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The epistemological argument against Lewis’s regularity view of laws

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Abstract

I argue for the claim that if Lewis’s regularity theory of laws were true, we could not know any positive law statement to be true. Premise 1: According to that theory, for any law statement true of the actual world, there is always a nearby world where the law statement is false (a world that differs with respect to one matter of particular fact). Premise 2: One cannot know a proposition to be true if it is false in a nearby world (the epistemological safety principle). The conclusion that no law statement can be known to be true follows immediately from the two premises.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TB, UK

    Alexander Bird

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  1. Alexander Bird
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Correspondence to Alexander Bird.

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Bird, A. The epistemological argument against Lewis’s regularity view of laws. Philos Stud 138, 73–89 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-0010-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-0010-8

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