Two senses of representation in science

Abstract

Accounts of scientific representation typically assume that there is a single sense of “represent”, and they attempt to develop a theory that can account for all its features. The aim of this article is to draw the consequences of a distinction between two senses of “represent” that has been proposed recently. Taking inspiration from the distinction between speaker-meaning and expression-meaning in philosophy of language, a first sense is analysed in terms of the mental states of the user of a vehicle in context, and a second sense in terms of communal norms constraining contextual uses. I argue that making this distinction, and thus understanding the representation relation as essentially indexical and normative, can help us move beyond the controversies between various accounts of scientific representation, notably what have been dubbed informational and functional accounts, as well as debates regarding the ontology of scientific models.