abstractions that
make them imperfect copies of their targets. Models abstract away many of their tar-
gets’ complexities, neglecting details where possible so as not to complicate matters
unnecessarily. Models also include intentional distortions. They often posit processes,
elements and properties that are absent in the target, or that cannot even be found
anywhere in nature, as in the case of infinite populations, frictionless planes, and the
rational self-interested agent. These lies “by omission” and “by commission,” as it
were, pose the challenge of elucidating the contribution of “falsehoods” to scientific
modeling, directing philosophers to the question how can scientists learn through
misrepresentation?
A considerable amount of attention in recent years has been devoted to explaining
the status of misrepresentation in model-based science. Abstractions, simplifications,
approximations and idealizations are recognized as useful means to the future develop-
ment of “truer theories” (Wimsatt 1987), and as serving at the very least as temporary
placeholders for more accurate descriptions. But some in the literature go so far as to
claim that falsehoods are not defects of a model, but are often instrumental to its suc-
cess: “fictions can be genuinely explanatory” (Bokulich 2012, p. 736); “false models
can explain, and (...) they often do so in virtue of their idealizations” (Kennedy 2012,
p. 332); and “idealizations aid in representation not simply by what they eliminate,
such as noise or noncentral influences, but in virtue of what they add, that is, their
positive representational content” (Potochnik 2017, p. 50). The options seem clear
enough: either we hold that explanatory success requires truth/accuracy and accord-
ingly see the false parts of models as explanatorily superfluous, or we agree with the
philosophers just quoted in holding that, at least sometimes, the false parts of models
are themselves required for models to be successful. Bokulich explains the situation
as follows:

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The field has largely split into two camps on this issue: those who think it is
only the true parts of models that do explanatory work and those who think
the falsehoods play an essential role in the model explanation. Those in the
former camp rely on things like de-idealization and harmless analyses to show
that the falsehoods do not get in the way of the true parts of the model that do
the real explanatory work. Those in the latter camp have the challenging task
of showing that some idealizations are essential and some fictions yield true
insights. (Bokulich 2017, p. 108)

Whether misrepresentation is defended as a temporary fix or as a legitimate long-term

strategy, acknowledging the utility of abstractions and idealizations in model-based
research generates the problem of explaining just how falsehoods can contribute to the
epistemic goals of science (Elgin 2004, 2017; Batterman and Rice 2014; Morrison
2015; Potochnik 2015, 2017).
Looming behind these philosophical questions about misrepresentation in scientific
modeling is the representationalist intuition described in Sect. 1. One influential view,
for example, treats idealization as a purposeful deviation from accurate representation
or a “departure from complete, veridical representation of real-world phenomena”
(Weisberg 2012, p. 98). Notice, however, that framing idealizations, abstractions etc.
as falsehoods or misrepresentations presupposes, more generally, an understanding of
models as representations and of modeling as a representational activity: it only makes
sense to think that a model represents some target inaccurately and imperfectly if we
think of models as representing at all. Furthermore, interest in elucidating how mis-
representation does not hinder, and perhaps even enhances, a model’s explanatory and
epistemic import presupposes a connection between the epistemic import of models
and their representational character. That is, the fact that we take the role of misrepre-
sentation in modeling to be a question of epistemological concern makes evident our
assumption that modeling is an epistemic activity because it is representational.
This view of models and modeling should sound familiar and uncontroversial, and
it is illustrated in pronouncements such as the following: that models are “the means by
which scientists represent the world—both to themselves and for others” (Giere 1988,
p. 62, emphasis added) and that “scientists use models to represent aspects of the world
for various purposes” (Giere 2006, p. 63); that modeling is “fundamentally a strategy
of indirect representation of the world” (Godfrey-Smith 2006a, p. 730, emphasis
added) and an “indirect approach to representing complex or unknown processes in
the real world” (Godfrey-Smith 2006b, p. 7, emphasis added), or, alternatively, that
models are “candidates for the direct representation of observable phenomena” (van
Fraassen 1980, p. 64, emphasis added); that “science is in the business of producing
representations of the physical world” (Pincock 2012, p. 3, emphasis added) and that
using mathematics in modeling, for example, “makes an epistemic contribution to
the success of our scientific representations” by “aiding in the confirmation of the
accuracy of a given representation” (Pincock 2012 p. 8, emphasis added); that models
“are by definition incomplete and idealized descriptions of the systems they describe”
(Bokulich 2017, p. 104, emphasis added) and that “scientific models are explicitly
intended to represent phenomena only partially” (Potochnik 2017, p. 43, emphasis
added); that “we need to know the variety of ways models can represent the world

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if we are to have faith in those representations as sources of knowledge” (Morrison

2015, p. 97, emphasis added); and, similarly, that “models must be representations:
they can instruct us about the nature of reality only if they represent the selected parts
or aspects of the world we investigate” and, for this reason, “if we want to understand
how models allow us to learn about the world, we have to come to understand how
they represent” (Frigg and Nguyen 2017a, p. 49, emphasis added).
On the surface, these quotes might all appear to be saying pretty much the same
thing. Those familiar with the literature can “see through” the apparent overlap and
identify hints of various disagreements philosophers have concerning representation,
such as about whether it is ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ (e.g. in the quotes by Godfrey-Smith and
van Fraassen), about how mathematics contributes to representation (e.g., in the quote
by Pincock), or about the role of misrepresentation (e.g., in the quotes by Bokulich,
Potochnik, and Morrison). But I want to suggest that, in an important sense, the surface-
level reading of these quotes is right. Despite all of the disagreements philosophers
have about representation, one issue they all seem to agree about is that representation
matters, that representation is what we should be thinking and disagreeing about
as we try to understand scientific modeling. Taken together, the quotes reveal the
representationalist intuition that pervades the philosophical literature on modeling
and amounts to the following methodological stance:
Representationalism: scientific modeling is best understood representationally;
i.e., making sense of model-based science, philosophically, requires analyzing it
in representational terms.
As a methodological stance, representationalism is constituted by the following
twofold representationalist assumption:
Ontological component of representationalism (OC): models are representations;
i.e., models stand in a representational relation to target phenomena.
Epistemological component of representationalism (EC): modeling is epistem-
ically valuable because of its representational nature; i.e., the representational
relation between model and target is what secures the epistemic worth of model-
ing.
The upshot of representationalism thus construed is as follows. The first component
of representationalism—the ontological component (OC)—holds that a model is a
representation of some target. This means that, like many other human activities (such
as, say, art), scientific modeling is a representational practice, and models, as tangible
components of that practice, are representations (just as, for instance, paintings and
sculptures can be artistic representations). Moreover, OC holds that a model is a
representation of some target phenomenon or system: in this way, a model is a model
of some target by virtue of representing that target.
Two points are important to note here. First, philosophers sometimes talk about
“target-less modeling” or models with “missing targets”—this is what happens when
scientists, knowingly or not, build models of non-real-world phenomena, such as
simulations of three-sex biological populations or models of ether and phlogiston.
Instances like these might appear not to endorse OC insofar as in these cases there is
no actual target that the models represent. But this variety of modeling is still typically

