Ceteris Paribus Laws: Genericity and Natural Kinds
نویسنده
چکیده
Ceteris Paribus (cp-)laws may be said to hold only “other things equal,” signaling that their truth is compatible with a range of exceptions. Several theorists have suggested that because of this feature, these generalizations are semantically defective. Against these concerns, I argue that cp-laws are often stated using a special kind of construction found in natural language, generics, which, though puzzling, is obviously semantically in order. I then argue that we can understand many otherwise puzzling features of cp-laws as an interaction between the semantics of generics and the structure of natural kinds in the special sciences.
منابع مشابه
Ceteris Paribus Laws (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual clai...
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Much of the literature on ceteris paribus laws is based on a misguided egalitarianism about the sciences. For example, it is commonly held that the special sciences are riddled with ceteris paribus laws; from this many commentators conclude that if the special sciences are not to be accorded a second class status, it must be ceteris paribus all the way down to fundamental physics. We argue that...
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Taking seriously the arguments of Earman, Roberts and Smith that ceteris paribus laws have no semantics and cannot be tested, I suggest that ceteris paribus claims have a kind of formal pragmatics, and that at least some of them can be verified or refuted
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