Talk:Ceteris paribus
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Q: how to pronunciate Ceteris ? R: in classical Latin, something like kehtehriss, with the stress on the first syllable; but nobody will notice if you say seh instead of keh; Encarta Dictionary says the best options (for English-speakers!) is [káytEriss pááribEs, séttEriss párrEbEss], where E sounds like a in about or i in edible. Velho 00:28, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Translation
I changed the literal translation, since ceteris paribus is in the ablative (that's the with) and the verb for to be (esse) is often omitted in Latin. Velho 00:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] How to Decline the Adjective par
The Latin adjective par (meaning "equal") observes the usual rules for Latin's third declension. It is a typical Latin adjective. The masculine and feminine forms look alike (omitting the vocative and locative forms, being as how they were historically absorbed into the history of the nominatives and genitive cases).
The adjective is declined as follows:
Singular Masculine/Feminine Singular Neuter Nominative par par Genitive paris paris Dative pari pari Accusative parem par Ablative pare pare
Plural Masculine/Feminine Plural Neuter Nominative pares paria Genitive parium parium Dative paribus paribus Accusative pares paria Ablative paribus paribus
The neuter forms of the Latin adjective par are declined exactly like the masculine and feminine forms but for the accusatives looking like the nominatives, and having the nominative form - in other words, par in the singular and paria in the plural.
[edit] Inter Alia and Ceteris Paribus
Inter alia is Latin for "among other things." Both alia and paribus have similar meanings, but paribus takes the ablative form because it goes with the adjective ceteris and forms an "ablative absolute" - a Latin construction that sets itself off from the rest of the sentence inasmuch as it functions like an independent clause, nearly a sentence unto itself. In the phrase inter alia, alia is a neuter plural also, but it takes the form it does because it is a first declension adjective instead of a third declension adjective, and the preposition inter demands an accusative in the nouns or adjectives that follow it. You could switch the adjectives around to say inter paria or ceteris aliis and arrive at similar meanings. (Respectively, among equals, and the rest of the others.
This notion is put to great use in Nancy Cartwright's 'How the Laws of Physics Lie' (Oxford University Press, 1983).
Rosa Lichtenstein
13/05/06
http://www.anti-dialectics.org
[edit] Leap year example
I don't much like the leap year example (no offence intended to the author of the paragraph), as I don't feel that really is what CP is about. February can either be a leap year or not - saying 'all other things held constant' doesn't really eliminate the possibility of it being a leap year, it's just a matter of probability really (about 1:4 chance), so I don't think this gives an accurate description of what CP really is. What I would suggest would be outside of CP here is perhaps the possibility of the earth speeding up suddenly and rotating twice as fast - though this is hardly an ideal example either as the definition of a day may well remain the same in this case (and just become shorter). But say the number of days in February did change in an unexpected way, that would be the situation you are trying to eliminate with CP. Leap years are something we know about and can predict, so I'd suggest we use a better example for this part. Here's the paragraph below. Richard001 07:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I say "If the current month is February — ceteris paribus — then it will last only 28 days," then the ceteris paribus clause is added in order to exclude the possibility that it is a leap year. Since there is a fixed set of rules that define whether or not the present year is a leap year, one could (in principle) eliminate the ceteris paribus clause from the analysis by rephrasing the sentence to "If the current month is February, and the current year is not evenly divisible by 4, then it will last only 28 days." (Actually the rules for determining a leap year are more complex than that; but there is a finite number of rules, and you could in principle include them all in the sentence.)
I think the leap year example demonstrates the uselessness of the concept as a whole. How exactly is this different than saying "cutting the price of beef increases demand for beef ceteris paribus"? It isn't any different - in both cases you are trying to tell what usually happens wihout citing every condition that must be true for the same result to occur.
But how can you tell if a given february is a case of "ceteris paribus" or not if you don't even know what it is that has to be the same because it wasn't directly adressed?
[edit] Uselessness of the concept
This concept is utterly useless for the following reasons.
1 - Generality problem of induction
Since the entire state of the univers is not the same, and it isn't occuring at the same point in space/time, it is never true that all else is equal.
2 -
Even if you limit what is equal to only what will effect the outcome, the concept is still useless because you have to know what that is, which of course usually you don't.
3 -
Even if it's a case where you do know everything that could affect the outcome,(such as a human defined concept like the feburary example having 28 days unless it is a leap year) then you still need to have a way to recognize when the current situation is a case of all else being the same as before or not. For example if you came across a feburary, in order to use the statement "feburary has 28 days ceteris paribus" to determine that the encountered february has 28 days, you would have to know what has to be the same for the statement to apply. Which means you have to know that it isn't leap year, which defeats the whole purpose of ceteris paribus.
Real life experience seems to drive people to believe this concept is meaningful, but to counter this consider the following example.
You are in a football field and coach says throwing the ball will cause it to fly down field. Consider the 3 following occurences.
1. If you run up and block the ball when he throws it, then he says "well of course it won't fly down the field if you block it, I meant if noone blocked it". In this case both you and the coach knew ahead of time that blocking the ball would invalidate his claim, so it is pointless for him to say "ceteris paribus" as it excludes no scenario that you did not already know would effect the outcome.
2. The coach throws the ball, but the wind is so strong that the ball doesn't go anywhere. The coach stands there dumbfounded. The coach did not realize the wind could invalidate his claim. Therefore his claim was based on ignorance, and a statement of "ceteris paribus" communicates nothing in this case either as it cannot communicate the exclusion of something the coach did not even know about when he said it.
3. The coach pulls out a lead football that looks like a normal one and throws it. You did not know the football was made out of lead as you cannot tell by looking out it. "ceteris paribus" also does not allow you to rule out this scenario, as you cannot tell the difference between this and any other time the coach throws the football to know if "all else is equal".
4. The coach, being experienced in the ways of football, happens to know that on days of the week with a m in the name, footballs don't fly down the field when thrown. The coach might say the ball will fly down the field when thrown "ceteris paribus" and know that it being monday is one of the things that would make things different. However since you do not know that it being monday makes a difference, the statement still does not communicate anything you can use to determine the outcome.
Someone please feel free to give an example where this concept is not useless?
[edit] Usefulness of the concept
I don't see this term as useless at all. To give an example:
Imagine you have programmed a computer to play poker and are now describing it's style of play. You have ranked all starting hands from best to worst and now you make the statement: "The better a hand my program has, the higher a share of it's stack will it bet initially". In this case it makes a huge difference whether you say ceteris paribus. If you DO add ceteris paribus the program can include other factors than hand rank, such as position on the table, history of other players' actions, stack size, blind size etc, and these factors will be strong enough to override the rank-bet factor. If you DON'T add ceteris paribus, then your program will either a) deterministically base it's betting value on the rank of it's hand alone or b) give other factors so little weight that they cannot prevent a higher rank from making the bet moving upwards (but perhaps make it move upwards less than it otherwise would have).
Of course this example works within a specified framework with it's own fixed rules (poker rules) and institutions (functioning computers and electrical supply). Unfix these and there will of course ALWAYS be a ceteris paribus needed just in case of that apocalyptic meteor strike which wipes out humans and computer programs alike. But within given implicit or explicit frameworks, ceteris paribus, can make real qualitative difference.
- Eagersnap 18/10/06