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understood representationally: models that do not represent some real-world target

are still understood as representations—they just represent some abstract, fictional,
non-existing target (see, e.g., Godfrey-Smith 2006a; Morrison 2015).
This connects to the second point, which is that OC is a general ontological view
that can be fleshed out in different ways. Part of the philosophical literature on models
focuses on the question of the “ontology of models,” whether they are concrete or
abstract objects, set-theoretic structures, sentences, fictions, artifacts, and so on (see
Gelfert 2017 for an overview of this specific debate). OC is not an alternative to these
views on the ontology of models. Rather, these different takes on the ontological nature
of models are typically developed as particular versions of the general ontological intu-
ition behind representationalism (i.e., OC): they propose that models are, for example,
objects that represent, or structures that represent, or fictions that represent, and so on.
This means that OC should not be seen as a particular view among the many found
in the debate about the ontology of models, but instead as distilling what virtually all
views in the ontology debate assume, namely that models are the sort of entity that
participates in a representation relation. In short, OC motivates representationalism as
a methodological stance for understanding scientific modeling because it delineates
a general way of thinking about models (i.e., as representations), which can then be
developed into various particular accounts of the nature of models.
The second component of representationalism—the epistemological component
(EC)—suggests that models contribute to central goals of science and that they do so
as representations, that is, only because they represent their targets. Models can be used
in communicating results and in science education, for example. Most prominently,
however, EC makes the stronger claim that models contribute to explanatory and other
epistemic goals of science, leading to understanding and knowledge of some target, and
that this happens because models represent their targets—that is, a model’s epistemic
worth is an outcome of its representational relationship to some target.
In clarifying EC it is important to note that authors differ on whether they use
‘representation’ as a success term or not. For those who do, representation and accuracy
do not come apart: in this view, the false parts of a model do not, strictly speaking,
represent; saying that X represents Y entails that X represents Y accurately. This seems
to be the case, for example, with Kennedy’s (2012) “non representationalist view of
model explanation.” Her claim is that idealizations can play an important explanatory
role. And she calls this a “non representationalist” view because she sees the false
parts of models (i.e., idealizations) as falling short from representing (i.e., accurately
representing) the target. Other authors who do not use ‘representation’ as a success term
can make similar claims, agreeing with regard to the explanatory import of the false
parts of models, while still seeing those false parts as positively (mis)representing—
which would amount to a “representationalist” account in Kennedy’s sense (see, e.g.,
Potochnik 2017).
This question will come up again in the next section when we discuss recent
approaches that divorce representational status from accuracy. For present purposes it
is important to point out that EC is meant as a general formulation that encompasses
both senses of ‘representation’. Whether one uses ‘representation’ as a success term
or not, the epistemological component of representationalism holds that we need to
understand how representation (or accurate representation) works if we are to under-

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stand why modeling is successful: this is, most fundamentally, what is communicated
in claims that “we need to know the variety of ways models can represent the world
if we are to have faith in those representations as sources of knowledge” (Morrison
2015, p. 97, emphasis added) and that “if we want to understand how models allow us
to learn about the world, we have to come to understand how they represent” (Frigg
and Nguyen 2017a, p. 49, emphasis added). In short, EC motivates representation-
alism as a methodological stance for understanding scientific modeling because it
delineates a general way of thinking about why models are epistemically valuable
(namely, because they represent), which can then be developed into different views of
how modeling works given particular accounts of the nature of representation.
To conclude this section I want to briefly indicate an initial difficulty attending
representationalism, namely that the role that many philosophers assign to idealization
and abstraction in scientific modeling creates puzzles connected to each component
of the twofold representationalist assumption. Following the ontological component
of representationalism, for some object (say, a pair of first-order differential equations
or a robotic agent) to be a model of some real-world target, a minimal requirement is
that it represent that target. That is, OC entails that at least part of what makes X a
model of some target Y is the fact that X represents Y, even if inaccurately (or partially,
if you use ‘representation’ as a success term). Yet, this seems incompatible with the
common idea, reviewed above, that introducing idealizations and abstractions does
not necessarily stand in the way of a model’s success and sometimes even enhances
the model. Put simply, the puzzle is: if what makes X a model of Y is that X represents
Y, then how can X still be a model of Y when X misrepresents Y, or falls short from
representing Y accurately?
A similar problem is associated with the epistemological component of representa-
tionalism. EC frames the epistemic value of modeling in terms of the representational
relation between model and target. In other words, EC says that modeling advances
scientific knowledge of target systems and phenomena because models represent those
targets. The problem, however, is that EC seems to be in tension with the purported
role of misrepresentation in science. If, as suggested by EC, models are epistemically
valuable in investigations of some target because they represent the target, then how
can models sometimes be more epistemically valuable when they misrepresent, i.e.,
when the representational relationship between the two is faulty?
These two puzzles show that popular views concerning the productive role of
misrepresentation (or partial representation) in science are in tension with the represen-
tationalist stance they presume and its ontological and epistemological commitments.
One might take this as indicating that our understanding of idealization and abstraction
is in need of revision, and I think this is right. But perhaps a deeper lesson is that the
representationalist intuition we took for granted just pushed our questions to another
level instead of answering them. The assumption that models are best understood,
ontologically and epistemologically, in representational terms gives rise to controver-
sies surrounding the nature and status of misrepresentation. This assumption creates
the need to account for how the parts of a model that do not represent accurately are
themselves epistemically valuable or, at least, how they do not get in the way of the
parts that are. But these problems only arise if we accept representationalism in the
first place.

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3 Can’t have: representationalism is untenable

I have suggested that the familiar and widespread representationalist approach to

model-based science corresponds to a twofold assumption constituted by an ontolog-
ical commitment (OC) and an epistemological commitment (EC). I have also shown
how this twofold representationalist assumption is implicated in the role that misrep-
resentation (e.g., idealization and abstraction) is said to play in science. The same
difficulty also applies to the task of explaining the epistemic import of successful
representation. In this section I examine some of the main philosophical accounts
of representation. This will involve revisiting a couple of well-known criticisms, but
with a different goal than the one critics originally had. Each account of representa-
tion can be seen as an attempt to make good on the claims that scientific models are
representations and that they are epistemically valuable because of their representa-
tional character. Many of the criticisms to follow were originally meant to show that
some particular account of representation was mistaken about the nature of represen-
tation. Our problem space here is different. Rather than meaning to discredit this or
that particular account of representation, the aim of this section is to cast doubt on
the feasibility of the entire representationalist project. For this reason, I will not be
concerned with whether a given account defines representation the right way or not.
On any theory of representation, the ontological and epistemological commitments of
representationalism undermine one another, making representationalism an untenable
view of scientific modeling. Or so I will argue.

3.1 Types of theories of representation

Representation is typically thought of, broadly speaking, as a relation. But exactly what
kind of relation is it, and between what sorts of entities does it hold? Traditional views
treat representation as a mind-independent relation between model and target, in which
the two are related by virtue of some property such as isomorphism or similarity. In
views like these, the representation relation exists whenever the appropriate objective
correspondence holds between model and target. This traditional conception of repre-
sentation as mind-independent has been dubbed “informational” (Chakravartty 2010)
because it sees models as objectively containing information about target phenom-
ena, and it has also been described as “dyadic” (Giere 2004; Suarez 2004; Knuuttila
2011) in that it sees the representation relation as one that holds between two entities
only, i.e., model and target. The designations “informational” and “dyadic” are con-
trasted with, respectively, “functional” views which see representation as a relation that
depends on human insight or use and is established by the activities of cognitive agents
(Chakravartty 2010), or “triadic” views which see representation as necessarily hold-
ing between three entities: agents, models and targets (Knuuttila 2011). In what follows
I will focus first on the mind-independent (or informational, or dyadic) conception of
representation and then on the mind-dependent (or functional, or triadic) conception to
show how each fails with representationalism in different ways. It is worth noting from
the outset that most participants in the literature have moved toward adopting a view of
representation as a mind-dependent agential accomplishment—including even those

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authors often identified as having originally put forward views of representation as

mind-independent. Still, working through the dyadic, mind-independent case, even if
more briefly, is instructive for understanding the problems facing representationalism
in general.

