ceteris-paribus lawfulness

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Ceteris-paribus lawfulness is reliable regularity under specified supporting conditions, with interfering factors excluded and the relevant mechanisms maintained. The manuscript draws on Cartwright to treat this scope as explanatory rather than a defect of law. A regularity can be objectively robust and locally accomplished without becoming an exceptionless command valid everywhere or an arbitrary pattern imposed by an observer.

Explanation

RB1 states that scientific laws can hold insofar as mechanisms remain intact and interference is excluded. Their conditions explain their reliability, rather than making any unexplained failure automatically acceptable. The proposed entry retains those conditions as part of the regularity’s warrant instead of silently expanding a local model into a law of every possible situation.

RB2 develops Cartwright’s nomological machines as organized arrangements capable of generating repeatable effects. The arrangement need not be only a laboratory device: its relevant variables and constraints can be sustained in other concrete setups. AB’s dappled-world image likewise depicts overlapping regimes, some exceptionally exact and others expressed as robust tendencies.

The surrounding meta-law compares different modes of lawfulness while explicitly distinguishing physical law, emergent regularity, grammar and legal norm. Their family resemblance does not prove identical mechanisms or that every fundamental physical law literally evolves. The entry therefore concerns scope-conditioned reliability rather than an unrestricted license to rename any stable social habit a physical law.

Scope and attribution

Preserve Cartwright’s attribution and the concrete supporting conditions of the regularity.

AB — The Actual Book

Dappled regimes permit different degrees and forms of exactness without erasing strata.

Occurrence locators: 133; Thinker register: 228; Notes: 244.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

The ceteris-paribus qualification explains reliable regularity under intact mechanisms and excluded interference.

Occurrence locators: 123.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Nomological machines produce repeatable effects, with kinds of law kept distinct.

Occurrence locators: 254, 255, 276, 277, 286.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.