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Everything Else Being Equal: A Modal Logic for Ceteris Paribus Preferences

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Abstract

This paper presents a new modal logic for ceteris paribus preferences understood in the sense of “all other things being equal”. This reading goes back to the seminal work of Von Wright in the early 1960’s and has returned in computer science in the 1990’s and in more abstract “dependency logics” today. We show how it differs from ceteris paribus as “all other things being normal”, which is used in contexts with preference defeaters. We provide a semantic analysis and several completeness theorems. We show how our system links up with Von Wright’s work, and how it applies to game-theoretic solution concepts, to agenda setting in investigation, and to preference change. We finally consider its relation with infinitary modal logics.

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Author notes

  1. Patrick Girard

    Present address: University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

  2. Olivier Roy

    Present address: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Johan van Benthem & Olivier Roy

  2. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Johan van Benthem & Patrick Girard

Authors
  1. Johan van Benthem
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  2. Patrick Girard
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  3. Olivier Roy
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Correspondence to Johan van Benthem.

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van Benthem, J., Girard, P. & Roy, O. Everything Else Being Equal: A Modal Logic for Ceteris Paribus Preferences. J Philos Logic 38, 83–125 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-008-9085-3

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