Scientific misrepresentation and guides to ontology: the need for representational code and contents

摘要

In this paper I show how certain requirements must be set on any tenable account of scientific representation, such as the requirement allowing for misrepresentation. I then continue to argue that two leading accounts of scientific representation-the inferential account and the interpretational account-are flawed for they do not satisfy such requirements. Through such criticism, and drawing on an analogy from non-scientific representation, I also sketch the outline of a superior account. In particular, I propose to take epistemic representations to be intentional objects that come with reference, semantic contents and a representational code, and I identify faithful representations as representations that act as guides to ontology.