Abstract

I analyse three most interesting and extensive approaches to theoretical models: classical ones—proposed by Peter Achinstein and Michael Redhead, and the rela- tively rare analysed approach of Ryszard Wójcicki, belonging to a later phase of his research where he gave up applying the conceptual apparatus of logical semantics. I take into consideration the approaches to theoretical models in which they are qualified as models representing the reality. That is why I omit Max Black’s and Mary Hesse’s concepts of such models, as those two concepts belong to the analogue model group if we consider the main function of the model of a given class as its classification criterion. My main focus is on theoretical models with representative functions as these very models and, in a broader context, the question of representation.