Mill-Ramsey-Lewis Accounts of Law

If we organised all the facts about the world into a system, and that system had the best balance between simplicity and strength, then the axioms and high-level theorems of that system would be the laws of nature.

Literature

See Lewis 1973b, pp 72-77, and Lewis 1983, pp213-218.

Problems

It is unclear how we should measure simplicity and strength, and how we should balance them. Further, there is no guarantee that there will be a winning system. Finally, it isn't clear that empirical investigation will produce approximations to the correct laws, nor is it clear how we could know whether we got it right or wrong.
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Copyright David Chart 1998