Modalities in Representation

The thrust of the previous post is that there are two main levels of analysis when discussing representation in science: relevance and accuracy, or what a representation is about and what it says. Let us focus first on conditions of relevance. Consider any model M , and any object O . The question I want to ask is: in what sense might we say that it is possible that M represents O , or that it must be so (independently of whether it represents it well )? We should first dispell an ambiguity in this question. Are we talking in general, or in a particular context? I have argued in my past research ( Ruyant 2021 ) that there is an important difference between two senses of “represent”: either it refers to norms at play in the epistemic community (such as: the Lotka-Volterra model represents a prey-predator system), or it refers to a specific use in context (the model of the pendulum that I’m using represents the oscillation of my clock). However, the first sense is generally more

Now that we have reached a rough taxonomy of modalities, let us talk about representation. I think it will be enough to have this rough picture in mind, which, I reckon, should be uncontroversial aspects of representation: Inferentialism: An epistemic representation (such as a scientific model, a map, a realistic drawing) can be used to make inferences about target systems of a relevant kind in concrete situations. Misrepresentation: It is possible, for a representation, to represent its target inaccurately. I take inferentialism to be a minimalist theory of representation. This does not tell against theories that attempt to give more substance to representation, but only defines a common ground. As for the possibility of misrepresentation, it has been challenged notably on the ground that representation would be a “success term” or a thick term ( Poznic 2018 ; Chakravartty 2010, pp. 209–10 ), but I’m utterly unconvinced that this is the case. “Cruel” is a thick term, and