Page "Ceteris paribus" Paragraph 16

But, if it is not even possible in principle to say just what is being ruled out by the ceteris paribus clause in these examples, then ( these philosophers worry ) it is no longer clear that the analysis is philosophically informative.

The suspicion of ceteris paribus arises because it seems sometimes to be used to conceal a sort of conceptual " blank spot " in the analysis, and ( these philosophers allege ) the existence of such a " blank spot " is as good a reason as any to think that an analysis that depends on it is not the right direction to take in analyzing a particular concept.

This is not to say that such ceteris paribus statements are not analytically true.

The argument is, instead, that the clause shows that their truth depends on a proper analysis of the concept, which has yet to be done.

For example, consider the analysis of causation as B following A ceteris paribus.

If the analyst is asked to pin down just what condition the ceteris paribus is imposing, and the ceteris paribus clause is genuinely ineliminable, then it looks as though all that can be said is something like, " A causes B if and only if A is followed by B in a cause-like pattern ".

And that is for certain true, but it would be hard to give it as an analysis of causation with a straight face.

The charge, then, is that ineliminable ceteris paribus clauses in an analysis conceal a conceptual circularity.

Jerry Fodor in " Psychosemantics " states that a statement of the form Ceteris paribus A is equivalent to saying, A ... unless not A, making them vacuously true and really rather pointless.