When Other Things Aren’t Equal: Saving Ceteris Paribus Laws from Vacuity

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1):81-110 (1995)
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Abstract

A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statements vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antecedents of ?real? laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformulations are rare; and they are not, we argue, to be expected in general. So we defend an alternative sufficient condition for the non-vacuity of ceteris paribus laws: roughly, any counterinstance of the law must be independently explicable, in a sense we make explicit. Ceteris paribus laws will carry a plethora of explanatory commitments; and claims that such commitments are satisfied will be as (dis) confirmable as other empirical claims

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Author Profiles

Paul Pietroski
Rutgers - New Brunswick
Georges Rey
University of Maryland, College Park

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References found in this work

Nature's capacities and their measurement.Nancy Cartwright - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Mental Events.Donald Davidson - 1970 - In L. Foster & J. W. Swanson (eds.), Experience and Theory. Clarendon Press. pp. 207-224.
Wittgenstein on rules and private language.Saul A. Kripke - 1982 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 173 (4):496-499.

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