3.2 Mind-independent views of representation fail with OC

Prominent accounts describe representation as a relation of isomorphism or of similar-

ity, and the initial formulations of these accounts are often described as having relied
on a conception of representation as being mind-independent. Bas van Fraassen’s
(1980) view is one of the go-to examples of an isomorphism-based view of represen-
tation as mind-independent. In an important passage, van Fraassen claims: a “theory is
empirically adequate if it has some model such that all appearances are isomorphic to
empirical substructures of that model” (p. 64). By “appearances” van Fraassen means
observable phenomena in the real world, or more precisely “structures which can be
described in experimental and measurement reports”; as for “empirical substructures,”
they are the parts of models within a theory that are “candidates for the direct repre-
sentation of observable phenomena” (p. 64). In order for a theory to be empirically
adequate, then, there needs to be a correspondence between the models of the theory
and observable phenomena, which is to say that the candidates for direct representa-
tion of real-world phenomena need to actually represent them. And representation, for
van Fraassen, is a relation of isomorphism, a one-to-one structural mapping or “total
identity of structure” (p. 43): a model represents some target system when the two are
isomorphic, that is, when there is complete structural identity between the “empirical
substructures” of the model and the real-world “appearances,” as he calls them.
A second example of a traditional view of representation as mind-independent is
provided by Giere (1988). For Giere, models are representations: models represent
“systems found in the real world” such as “springs and pendulums, projectiles and
planets, violin strings and drum heads” (p. 62). But what does it mean to say that a
model represents some real-world system? In Giere’s view, a model represents some
system by virtue of being similar to it: “[T]he primary relationship between models
and the world is not truth, or correspondence, or even isomorphism, but similarity” (p.
93). Giere explicitly rejects van Fraassen’s isomorphism-based view of representation
because he takes it to set the bar too high. A model and its target may well be structuraly
similar to the point of being isomorphic, but this is the exception. In practice, models
and targets usually fall short from this degree of structural mapping (p. 80). Different
degrees and kinds of similarity may be relevant in different contexts. Still, in Giere’s
view, it is by virtue of being similar to real-world systems that models represent them.
Giere and van Fraassen thus clearly disagree on what it takes for a model to represent
some target system, and yet their views in the works cited here seem to coincide in
a crucial respect: both treat representation as a mind-independent relation. Figure 1
illustrates this type of view of representation in the usual fashion seen in the literature.
These isormorphism- and similarity-based views have been extensively criticized
as giving an inadequate account of the nature of representation (see, e.g., Giere 1988,
2004; Suarez 2003; Knuuttila 2010), and, as we will see in the next subsection, they

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r
M odel T arget
Fig. 1 Representation as mind-independent: the model represents the target, and this objective two-place
representation relation (r) is defined in terms of, e.g., isomorphism (van Fraassen 1980) or similarity (Giere
1988)

have also been revised (or re-explained) by their own authors. But our level of analysis
is different. What matters for present purposes is to understand the theory-type (i.e.,
the conception of representation as mind-independent) and to determine how it fares
with the twofold representationalist assumption. In short, our question is not whether
these views get representation right, but rather: is representationalism, as composed
of ontological and epistemological intuitions (i.e., OC and EC), supported by a view
of representation as a mind-independent, informational, two-place relation?
At first blush, views of representation as mind-independent seem highly promising.
They provide a simple way to flesh out OC: saying that models stand in a representa-
tional relation to their targets means that there is some actual correspondence between
them, be it one-to-one structural identity or some other form of similarity. Views of
representation as mind-independent can thus point to objective features of a model
and of a target that make the one a representation of the other. And this answer to
OC, in turn, lends support to EC. Representation is not something we make up; and
the existence of an objective correspondence between a model and its target inspires
confidence in that model as a source of knowledge about the target. This makes EC
seem perfectly unproblematic: model-based science is epistemically valuable because
successful models stand in the appropriate mind-independent representational relation
to their targets and can, for this reason, act as sources of knowledge about those targets.
However, the apparent success of mind-independent representation with EC is
undermined by its failure with OC. Note how EC relies on OC: the idea that mod-
eling is epistemically valuable because of its representational nature (i.e., EC) relies
on the idea that modeling actually has this representational nature (i.e., OC). But
mind-independent views notoriously fail as explanations of how scientific represen-
tation works, that is, as attempts to flesh out OC. And, by failing with OC, views of
representation as mind-independent make representationalism untenable.
A first difficulty attending mind-independent views of representation is the problem
of the asymmetry of modeling. For any account of representation as mind-independent
to be successful in elucidating how model-based science works, it needs to accom-
modate the inherent asymmetry that characterizes modeling. Scientists build and
manipulate models to learn about real-world systems, but usually not the other way
around: scientists do not, for example, intervene on the global climate as a means to
understanding how computer simulations work. To say the same using more explicitly
representational terms, models represent their targets, but it does not seem right to say
that target systems also represent their models. Because representation is an asymmet-
ric relation, accounts of representation need to respect this asymmetry if they are to
be plausible. Isomorphism is a symmetric relation and therefore fails in this respect:
if A is isomorphic to B, then B is isomorphic to A as well (Suarez 2003; Knuuttila
2010). The same is true for similarity: if a model is similar to its target to some degree
and in some respects, then the target will necessarily be similar to the model as well,
to the same degree and in the same respects (Suarez 2003).

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This difficulty applies to any account of representation as mind-independent. In

order to succeed where isomorphism and similarity fail, alternative informational or
dyadic views would have to involve an asymmetric relation to ensure that models
represent their targets but not the other way around. But it is not at all clear how this
could be done within a conception of representation as mind-independent. Notice that,
logically speaking, asymmetry is a special kind of non-symmetry. MacBride (2016)
provides good examples to illustrate the distinction: love can be symmetrical or non-
symmetrical (e.g., if A loves B, B may or may not love A), but love is not asymmetric
(e.g., the fact that A loves B does not entail that B doesn’t love A); on the other hand,
if A is taller than B, this guarantees that B is not taller than A, precisely because
‘being taller than’ is an asymmetric relation. The challenge, then, is to find some
objective, mind-independent feature of models and targets that is neither too restrictive
(a common charge against isomorphism) nor too inclusive (a common charge against
similarity) and that points in the right direction, such that models represent their
targets but targets do not represent their models. While this may not be a logically
unsurmountable obstacle, it is in practice challenging enough that no account has been
offered in recent decades which adequately addresses it: instead, virtually everyone
in the literature has come to see the asymmetry of the representation relation as an
agential feature and as reason to account for that relation as being mind-dependent.
A second problem for mind-independent views of representation is the problem of
the diversity of scientific practice, namely that this diversity precludes the identification
of a single criterion for representation that applies to all of science. Isomorphism may
be a useful approximation to how representation works in some scientific disciplines
and in approaches that rely on mathematics to model structures. But many scientific
projects are not in the business of mathematically modeling structures. Similarity
may well apply in these other cases, but that is because similarity applies everywhere:
anything is similar to anything else in various ways (Giere 2004). Scientists in different
disciplines and research traditions model real-world phenomena in so many different
ways that this diversity inspires skepticism in there being a single criterion that applies
to all cases of scientific representation without casting too wide a net. Along similar
lines, Suarez claims that isomorphism and similarity do not do justice to the variety
of representations scientists use: “an analysis of the means of representation in terms
of just one of these conditions would be unduly restrictive and local” (Suarez 2003,
p. 230).
But, again, this is not a problem only with isomorphism and similarity. The
diversity of scientific practice makes it difficult for any view of representation as
mind-independent to support OC by fully specifying what grounds the representational
relation. Some philosophers have proposed that representation can involve different
kinds of interpretative keys (see, e.g., Contessa 2007; Frigg and Nguyen 2017a). This
move might help accommodate the diversity of modeling practices, but it is not an
option for views of representation as mind-independent, in which the representation
relation has to hold between model and target independently of human intention,
agency, and interpretation. The challenge, then, is to find a single criterion for this
mind-independent relation that can capture the diversity of scientific practice without
being too inclusive. One could perhaps adopt some sort of pluralism about repre-
sentation as a mind-independent relation. Along these lines, for example, one might

