The ontology of scientific models

All philosophers of science today agree that the models are indispensable part of the scientific activity. If there is an additional point that unites at least most of the philosophers of science, it is that models are representations. Traditional view says that models give us knowledge about a certain target system due to their accurately representing that system. In other words, the epistemic value of models is based on an objective representational relationship between the properties of a model and its target. But as some observe, it is always not the case that there is such a direct relationship between the two. Scientists often work not on real systems but on hypothetical systems. Thus arises the important question of what kind of entites scientific models are. In an attempt to make sense of the modelling activity that emerges over the last decade or fifteen years, some accounts draw attention to certain similarities between scientific models and the works of art. The most notable among them is the view that models are "fictional" in the sense Kendall Walton, a prominent philosopher of art, has used it. This work, also, is an outcome of a view in which it is claimed that there are various similarities between models and literary works of art. But the work essentially takes its support from the views of Amie Thomasson, a philosopher of art and a metaphysician, and asserts that scientific models are human-made objects, that is, artifacts. According to the account (artifactualism) that is presented here, models are some kind of tools put into use by scientists to solve certain problems. This view considers models as tools that are used in achieving a goal instead of solely seeing them as representations of a target system. So, it comprises not only the representational approach but even the Waltonian account of scientific modelling.