Ceterus Paribus Laws

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-4

   PDF

2. Ceteris Paribus Lost

   • John Earman, John T. Roberts, Sheldon Smith

   Pages 5-25

3. There is No Such Thing as a Ceteris Paribus Law

   • James Woodward

   Pages 27-52

4. Ceteris Paribus — An Inadequate Representation for Biological Contingency

   • Sandra D. Mitchell

   Pages 53-74

5. Ceteris Paribus Laws: Classification and Deconstruction

   • Gerhard Schurz

   Pages 75-96

6. Laws, Ceteris Paribus Conditions, and the Dynamics of Belief

   • Wolfgang Spohn

   Pages 97-118

7. A Semantics and Methodology for Ceteris Paribus Hypotheses

   • Clark Glymour

   Pages 119-129

8. Who’s Afraid of Ceteris-Paribus Laws? Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Them

   • Marc Lange

   Pages 131-147

9. In Favor of Laws that are Not Ceteris Paribus After All

   • Nancy Cartwright

   Pages 149-163

10. Cartwright on Explanation and Idealization

    • Mehmet Elgin, Elliott Sober

    Pages 165-174

Natural and social sciences seem very often, though usually only implicitly, to hedge their laws by ceteris paribus clauses - a practice which is philosophically very hard to understand because such clauses seem to render the laws trivial and unfalsifiable. After early worries the issue is vigorously discussed in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind since ca. 15 years.
This volume collects the most prominent philosophers of science in the field and presents a lively, controversial, but well-integrated, highly original and up-to-date discussion of the issue. It will be the reference book in the coming years concerning ceteris paribus laws.

• mind
• philosophy of mind
• philosophy of science
• science
• semantics

• University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

  John Earman, Sandra Mitchell

• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

  Clark Glymour

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