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attempt to accommodate a number of different criteria to make sense of the diver-

sity of scientific practice by assuming that the various criteria do not all apply to the
same mind-independent, two-place relation: instead, each criterion corresponds to a
distinct two-place relation, and different two-place relations connect different models
and targets. Yet, if one somehow succeeded in identifying these distinct criteria that
make up the multiplicity of two-place relations that suffice for representation, then
that would actually be a good reason to give up on the notion of representation as
mind-independent! After all, “representation” would no longer refer to a single type
of two-place relation but instead it would be a merely conventional (and, therefore,
mind-dependent) way to designate various distinct types of two-place relations that
are only related insofar as we conceive of them all as forms of representation.
In sum, the failures of prominent isomorphism- and similiarity-based accounts
reveal more general ways in which any view of representation as a mind-independent
relation faces serious challenges. For reasons such as the ones examined here, views
adopting a conception of representation as mind-independent are unable to give a clear
and plausible account of representation with which to support OC. And by failing with
OC, these views thereby undermine EC as well. That is, if we have no good account
of how and why the (informational, two-place, mind-independent) representational
relation holds between model and target, then this motivates rejecting the intuition
that models give us knowledge of their targets because of this (informational, two-
place, mind-independent) representational relation. This results in the methodological
stance of representationalism being unsupported when couched in a conception of
representation as mind-independent.

3.3 Mind-dependent views of representation fail with EC

According to the views considered so far, the correspondence between a model and
a target exists purely because of the features that the model and the target have in
common—purely by virtue of what the model is like and what the target is like. But,
consider that, while two entities may relate to one another in a number of mind-
independent ways, ordinary usage seems to suggest that one represents the other only
for humans, that is, only if humans use the one as a representation of the other. Suppose
you witness a traffic accident and later you tell a friend about it, using your hands to
show how the two cars in front of you collided. You might find it unproblematic to
say that in this context your hands represent the two cars. And you might grant that
there are mind-independent correspondences between hands and cars, some degree of
similarity, such as their roughly approximate width-to-length ratio. Yet, it would seem
wrong to say that hands always represent cars: they can represent cars and they do so
in situations like the one described; still, what makes hands represent cars is not any
objective correspondence between the two, but the fact that we intentionally use them
that way, if and when we do so.
The recognition that traditional views failed to account for the role that human
intention plays in representation has spurred alternative ways of understanding the
representation relation. Rather than framing it as an objective relation between two
entities, more recent accounts treat representation as a mind-dependent relation that

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Scientists

M odel r
T arget

Fig. 2 By using a model to represent some target, scientists establish (e) that the model represents the target
(r). Strictly speaking, the representation relation is mind-dependent and therefore not reducible to r: it is
necessarily constituted by both r and e

necessarily involves humans as an agential or intentional component. Rather than

thinking that “the model somehow ‘directly’ represents the object” (Giere 2010, p.
275), in the current perspective a model is a representation of a target only as a result of
human activity. As van Fraassen has put it recently, “There is no representation except
in the sense that some things are used, made, or taken, to represent some things as thus
or so” (van Fraassen 2008, p. 23). In this sense, representation is a functional (rather
than informational) term, and there can only be a representational relation between
any two things if a third component is in place: models represent only if they are used
by scientists for that purpose. In contrast with Fig. 1, Fig. 2 illustrates representation
as a functional, three-place, mind-dependent relation.
The inclusion of an intentional aspect to representation, through the addition of a
third relatum, is found in updated versions of both isomorphism- and similarity-based
views, as illustrated in the following quotes:

A model can (be used to) represent a given phenomenon accurately only if it
has a substructure isomorphic to that phenomenon. (That structural relationship
to the phenomenon is of course not what makes it a representation, but what
makes it accurate: it is its role in use that bestows the representational role.) (van
Fraassen 2008, p. 309, italics original)

The formula is: Agents (1) intend; (2) to use model, M; (3) to represent a part
of the world, W; (4) for some purpose, P. So agents specify which similarities
are intended, and for what purpose. This conception eliminates the problem of
multiple similarities and introduces the necessary asymmetry. I propose to call
this “The Intentional Conception of Scientific Representation.” (Giere 2010, p.
274)

Besides these updated versions of isomorphism and similarity, other original

accounts that implicitly or explicitly put forward representation as a mind-dependent
relation include the inferential account (Suarez 2003, 2004), the interpretational
account (Contessa 2007), the weighted feature-matching account (Weisberg 2012),
the Denotation, Demonstration, Interpretation or DDI account (Hughes 1997), and
the Denotation, Exemplification, Keying-up, Imputation or DEKI account (Frigg and
Nguyen 2017a, b). All of these accounts have in common the idea that representation is
not a brute fact about the model-target dyad: rather, representation necessarily involves
an agent responsible for establishing the “representational mapping” and determin-
ing what represents what, to what extent, and in what way. A given model may be
isomorphic to its target or it may be similar to the target in non-structural ways and

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these are perfectly legitimate two-place relations that may be of scientific interest. But,
in a functional view of representation as mind-dependent, neither isomorphism nor
similarity (nor any other two-place relation) entails a relation of representation. To be
sure, we often take advantage of correspondences between different entities when we
use one to represent the other, as in the case of hands and cars discussed above. Still,
in views of representation as mind-dependent, it is our use of these correspondences
(rather than the correspondences themselves) that creates the representation relation.
Is representation in fact a mind-dependent relation? This is not a question I will
attempt to answer here. Instead, what matters for this paper’s argument is to deter-
mine how views of representation as mind-dependent fare with OC and EC. This
decides whether mind-dependent views can support the representationalist assump-
tions philosophers of science by and large take for granted. We have seen that views
of representation as mind-independent fail with OC. In this respect, mind-dependent
views appear to fare better. Indeed, the main motivation for the formulation of mind-
dependent views in the first place was precisely to give a better account of the
representation relation—in the current terminology, to flesh out OC in a more appro-
priate way. And that they do. Mind-dependent views accommodate the intuitions many
people have about how representation works, most importantly intuitions about how
representation involves intention and agency. Mind-dependent views seem to tell a
more realistic story about what makes a model a representation of its target: models
represent their targets, not independently from human activity, but as a result of sci-
entific practice and the purposes guiding research; i.e., models represent their targets
because they are used as representations of those targets.
The problem, however, is that mind-dependent views strengthen OC at the cost of
weakening EC. Granting for the sake of the argument that the functional conception
is correct and representation is a mind-dependent relation, this secures OC in a way
that undermines EC. Mind-dependent views dissociate the question of what makes
something represent well from the question of what makes it represent at all (see, e.g.,
Callender and Cohen 2006; Chakravartty 2010; Knuuttila 2011). This means that, in a
mind-dependent view of representation, anything can by definition represent anything
else in some context as long as someone is willing to establish the relevant repre-
sentational mapping: intention and stipulation are not sufficient to make something
represent successfully or accurately, but they are enough to make it a representation.
The problem is that even if anything can represent anything else for someone, plausi-
bly not anything can be informative about anything else. Scientists do not use any old
representation to model their targets of investigation because not any representation
would be explanatory, illuminating, or epistemically valuable in some way. If repre-
sentation entails only usage, not success or accuracy, then it no longer makes good
sense to also hold that the model-target representational relation is what enables us
to learn about a target through modeling. Accepting the conception of representation
as mind-dependent would render the representationalist stance absurd: in this view
we can paraphrase EC and OC, respectively, as stating that scientists can use mod-
els to learn about target phenomena because models represent their targets, and that
models represent their targets because scientists use them as representations of those
targets—in short, this would mean that the reason scientists can use models to study
real-world phenomena is that they do use them to study real-world phenomena.

