RELATIVE AND OBJECTIVE, ON BALANCE: Detailing the Best Systems Analysis of Laws

Abstract

Variations on Lewis’ Best Systems Analysis (BSA) of laws of nature have tended to emphasize the aspects of the view that allow it to accommodate the peculiarities of scientific practice. That move has allowed such views to do a lot of good work in solving old and new challenges for the BSA, but at the cost of strengthening the argument against the BSA that it is insufficiently objective. I argue that the “insufficiently objective” objection is overcome by a balance of relativity in the laws and limits to that relativity, each properly motivated by appeal to scientific practice. I then explore what relativity in the laws, and limits to it, may be required by scientific practice.