Ceteris Paribus and Ceteris Rectis Laws: Content and Causal Role

Schurz, Gerhard

doi:10.1007/s10670-014-9643-8

Cited by 11 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Hitchcock and Woodward prefer this term to 'ceteris paribus laws'. This does appear just to be a terminological decision (see reutlinger et al 2017;Hitchcock & Woodward 2003a: 3;Schurz 2014Schurz : 1805 but, in any case, nothing of substance turns on the distinction here.…”

Section: Bf Exceptions and Causationmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…in fact, Schurz's (2014Schurz's ( : 1808 formal explication of ceteris rectis laws makes it clear that he wishes his notion of them to cover both cases where the generalization only holds for a certain range of values of background variables not represented in the generalization (2014: 1802-1803) and cases where the generalization only holds for a certain range of values of variables that are represented in the generalization (2014: 1804) and cases where the generalization holds only for sibly also an example of what Schurz calls an exclusive cp law (the two categories are therefore not mutually exclusive-see Schurz 2002: 353;: 1803-1804reutlinger, Schurz, & Hüttemann 2017: Section 3.1), since it may be violated (for example) in the presence of a strong electric field.…”

Section: 'Background Factor' (Bf) Exceptionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…(As will be seen in Section 5, high-level generalizations also typically admit of exceptions that arise when certain background micro-variables take unusual values.) in fact, there are at least two cases to distinguish, corresponding at least roughly to Schurz's (2002) distinction between comparative ceteris paribus laws and exclusive ceteris paribus laws, or what he later (Schurz 2014) calls 'literal' ceteris paribus laws and ceteris rectis laws. 8 A comparative (or 'literal') ceteris paribus (cp) law is one that holds only when the values of certain background variables remain constant (Schurz 2002: 351-352;: 1802-1803).…”

Section: 'Background Factor' (Bf) Exceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is There High-Level Causation?

Fenton-Glynn¹

2017

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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The discovery of causal relations seems a central activity of the high-level sciences, including the special sciences and certain branches of macrophysics. Those same sciences are less successful in formulating exceptionless laws. if causation must be underwritten by exceptionless laws, we are faced with a puzzle. Attempts have been made to dissolve this puzzle by showing that non-exceptionless generalizations can underwrite causal relations. The trouble is that many of these attempts fail to distinguish between two importantly different types of exception of which highlevel scientific generalizations admit. roughly speaking, one is where the values of high-level variables not represented in the generalization are abnormal: call these 'background factor' (bf) exceptions. For example, the ideal Gas Law (iGL) may be significantly violated by a gas if a strong electric current is passed through it. Another is where the high-level states that are represented by variables in the generalization are realized in certain abnormal ways: call these 'mr exceptions' (exceptions having to do with the multiple realizability of high-level states). For example, the pressure of a gas may not be proportional to its temperature and volume in the way that the iGL describes if the initial macrostate of the gas is realized in a certain unusual microphysical way. While existing attempts to show that non-exceptionless generalizations can underwrite causal relations tend to work well where the generalization admits only of bf exceptions, they work less well when the generalizations in question admit-as most high-level scientific generalizations do-of mr exceptions. i argue that the best prospect for resolving the apparent problem posed by mr exceptions is to regard the generalizations which admit of them as approximations to probabilistic generalizations which don't, and which are themselves able to support relations of probabilistic causation.

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Section: Bf Exceptions and Causationmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: 'Background Factor' (Bf) Exceptionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: 'Background Factor' (Bf) Exceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is There High-Level Causation?

Fenton-Glynn¹

2017

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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“…Take (i), epistemic inaccessibility: statements of the form 'CP, All As are Bs' can be interpreted to mean the same as 'All As in C are B', where this is a two partclaim: the explicit claim that a finite and determinate number of conditions {C1 … Cn} need to obtain for the generalisation to be true, and the implicit claim that an opaque and potentially infinite set of further conditions {Cn + 1, Cn + 2, ...} are nomically irrelevant to the generalisation, given the evidence in its support (Kowalenko 2014: 147;cf. Strevens 2012, Schurz 2014. In other words, CP clauses when spelt out explicitly state the causal factors that are known, given the evidence, to interfere with the truth of the generalisation, while implying that other causal factors are not thus known (ibid.).…”

Section: Manipulationism and Regularities Ceteris Paribusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulationism,Ceteris ParibusLaws, and the Bugbear of Background Knowledge

Kowalenko

2017

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

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According to manipulationist accounts of causal explanation, to explain an event is to show how it could be changed by intervening on its cause. The relevant change must be a 'serious possibility' claims Woodward 2003, distinct from mere logical or physical possibility-approximating something I call 'scientific possibility'. This idea creates significant difficulties: background knowledge is necessary for judgments of possibility. Yet the primary vehicles of explanation in manipulationism are 'invariant' generalisations, and these are not well adapted to encoding such knowledge, especially in the social sciences, as some of it is non-causal. Ceteris paribus (CP) laws or generalisations labour under no such difficulty. A survey of research methods such as case and comparative studies, randomised control trials, ethnography, and structural equation modeling, suggests that it would be more difficult and in some instances impossible to try to represent the output of each method in invariant generalisations; and that this is because in each method causal and non-causal background knowledge mesh in a way that cannot easily be accounted for in manipulationist terms. Ceteris paribusgeneralisations being superior in this regard, a theory of explanation based on the latter is a better fit for social science.

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“…2 For Spohn and Nickel, what counts as normal depends in part on practitioners' aims and assumptions. Schurz proposes that science should "reconstruct" generalizations framed in terms of normal conditions so as to eliminate their normality riders in favor of a stochastic connection between antecedent and consequent, or in other words, that narrowing generalizations should be converted into what I will call soft generalizations; see also Schurz (2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

High-Level Exceptions Explained

Strevens

2014

Erkenn

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Why are causal generalizations in the higher-level sciences "inexact"? That is, why do they have apparent exceptions? This paper offers one explanation: many causal generalizations cite as their antecedent-the F in Fs are G-a property that is not causally relevant to the consequent, but which is rather "entangled" with a causally relevant property. Entanglement is a relation that may exist for many reasons, and that allows of exceptions. Causal generalizations that specify entangled but causally irrelevant antecedents therefore tolerate exceptions.

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Ceteris Paribus and Ceteris Rectis Laws: Content and Causal Role

Cited by 11 publications

References 13 publications

Is There High-Level Causation?

Is There High-Level Causation?

Manipulationism,Ceteris ParibusLaws, and the Bugbear of Background Knowledge

High-Level Exceptions Explained

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