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Suarez’s (2004) “inferential” account of representation is partly sensitive to the

concern I am raising, but it is still unable to avoid the tension between OC and EC that
characterizes views of representation as mind-dependent. Suarez gives the following
formulation of representation in inferential terms:

[Inf]. A represents B only if

(i) the representational force of A points towards B, and
(ii) A allows competent and informed agents to draw specific inferences regard-
ing B. (p. 773)
Note, however, that by “representational force” Suarez means “the capacity of a source
to lead a competent and informed user to a consideration of the target,” and he further
adds that this capacity is “fixed and maintained in part by the intended representational
uses of the source on the part of agents” (p. 768). This suggests that the definition
of ‘representational force’ already subsumes the second criterion, such that the two
criteria of [Inf] collapse into a single one that Suarez describes as being “fixed and
maintained” by us and our intentions. In the inferential account, then, representation
is still a matter of stipulation, even if it is not entirely “arbitrary” stipulation, as Suarez
claims. Constraints make it so that not any model is informative about any target; but
what makes a model informative about some target is that it represents that target (i.e.,
that its representational force points to the target), which in turn is determined by our
goals and intentions to use the model as a representation of the target. This simply
amounts to a more roundabout way of saying that OC is true because of us, because we
make it so. And, as I have argued, this kind of view of what makes X a representation
of Y (i.e., this view of OC) undermines the claim that we learn about Y because X
represents it (i.e., it undermines EC).
The conception of representation as mind-dependent thus fails with EC in a view
like Suarez’s. But what about other accounts that also treat representation as mind-
dependent? As the brief discussion above makes clear, Suarez’s (2004) is a bare-bones,
deflationary view of representation: he does not put forward a substantive account of
what sort of model-target correspondence needs to be in place for humans to use a
model as a representation of some target; instead, he outlines minimum general con-
ditions that he takes to constitute the representation relation in every particular case.
In contrast with this minimalist or deflationary approach, other mind-dependent views
add more substantive constraints to what creates representation relations, as is the case,
for example, with the updated versions of isomorphism- and similarity-based views
mentioned above. Could these substantive (non-deflationary) accounts of representa-
tion as mind-dependent provide more secure foundations for the representationalist
methodological stance?
I don’t think so. Notice how, as I proposed above, what makes Suarez’s account
fail with EC is not the fact that it is deflationary. Suarez’s view omits details about
the specific sorts of model-target correspondences that need to be in place for the
representation relation to exist, and this lack of details makes it a deflationary rather
than substantive account. Importantly, however, the lack of these details is not what
makes Suarez’s account fail with EC: rather, the account fails with EC because of
its general formulation of representation as a mind-dependent relation—crucially, it

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fails precisely because it fleshes out OC in mind-dependent terms, which, in turn,

undermines EC. This suggests that adding details about specific sorts of model-target
relations (i.e., putting forward a substantive account rather than a deflationary one)
would not suffice to rescue the mind-dependent conception: while the resulting account
may or may not be more attractive for other reasons, it would still have to deal with the
same problem attending deflationary views because the way it differs from deflationary
views does not address what makes deflationary views fail with EC. Not only that, but
substantive accounts would likely face additional problems related to the substantive
claims they make about the nature of the model-target relation, e.g., if it is isomorphism,
similarity, or something else. This means that, in addition to failing with EC in the
way a deflationary view does, these accounts may also fail due to the specific way they
flesh out OC. Some of the additional criticisms of isomorphism- and similarity-based
mind-dependent views would be recapitulations of the familiar ones referred to in
Sect. 3.2, while other criticisms would be more specific. The important point is that,
although much more could be said about substantive mind-dependent views, not much
else is needed for the purposes of the present argument—and this because what is at
stake here is not what the best account of representation is, but rather how different
views of representation fare with representationalism.
If representations are ever epistemically valuable, it cannot be because they are
representations. After all, when representational success is separated from represen-
tation simpliciter, being a representation entails nothing about quality or accuracy,
only about use. The advocate of representationalism could try to defend her view by
conceding that being used as a representation suffices for a model to represent at all
while also holding that some additional criterion is what makes the model represent
its target well or accurately. While this move toward a substantive view may (or not)
lead to a better understanding of how representation works, it would not salvage rep-
resentationalism because it would not resolve the tension between OC and EC. This
becomes clear when we consider that this putative additional criterion for accuracy
in a substantive mind-dependent account would itself be either a mind-independent
or a mind-dependent relation between model and target. The latter should be rejected
from the get-go: saying that the criterion for accuracy is mind-dependent would result
in a regress because we would be back to the same position that led us to look for a
criterion separate from usage in the first place, and this new criterion would itself also
be either mind-independent or mind-dependent, and so on.
But what about the former, that is, if the criterion of accuracy in a mind-dependent
account of representation is mind-independent? This is what van Fraassen (2008)
proposes in the long quote above—namely, that isomorphism is what makes the model
accurate, not what makes it a representation. For reasons like the ones examined
in Sect. 3.2, we should have little confidence in the possibility that a single mind-
independent criterion of accuracy applies in all of science without being too loose,
vague or trivial. But even if we succeeded in finding this elusive mind-independent
criterion of accuracy with the right scope of application, this would still not enable
views of representation as a mind-dependent relation to secure EC. In this conception
of representation, mind-independent relations such as isomorphism and similarity are
strictly speaking non-representational: they hold between two entities independently
of the two entities being used for representational purposes. And identifying epistemic

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value with a non-representational criterion is not a way to resolve the tension between
EC and OC in the mind-dependent conception of representation because that would,
instead, necessitate rejecting EC: in this view, models would be epistemically valuable
due to some non-representational relation they bear to their targets, rather than due
to the representational relation between the two. And by failing with EC, even this
hypothetical substantive mind-dependent account of representation would undermine
representationalism.
The advocate of representationalism might recognize that she cannot rescue EC but
still resist the conclusion that the representationalist methodological stance is unjus-
tified: she could do so by claiming that she was never committed to EC as framed
earlier but rather to an alternative formulation (say, EC*) according to which mod-
els are epistemically valuable because of their representational accuracy (rather than
because of their representational status simpliciter). But this move would not avoid
the criticisms just raised. Instead, the same problem would arise of whether accuracy
should be defined in mind-dependent or mind-independent terms. Not only that, how-
ever, this move would also raise additional problems. One problem is related to our
earlier discussion about misrepresentation. As seen in Sect. 2, an increasingly popular
philosophical view is that idealizations, abstractions and other misrepresentations can
actually make models better—i.e., that sometimes models are epistemically valuable
not despite misrepresenting their targets but precisely because of misrepresentation.
Adopting something like EC* and making accuracy the criterion for epistemic value
would entail that idealization and abstraction (i.e., inaccurate representation) can-
not make models better epistemic tools. This would not only go against a growing
philosophical view, but would also fly in the face of scientific practice and make the
widespread reliance on idealization and abstraction into a mystery—something that,
somehow, is more and more used for epistemic purposes but is not epistemically valu-
able. And lastly, adopting something like EC* would in fact motivate abandoning
the methodological stance of representationalism. If fleshing out our view of models
as representations (in a mind-dependent conception) forces us to hold that the epis-
temic value of modeling is not due to its representational nature (but rather to some
notion of accuracy), then we no longer need an account of scientific models in rep-
resentational terms because the real epistemological heavy-lifting would be done by
the model-target correspondence or informational, two-place relation (which is not
representational). Accordingly, if our goal was to find out why scientific modeling is
successful and how it leads to knowledge of real-world target phenomena, figuring out
what the right theory of representation is would not help because the answer to that
question will be some non-representantional mind-independent feature that models
and targets have in common.

