Models and Cognition is a rigorous philosophical examination of how scientific models function in cognitive science and what they actually explain.

Jonathan A. Waskan interrogates a foundational assumption in contemporary cognitive theory: that internal models genuinely do explanatory work rather than merely redescribing behaviour at a convenient level of abstraction.

Engaging with philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and cognitive psychology, Waskan asks what it means for a model to represent, predict, or explain mental processes. He challenges overly instrumental views of modelling while remaining sceptical of naive realism about mental representations.

The book is especially attentive to issues of mechanism, abstraction, and explanatory depth, positioning cognitive models not as metaphors or heuristics but as candidates for real scientific explanation — provided they meet demanding criteria.

This is a serious, technically precise work, best suited to readers interested in philosophy of cognition, representational theory, and the epistemology of scientific modelling.