ABSTRACT
How do models represent their target systems? Two accounts of representation emerge from the discussion of Suppes’ view of theories in the previous chapter: the Data Matching Account and the Morphism Account. To evaluate these accounts, we formulate five problems that every account of representation must answer, and we state five conditions of adequacy that answers must meet. We examine the Data Matching Account and discuss the most important objection against it, the so-called loss of reality objection. We introduce Bogen and Woodward’s distinction between data and phenomena, and we conclude that models represent phenomena in Bogen and Woodward’s sense. We then turn to the Morphism Account and examine its most important presupposition, namely that a target system must have a structure and discuss how the account fares with the questions and conditions that we introduced previously. The so-called Partial Structures Programme offers an alternative formulation of the structuralist programme. We introduce the approach and analyse what notion of representation it offers.