4 Don’t need: representationalism is unnecessary

The previous section proposed a “can’t have” argument, showing that the methodolog-
ical stance of representationalism does not work: the different ways to flesh out the
representationalist approach, based on views of representation as mind-independent
or as mind-dependent, all undermine representationalism by failing with at least one

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of its two components (i.e., OC or EC). Naturally, there is no alternative way to flesh
out representationalism because there are no alternative conceptions of representation:
either representation is mind-independent or it is mind-dependent. What then? In this
section I offer a “don’t need” argument, claiming that, whether or not representation-
alism is something we can have, a representationalist approach is not actually required
for making sense of model-based science. I discuss two reasons why representation-
alism is uncalled for, and along the way I indicate promising directions for advancing
our understanding of scientific modeling without stepping into the representationalist
minefield.

4.1 Pragmatic reason

The first reason philosophy of science does not need representationalism is what I call
the pragmatic reason. Scientists build and manipulate models of many different sorts
to study a wide range of phenomena, and in this process, they learn many different
things about how the world works. Now, most scientists clearly do not have a theory
of representation. Some chemists use simulations to study chemical reactions, some
biologists use mathematical equations to understand population dynamics, and some
economists have used a hydraulic analog computer like the Phillips Machine to learn
about financial systems—and they all manage to learn about their objects of study via
modeling without having an account of what it means for their simulations, equations
and machines to represent chemical reactions, populations and financial systems. Of
course, scientists have standards, both explicit and tacit, that guide the procedures and
tools they use in their research. But these are standards for making “good models,”
not necessarily criteria for making (accurate) representations of target phenomena.
In practice, the precise meaning of “good model” depends on a number of factors.
Crucial factors implicated in what makes a “good model” typically include the research
project’s disciplinary and theoretical context, the methodological and technological
background (i.e., which prior “successful” models a given project builds on), and what
sorts of questions the project is meant to address (e.g., if it aims to generate predictions
of future events, explain past events, guide real-world interventions, etc). Modeling
is always informed by these disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, technological,
erotetic and purposive aspects of particular research projects. And, taking scientific
practice at face value, success in following these various kinds of standards is what
justifies the epistemic claims coming out of model-based research. That is, models
are constrained in their construction and usage by all of these theoretical and practical
standards that have come to be accepted by the scientific community as justified paths
to knowledge, and, as a result, models have their epistemic justification built in: models
are meant “to solve [certain] tasks, and their success or failure at the task at hand is
both the measure of their value and the justification of their design” (Isaac 2013, p.
3622).
The representationalist methodological stance is predicated on the assumption that
the single most important factor in model-based science, and the factor to be elucidated
philosophically, is the (representational) relation between a model and a target system:
models are taken to be “about” their targets, and to be evaluated by scientists in terms

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of the success of this relation. While I will have more to say concerning “aboutness”
in Sect. 4.2, what matters for the present point is to see how it is more adequate, prag-
matically speaking, to bring to the forefront other factors, such as the disciplinary,
theoretical, methodological, technological, erotetic and purposive aspects I have indi-
cated here. An example might help illustrate this point. Climate modeling, for instance,
typically involves the use of multiple models: no single model is accepted as “the right
model” but, together, a number of competing models are used to support explanatory
or predictive practices (see, e.g., Lloyd 2010; Parker 2011). In these typical cases, the
various climate models are representationally incompatible (i.e., if analyzed represen-
tationally, each model “describes” the climate in ways that are known to be false and
which contradict the other models). Yet, following theoretical and practical (method-
ological, technological, etc) standards, scientists evaluate their model-based climate
research as more or less successful and justified to the degree that it enables them to
accomplish relevant goals. The pragmatic stance I am proposing here takes this feature
of climate modeling to be the rule in science rather than the exception. The primacy of
pragmatic value (understood broadly to include the various theoretical, methodolog-
ical, technological, and other practical aspects) explains why scientists can advance
their knowledge through model-based research without having a theory of represen-
tation and without needing to wait for philosophers to provide the correct account of
representation that explains the success of good models and the failure of bad ones.
In practice, scientists care about whether or not their models “work”—whether the
models fruitfully connect with and advance current knowledge, methods, technology,
and research goals—not whether the models represent real-world target phenomena
in the sense of meeting some formal definition of “representation.”
What I have said up to now highlights one way in which this is a “pragmatic”
reason, namely in that it takes scientific practice seriously and recognizes the practi-
cal epistemic justification of modeling as independent of representational status and
representational accuracy. But this reason is also “pragmatic” in the way it connects
to the philosophical approach of the American pragmatist tradition. The reader might
be willing to grant that scientists do not need a theory of representation in order to
be epistemically successful, but still be inclined to hold that philosophers need one
in order to adequately make sense of the scientists’ epistemic success. Here, though,
the pragmatist response is that this would only lead to bad philosophy. William James
(1907) describes the now famous anecdote of a man who goes around a tree to try to
see a squirrel while the squirrel is, at the same time, also going around the same tree
to try to hide from the man: in going around the tree, does the man also go around
the squirrel? James concludes that the disagreement between competing answers to
this question is pointless: “If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the
alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle” (p. 45). Later on
in the same lecture and generalizing the lesson from the anecdote to various philo-
sophical debates, James claims: “It is astonishing how many philosophical disputes
collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing
a concrete consequence. There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a
difference elsewhere” (pp. 49–50, emphasis original).
James’ quote could perhaps be read as condemning any kind of abstract
philosophizing—but that is more than I will ask the reader to accept here. My point,

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instead, is to suggest the following: if we accept that thinking in representational

terms is not necessary for the scientists’ epistemic success, then giving a philosophical
account of scientific practice in representational terms becomes a lot less urgent than
it would otherwise have been—less urgent, say, than it would have been if scientists
in fact used theories of representation to justify, to themselves, their claims to knowl-
edge stemming from model-based research. Accordingly, philosophical disputes about
representation might just be complicating things more than is necessary and beyond
concrete analytical purchase on what is going on in science. There are many different
philosophical views about representation: about whether it is mind-independent or
not, whether it is a matter of isomorphism or interpretation or something else, whether
its definition includes accuracy or only use, whether misrepresentation is a legitimate
long-term strategy or whether idealizations and abstractions are merely place-holders
for more accurate representation, and so on. But we ought to consider carefully whether
the differences between these views are associated with real differences elsewhere: the
cost of not pondering this possibility is practical irrelevance. If scientists get by just
fine without conclusively settling any of these matters, then we don’t need to settle
them either if our goal is to make sense of actual (rather than ‘ideal’) science: in order
to make sense of the epistemic worth of modeling, we should pay attention to factors
like the standards and practices mentioned above—that is, we should pay attention to
what actually makes a difference for scientists as they use models to learn about the
world.
To be sure, this does not mean that philosophical meta-level analysis of science is
unimportant, nor, more specifically, that trying to elucidate how we learn from models
is pointless. First, because the standards involved in the pragmatic-epistemic justifica-
tion of model-based research are often tacit or only poorly articulated within scientific
practice, philosophers have plenty of work to do helping clarify those standards. This
is work that retains the distinctly meta-level nature characteristic of philosophical
inquiry but which has clear real-world implications insofar as it is informed by and
closely aligned with actual scientific practice (as opposed to an abstract, armchair
reconstruction of science). And, second, it does not follow from the foregoing that the
specific goal of elucidating how we learn from modeling is worthless: on the contrary,
I take this to be a crucial goal—but one that, following my argument in Sect. 3, rep-
resentationalism cannot help us accomplish. If we are to philosophically make sense
of how scientists learn from modeling, we need to take into account what scientists
do and what in fact guides the design and evaluation of models in real scientific prac-
tice. My contention is that the representationalist framework is not required for making
progress here because the scientists’ pragmatic-epistemic success is independent from
their models’ meeting the requirements of formal definitions of representation.

