The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science - The Department ...

Harold Kincaid
if social science claims were qualified ceteris paribus so long as they predicted the
data.
This instrumentalism might be justified on other grounds, but unless it is, it is
no solution to the ceteris paribus problem. Social scientists claim to explain, to cite
causes, and to make policy recommendations. Economists, for example, assert that
various macroeconomic variables – the rate of interest, the money supply, etc –
influence employment and growth. If the theories economists use to explain
these phenomena make false assumptions, then we have reason to doubt those
explanations. Successful predictions may be lucky accidents that will not hold up
in new circumstances; they may result from spurious correlations. The only way
to rule out this situation is to provide evidence that the postulated mechanisms
are the true ones – and that means finding evidence somehow that other things
are equal.
Another response to the ceteris paribus problem has been to spell out truth conditions
– to determine what states of affairs would make a claims qualified ceteris
paribus true. Numerous proposal have been offered, with Hausman (1981, 1992)
being the most direct application to the issue in the social sciences. According to
Hausman, the phrase “ceteris paribus” has a fixed meaning, but what proposition
it picks out depends on the context. The claim “All As are Bs, ceteris paribus” is
true in context C just in case C picks out a property P such that “Everything that
is both A and P is B” is true.
Giving truth conditions may help remove doubts that claims qualified ceteris
paribus are meaningful. Yet stating truth conditions and having good evidence
that those conditions obtain are entirely different things, and it is the latter
problem that remains for the social sciences. Using Hausman’s analysis, how are
we to identify property P? If the ceteris paribus clause is unspecified, then how
are we to know if P is instantiated? Perhaps P is only infrequently seen in the
contexts we observe. The basic problem remains.
A second approach comes from Cartwright (1989). She provides truth conditions
as well, with ceteris paribus laws referring to capacities. Her truth conditions
face the same problem mentioned above, namely, stating truth conditions still
leaves us with the problem whether we every know they are satisfied. However,
Cartwright’s account has interesting implications for the natural sciences. In her
view, neither the social sciences nor the physical sciences produce strict laws about
observables. So the fact that social science claims are qualified ceteris paribus cannot
show a fundamental divide.
There are compelling objections to Cartwright’s arguments against strict laws
(Earman and Roberts, 1999). Nonetheless, it surely is true that some seemingly
quite respectable natural science faces the ceteris paribus issue. So, arguably, the
key question concerns what strategies there are for dealing with the complexity
that leads to ceteris paribus claims and whether those strategies are open to the
social sciences.
Two questions are at issue: is the claim qualified ceteris paribus plausible or true,
and does it explain in the circumstances in question? Is it true that, other things
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