Talk:Ceteris paribus

message: 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)
thread_title: Pronunciation

message: 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)
thread_title:  Translation 

message: 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)
thread_title: Leap year example

message: 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?
:You have completely misused the term and your own example would suffice if you used it properly.  It would be as if the coach says “As Jimmy throws the ball closer to the 45 degree angle with the field, he is able to throw the ball farther down the field, ceteris paribus.”  He is passing information on to someone, asking them to take into account the fact that this is not a full explanation of cause and effect (wind, how hard he threw it, whether the ball is made of lead, etc., also play a strong role in the outcome), and yet it is information that is true and worth noting.  In other words, the angle may NEVER correspond with the distance during a particular game because of various other factors, but the original statement would still be valid and worth noting.70.144.90.132 (talk) 20:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uselessness of the concept 

message: I rated this article as "Start" class, only because of the poor section on the use of ceteris paribus in philosophy. The sections relating to the use of this term in economics are reasonably good, in my opinion. I am not qualified to rewrite the philosophical section — are there any philosophers out there who could give it go? —Aetheling 16:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Quality rating

message: I have seen a reference [1] to the cereris parabus fallacy that should probably be defined here. Presumably it means assuming all other things are equal when actually they aren't.
[1] http://www.google.com/buzz/114134834346472219368/M7qWtHmuXqC/Mathematicians-like-to-describe-geometric-spaces  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.212.212 (talk) 20:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Cereris paribus fallacy