4.2 Viable alternatives

The second reason representationalism is unnecessary for making sense of scientific

modeling is that viable alternatives exist. Representationalism is popular, but it is
not the only game in town. In fact, even within recent representationalist approaches,
particularly of the deflationary variety, there are useful philosophical resources for

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building more successful ways of understanding scientific modeling. Here I focus on

the notions of ‘surrogate reasoning’ and ‘mediation’ used by Mauricio Suarez and
Margaret Morrison.
Morrison has long advocated the view of models as mediators. An early articula-
tion of this view can be found in her collaboration with Mary Morgan (see Morgan
and Morrison 1999), where the two proposed an account of models as autonomous
mediating instruments. In their view, models contain elements that are shaped by the-
oretical commitments and by empirical evidence, but which are not fully determined
by either. Models are thus partially dependent on both theory and phenomena (i.e.,
data) while also being partially independent from both, and, for this reason, models
mediate between the two, thus helping advance our understanding of both our the-
ories and the world. More recently Morrison has reiterated this view of models as
theory-world mediators while also emphasizing an additional way in which models
are mediators: “I use the term ‘mediated’ here to indicate that the model functions
as a kind of stand-in or replacement for the system under investigation and that it
furnishes only a partial representation; it is, in essence, one step removed from the real
system” (Morrison 2015, p. 153). In this second sense, models are mediators in that
they mediate our contact with phenomena: for example, for the biologist using a set
of first-order differential equations to study population dynamics, the model takes the
place of the actual population, and manipulating the model can replace, say, field work
as the method of investigation. For Morrison this means that, in addition to connecting
scientific theory and empirical data, models are mediators because they become an
indirect link between scientists and phenomena, as alternatives to more direct inves-
tigation. And this second understanding of ‘mediation’ is exactly what Suarez (2003,
2004, 2015) means when he says that models enable ‘surrogative reasoning’: for him,
in modeling, scientists reason about an object (a model) as a means to reasoning about
another object (some target), and, in this sense, models act as surrogates for thinking
and learning about some other object.
Crucially, neither ‘mediation’ nor ‘surrogative reasoning’ is inherently represen-
tational. To be sure, both Morrison and Suarez use the two terms representationally:
for Morrison, models have both theory and data represented in them (as theory-world
mediators) and they also represent phenomena to scientists (as experimental stand-ins);
and for Suarez, surrogative reasoning is “the main purpose of representation” (2003,
p. 229) and “the primary function of scientific representation” (2004, p. 769). But
this representational use of ‘mediation’ and ‘surrogative reasoning’ is not conceptu-
ally required, and a pragmatic rendering of both provides a representationally-neutral
alternative.
Consider how skill development requires practice with objects that are progressively
more complex and specialized. Playing sports competitively or performing a song with
a musical instrument while others sing along are abilities that do not arise out of the
blue. Rather, learning requires practice, which, for kids, typically begins with simpler
tools: plastic bat and ball for baseball, a rubber ball for soccer, a toy keyboard, a
plastic guitar. Developing motor fluency in free-form exploration of these toy objects
enables the addition of constraints, such as learning how and when to play a certain
sequence of musical notes or how and when to kick the ball with the outside of your
foot. And practice with simpler objects ultimately enables the learner to shift to using

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 Synthese

Agent
pA
pB

ObjectA ObjectB
Fig. 3 Practical engagement with one object (pA) can facilitate the development of skills useful for engaging
with another object in a different context (pB): e.g., playing with a beach ball or a toy guitar can help develop
the motor skills needed for participating in a real soccer match or for performing with a band. Object A
can be seen as a mediator or surrogate for B, but in this pragmatic, developmental view ‘mediation’ and
‘surrogacy’ do not entail a representational relation and do not require analysis in representational terms

conventional instruments, and go from, say, a toy guitar to a Gibson Les Paul or from
a rubber soccer ball to the Adidas Telstar 18 (the official ball of the 2018 FIFA World
Cup). These simpler, toy instruments can be said to act as mediators and surrogates for
more advanced, conventional instruments. One might wish to describe the surrogates as
representations of conventional instruments, but this is not required. In fact, if our goal
is to make sense of the expert performance of professional athletes or musicians, it is
arguably more illuminating to analyze their performance in terms of skill development
through practice (see Fig. 3).
The same view of surrogate or mediated engagement applies to skills that are more
abstract than sports and music, such as mathematics. Children usually begin to learn
mathematics by reasoning about concrete objects, for example, learning to count using
oranges and learning fractions with slices of a cake; facility with abstract, symbolic
operations can be seen as on a continuum with, and emerging from, these simpler
types of concrete engagement. And while it is always possible to interpret surrogate
reasoning in representational terms, in a case like this assuming that surrogates always
represent what they stand in for leads to the strange conclusion that concrete quantities
represent numbers rather than the other way around. That is, one could say that the
five oranges represent the number 5 or that the half cake represents the fraction 1/2,
but this would go against normal usage, according to which it is the symbols that are
abstract representations of various equivalent concrete quantities such as five oranges
and five apples or half a cake and half a pizza.
And even if some philosophers use ‘mediation’ and ‘surrogate reasoning’ in
accounts of model-based representation, these notions do not by themselves entail
a representational relation and do not require analysis in representational terms. In a
representationally-neutral fashion, ‘mediation’ and ‘surrogacy’ can help explain skill
development and learning transfer not only across contexts in everyday practices like
sports, music, and mathematics, as seen above, but also in the domain of model-based
scientific inquiry.
The scientific practice of using concrete models as ‘mediators’ or tools for ‘surro-
gate reasoning’ about concrete systems (e.g., the San Francisco Bay model) should
not be seen as distinct in kind and independent from what kids do when they play with
makeshift toys, using a cardboard box as a fort, a pen as a sword, and so on. As kids
grow up, and through formal training from grade school to grad school and beyond,
their surrogate reasoning skills gain complexity and are directed to novel domains
of practical engagement, yet the different applications are outgrowths of the same
cultural and psychological developmental context. To be sure, I am not suggesting

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that simulating different hydrological conditions in the San Francisco Bay model and
playing with Legos are entirely identical. Yet, the crucial difference between the two
seems to be a difference in the practical and theoretical constraints and goals involved,
rather than a difference in mechanism: depending on what one wants to accomplish
and what practice one aims to contribute to (play or science, say), different criteria
will define ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in each case, but they remain instances of mediated
or surrogate practical engagement.
This way of thinking is not limited to concrete models, but also applies to suppos-
edly “abstract” varieties such as mathematical equations and diagrams. These varieties
of modeling co-opt skills at work in mathematical reasoning (from ordinary instances
such as the ones with oranges and cakes described above) as well as in reading and
writing more generally, applying these skills to a new domain where engaging with
equations or diagrams on paper or on a computer screen mediates the development
of strategies for practical engagement with and reasoning about some other object or
entity (the “target”). Given a complex set of background skills and practices, inter-
acting with a pair of differential equations, for example, is then used as a scaffold for
thinking about various biological or physical systems, and for generating understand-
ing, forming hypotheses, guiding interventions, and so on. The point is that, whether
concrete or abstract, a model need not be analyzed in representational terms as a
description of some target: in the view sketched here, a model is instead understood as
a distinct, autonomous object that is used for developing skills that are also useful for
engaging with those other objects in specified ways (including, of course, reasoning
about those other objects).
Skill development and learning transfer in model-based science are often indirect:
typically modelers cannot intervene in the systems they model, but instead they have
to communicate their findings to others (e.g., policy makers) who are in a position to
directly manipulate the target system in question (e.g., regulating carbon emissions
to avoid negative outcomes predicted by climate models). This indirect character of
engagement and application does not contradict the account I am sketching here: on
the contrary, the widespread difficulties with translating scientific findings into public
policy can, at least in some cases, be understood as a resistance individuals have to
surrogate reasoning processes they are not themselves skillful in due to lack of relevant
training. The focus in recent years on active learning in science education points in
the same direction. Arguably, non-experts such as school-aged children and grown-up
policy-makers become capable of making epistemic use of models not by learning
how a model meets criteria that make it a representation of some target, but through
direct engagement and the development of relevant practical (motor and reasoning)
skills.
Working out further details of a non-representationalist account of modeling in
terms of skill development and learning transfer is beyond the scope of this article,
but this pragmatic and representationally-neutral rendering of ‘surrogate reasoning’
and ‘mediation’ indicates possible future directions. Focusing on scientific practice in
this way gives us a useful lens through which to think about how models can act as
mediators and surrogates for skill development and for transferring insights to novel
objects. Through modeling, scientists explore new ways of thinking and acting, and
understanding how this happens is crucial for making sense of the epistemic outcomes

