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Scientific models consist of fictitious elements and assumptions. Various attempts have been made to answer the question of how a model, which is sometimes viewed as a fiction, can explain or predict the target phenomenon adequately. I examine two accounts (the counterfactual dependency view and the idealization view) of models-as-fictions which are aiming at disentangling the myth of representing the reality by fictional models. I argue that both views have their own weaknesses in spite of many virtues. I propose to re-evaluate the problems of representation from a novel perspective in which some of the model representations can be regarded as fictional representations. I argue that this type of model representation is credible despite being a fictional representation of the reality.

DOI: 10.1007/s10516-018-9379-1

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