About Extensional Equivalence Between Epistemic Representations and Representation-As

In the last decades, two proposals have emerged in the philosophy of science regarding scientific models and their representational function. According to one of them, scientific models are subsumed under the category of epistemic representations. According to the other, scientific models are subsumed under the category of representations-as. This article proposes that there is an extensional equivalence between epistemic representations and representations-as. This thesis is defended by arguing that the necessary and sufficient conditions that determine representations-as are those that explain how surrogative, which is the symptom used in the literature to define epistemic representations, is possible. One consequence of this thesis is that the acceptance of one of the proposals about scientific models and their representational function implies the acceptance of the other. Another consequence, and its main advantage, is offering a proposal about how epistemic representations are possible.