AModel-TheoreticAccountofRepresentation.docVIP

A Model-Theoretic Account of Representation (Or, I Dont Know Much About Art … But I Know It Involves Isomorphism) I am grateful to a number of people for discussions on this topic, including Otávio Bueno, Matthew Kieran, James Ladyman and Mauricio Suarez but most especially Alirio Rosales and the MA students who took my Issues in Philosophy of Science module. Of course, I should take the blame for any artistic misjudgments or philosophical infelicities. Steven French Division of History and Philosophy of Science University of Leeds Leeds, UK Introduction Most of us would accept that scientific theories represent, although there has been relatively little consideration of the nature of this representative function. What discussions there have been have tended to import pre-established conceptions from analyses of representation in the arts, language, cognition and so forth. Of course, which of these analyses one favours will depend on how one conceives of theories in the first place. If one thinks of them in terms of an axiomatised set of logico-linguistic statements, then one might be naturally drawn to accounts of linguistic representation in which notions of denotation, for example, feature prominently. If, on the other hand, one conceives of theories in non-linguistic terms, as in the model-theoretic approach, then one might look to analyses of representation in the arts where notions of resemblance tend to be brought to the fore. Van Fraassen, for example, has imported such an analysis into his discussion of representation in science and argued that an appropriate account of resemblance can be given in terms of the set-theoretic relation of isomorphism (1994). This has been strongly criticised by Suarez, who argues that just as isomorphism cannot capture representation in art, so it is inappropriate in the scientific context as well (1999). Similarly Hughes draws on Goodmans rejection of resemblance in art in favour of denotation and, rather confusingly perh