Ceteris Paribus Laws: Generics & Natural Kinds

Ceteris Paribus Laws: Genericity and Natural Kinds

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,...

Processes in the Interpretation of Generics and CP-Laws∗

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 taken this feature to introduce the presumption that cp-laws are trivial, one that needs to be countered if we are to appeal to cp-laws in the course of scientific investigation or our philosophical theorizing about it. I argue that...

The Role of Kinds in the Semantics of Ceteris Paribus Laws

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...

Ceteris Paribus, There Is No Problem of Provisos

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...