WHEN OTHER THINGS ARENT EQUAL - SAVING CETERIS PARIBUS LAWS FROM VACUITY

A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statement s vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antec edents of 'real' laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformul ations 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 par ibus laws will carry a plethora of explanatory commitments; and claims that such commitments are satisfied will be as (dis)confirmable as ot her empirical claims.