Best-Systems Analyses
Edited by Markus Schrenk (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
Assistant editor: Florian J. Boge (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)
About this topic
Summary | The best known Best Systems Account of Laws of Nature is often referred to as the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account. All three philosophers have formulated versions of it where David Lewis's is the most sophisticated. It says, roughly: Suppose you knew everything about the past, present, and future, all facts, all events, and you organised your entire knowledge as simply as possible in various systems. The statements in these systems must mention natural properties only. A contingent generalisation is, then, a law of nature if and only if it appears as an axiom or theorem in the one system that achieves a far better combination of simplicity, strength and fit than any of the other competing systems. To have strength is to bear a great deal of informational content about the world; to be simple is to state everything in a concise way, not to be redundant, etc., to fit is, especially for the probabilistic laws, to accord as much as possible with the actual outcomes of world history. |
Key works | The original Best System Analysis is in: Lewis 1973 (pp.73-77); and Lewis 1999 (esp. pp. 8-55 and 224-247). Versions of it that are discussed under the heading Better Best Systems can be found here: Cohen & Callender 2009, Schrenk 2006. |
Introductions | There are no introductions specifically on this subject but see the references in the general entry "Laws of Nature" and here under key works. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Anti-Realism about Laws (113)
- Ceteris Paribus Laws (194)
- Humeanism and Nonhumeanism about Laws (252)
- Law Statements (66)
- Laws as Relations between Universals (117)
- Necessitarianism about Laws (187)
- Nomological Necessity (184)
- Probabilistic Laws (62)
- Special Science Laws (187)
- Laws of Nature, Misc (496)
- Explanation and Laws (139)
- Causation and Laws (170)
- Dispositions and Laws (188)
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