 But serious doubts have been raised as to how to spell out the ceteris paribus clause in a way that fits the bill. It is even claimed that the only way to spell it out in such a way is to render the proposed analysis vacuous. For, on the intended reading of the ceteris paribus clause, to say that if \(x\) were struck, then ceteris paribus it would break seems to be simply to say that if it were struck then, unless it didn’t break, it would break, which is vacuously true (Martin 1994; Bird 1998; Mumford 1998, 2001; Fara 2005 and Hauska 2008b) See Mellor 2000 and Steinberg 2010 for the view that the risk of vacuity is unproblematic. See also Choi 2008 and Steinberg &amp; Steinberg 2017 for an attempt to spell out the ceteris paribus clauses in a way that does not render the resulting conditionals vacuous.