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of model-based research such as explanations, predictions and interventions. Impor-

tantly, the sketch presented here shows that representationalism is not needed and that
resources currently in use in the representationalist approach do not require a repre-
sentational analysis and might even provide the starting point for simpler alternatives
that avoid pitfalls inherent to representationalism.
To conclude, I want to return to a point that came up in my discussion about
the pragmatic reason in Sect. 4.1. There, I pointed out that scientists evaluate mod-
els as being “good” in terms of how the model fits various disciplinary, theoretical,
methodological, technological, erotetic and purposive aspects of a particular research
project—and, accordingly, I urged that philosophical work be directed at elucidating
precisely these aspects of model-based science. To be clear, this is a direct challenge
to the traditional representationalist methodological stance, which takes the crucial
aspect of model-based science to be how models relate to target phenomena: repre-
sentationalism identifies model-target relations (rather than any of these other factors)
as what needs to be understood if we are to make sense of scientific modeling. The
argument against representationalism that I have offered in this paper does not entail
that model-target relations don’t matter, yet it does motivate rethinking the common
idea that models are “about” their targets.
As I pointed out above, it makes little sense to treat a beach ball as representing the
Adidas Telstar 18 or a toy guitar as representing the Gibson Les Paul. The beach ball
is not “about” a professional soccer ball (in the representational sense of aboutness)
any more than it is (in a broader sense) about beach sports, or about going on vacation,
or about being a child—the beach ball is, arguably, more closely associated with these
practices, events and states than with a professional soccer ball. And even without being
“about” a professional soccer ball, the beach ball can, as already seen, mediate how
we use the professional soccer ball: the skills developed through practical engagement
with it can turn out to be useful for engaging with the professional ball. But so can
those skills turn out to be useful for learning how to kick the oval-shaped ball used
in American football. Would this, then, mean that the beach ball also represents or is
“about” American football, and a generic or a specific American football ball at that?
The case of musical instruments is even more telling. Free-play with a toy guitar could
lead one to develop skills necessary for playing a professional guitar like the Gibson
Les Paul the same way that Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards did in the
1960s. But so can it enable one to learn to play other types of guitars, and to play many
other musical genres. Or to learn to play other string instruments, such as the bass. Or
even to transition to percussion or brass instruments. If it makes sense to speak of any
of these various possibilities (with different genres and instruments) as the “target” of
free-play with a “model” toy guitar, either there is nothing inherently representational
in this model-target relation, or the model will have to, in some way that goes against
common use, represent the various possibilities all at once.
The same applies to models in science. It is commonplace within the represen-
tationalist framework to assume that models are best understood as models of some
target, where “of” denotes a representational relation. We know, however, that models
often come to be used in novel contexts to support investigations of different target
phenomena. The same set of equations first used in physics might later be used by
biologists for completely different purposes. What, then, is the target of that mathe-

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matical model, a physical system or a biological system? Or is it those systems plus

all the other systems that will someday come to be investigated using the same equa-
tions? Model organisms like fruit flies and mice are now used to model a vast range of
phenomena, and the same is true for the Khepera robot, which for an entire generation
was the go-to “model organism” for roboticists. Are these model organisms, then,
representations of each and every one of those targets? Speaking of a model’s target
(as the system or phenomenon it represents or is about) helps to direct our attention to
the specific use of the model in a particular context, but it does little more than that.
In the pragmatic surrogacy-based view I have sketched here, it is more illuminating
to focus on scientists as agents— rather than to focus on models and targets as free-
standing objects—and to frame modeling in terms of skill development and learning
transfer—rather than in terms of model-target correspondences as abstract relations.
Models are, of course, typically useful for guiding how we think and talk about some
phenomenon in a given context, but this does not necessitate analyzing the model itself
as being ‘about’ the phenomenon in the sense of being a truth-evaluable description of
some representational ‘target’. Models are ‘about’ target phenomena as much as they
are ‘about’ the discipline in which they are used, the theoretical context they are meant
to fit and advance, the methodological and technological background they are built
upon, the intended users, and the intended goals they are meant to help accomplish.
Rather than thinking that models tell us something about the world, it is more adequate
to think that scientists are the ones who tell us something about the world, something
that they learned by harnessing their skills in particular ways to build and manipulate
objects of various sorts.

5 Conclusion

This paper argued that representationalism is a philosophical dead end. In Sect. 2

I used discussions about misrepresentation in scientific modeling to reveal the rep-
resentationalist methodological stance that constitutes the mainstream philosophical
view of model-based science. There I identified the twofold assumption underlying
representationalism, namely its ontological and epistemological commitments (i.e.,
OC and EC), and showed how currently popular ideas about the productive role of
idealizations and abstractions, understood as misrepresentations, are in tension with
the two underlying representationalist commitments.
In Sect. 3 I provided a “can’t have” argument, showing that representationalism
does not work. Beyond problems with particular theories of representation, each of
the different types of views on the representation relation (i.e., as mind-independent
or mind-dependent) creates a tension between the two central representationalist
assumptions: views of representation as mind-independent fail with OC and thereby
undermine EC, while views of representation as mind-dependent give more plausi-
ble support for OC but in a way that also undermines EC. Ultimately, therefore, no
matter the particular theory of representation, whether it frames representation as
mind-independent or mind-dependent, the tension between OC and EC leads to the
downfall of representationalism.

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Section 4 concluded the discussion by offering a “don’t need” argument for rep-
resentationalism about scientific models: whether or not representationalism works,
analysis of models in representational terms is not required, and this for reasons having
to do with the success of scientific practice as well as with the fact that key philosoph-
ical notions are not inherently representational. To be clear, the account sketched in
Sect. 4 is representationally-neutral in that it does not affirm that models do not repre-
sent their targets nor that models will never meet formal definitions of representation:
rather, the claim is that modeling is best understood in terms of pragmatic engagement
mediated by skill development and learning transfer, and that meeting formal defini-
tions of representation is incidental to the purpose and epistemic value of modeling.
These arguments show that representationalism is both untenable and unnecessary;
together they suggest that it should be abandoned. Our representationalist intuitions
appear to work fine so long as we do not confront them directly. As soon as we try
to figure out what supports them, it becomes clear that nothing does—that is, noth-
ing other than habit. There is nothing terribly wrong with thinking about models as
representations, but that can’t tell us why models are epistemically valuable. Repre-
sentationalist approaches to model-based science have reached a dead end, and the
only reasonable way to move forward is to take one step back and change directions.
The hard but interesting philosophical question about models concerns how we can
learn through modeling: representationalism cannot answer this question, and we
don’t need representationalism to answer it, so we might as well begin working on
developing alternative ways of thinking.

Acknowledgements I have presented ideas related to this paper at various conferences over the past couple
of years, and I have benefited from questions and objections raised by more people than I can hope to name.
I am grateful for all of these interactions and recognize the crucial role they have played in helping me
develop my thinking. Very special thanks go to Angela Potochnik for her extensive and insightful comments
on multiple drafts of this paper. My research was supported by a dissertation fellowship from the Charles
Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.

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