Ceteris Paribus and Ceteris Rectis Laws: Content and Causal Role.

Schurz, Gerhard

This paper has three goals. The first goal is to work out the difference between literal ceteris paribus (cp) laws in the sense of 'all others being equal' and ceteris rectis (cr) 'laws' in the sense of 'all others being right' (Sects. 2, 4). While cp laws involve a universal quantification, cr generalizations involve an existential quantification over the values of the remainder variables Z. As a result, the two differ crucially in their confirmability and lawlikeness. The second goal is to provide a classification of different kinds of cr generalizations (indefinite, definite and normic), including certain transition cases between cr generalizations and cp laws (Sect. 3). The third goal is to work out what cp laws and all kinds of cr assertions have in common: they figure as an information source for assertions of causal influence between variables (Sect. 5).

PHYSICAL laws; NEWTON'S second law of motion; ABSOLUTE temperature; GRAVITATIONAL effects; PROBABILITY theory

Erkenntnis, 2014, Vol 79, Issue 10, p1801

0165-0106

Academic Journal

10.1007/s10670-014-9643-8