Generic Generalizations

First published Sun Apr 24, 2016; substantive revision Thu Aug 4, 2022

Generics are statements such as “tigers are striped”,“a duck lays eggs”, “the dodo is extinct”, and“ticks carry Lyme disease”. Generics expressgeneralizations, but unlike quantified statements, generics do notcarry information about how many members of the kind or category havethe property. For example, if asked “how many ravens areblack?” one could reply “all [or some, or most, etc.]ravens are black”, but one cannot felicitously reply with thegeneric “ravens are black” (Carlson 1977).

Generics have proved quite difficult to analyze semantically. Forexample, “dogs are mammals” seems to require for its truththat all dogs be mammals. “A tiger is striped” or“ravens are black”, however, are somewhat more forgiving,since they are compatible with the existence of a few stripelesstigers and white albino ravens. “Ducks lay eggs” and“a lion has a mane” are more forgiving still; thesegenerics are true even though it is only the mature members of one sexthat possess the relevant properties. Notice, however, that we do notaccept “ducks are female”, even though every egg-layingduck is a female duck. Finally, we accept “ticks carry Lymedisease”, even though very few ticks (approximately one percent)actually have the property, while also rejecting “humans areright-handed”, when over ninety percent of humans areright-handed.

As these examples illustrate, generics are not equivalent in meaningto any of the quantifying determiners such as “all”,“some”, or “most”. They also differ in meaningfrom sentences containing adverbs of quantification (Lewis 1975) suchas “generally”, “usually”, or“often”. For example, the generic “books arepaperbacks” is false, yet the insertion of any of these adverbsof quantification would render the statement true: “books aregenerally/usually/often paperbacks”.

1. Generics and Logical Form

In English, generics can be expressed using a variety of syntacticforms:bare plurals (e.g., “tigers are striped”),indefinite singulars (e.g., “a tiger isstriped”), anddefinite singulars (“the tiger isstriped”). However, none of these syntactic forms is dedicatedto expressing generic claims; each can also be used to expressexistential and/or specific claims. Further, some generics expresswhat appear to be generalizations over individuals (e.g.,“tigers are striped”), while others appear to predicateproperties directly of the kind (e.g., “dodos areextinct”). These facts and others give rise to a number ofquestions concerning the logical forms of generic statements.

1.1 Isolating the Generic Interpretation

Consider the following pairs of sentences:

(1)

a.: Tigers are striped.
b.: Tigers are on the front lawn.

(2)

a.: A tiger is striped.
b.: A tiger is on the front lawn.

(3)

a.: The tiger is striped.
b.: The tiger is on the front lawn.

The sentence pairs above areprima facie syntacticallyparallel—both are subject-predicate sentences whose subjectsconsist of the same common noun coupled with the same, or no, article.However, the interpretation of first sentence of each pair isintuitively quite different from the interpretation of the secondsentence in the pair. In the second sentences, we are talking aboutsome particular tigers: a group of tigers in (1b), some individual tiger in (2b), and some unique salient or familiar tiger in (3b)—a beloved pet, perhaps. In the first sentences, however, we are sayingsomethinggeneral. There is/are no particular tiger or tigersthat we are talking about.

The second sentences of the pairs receive what is called anexistential interpretation. The hallmark of the existentialinterpretation of a sentence containing a bare plural or an indefinitesingular is that it may be paraphrased with “some” withlittle or no change in meaning; hence the terminology“existential reading”. The application of the term“existential interpretation” is perhaps less appropriatewhen applied to the definite singular, but it is intended there tocover interpretation of the definite singular as referring to a uniquecontextually salient/familiar particular individual, not to akind.

There are some tests that are helpful in distinguishing these tworeadings. For example, the existential interpretation isupwardentailing, meaning that the statement will always remain true ifwe replace the subject term with a more inclusive term. Consider ourexamples above. In (1b), we can replace “tiger” with “animal”salva veritate, but in (1a) we cannot. If “tigers are on the lawn” is true, then“animals are on the lawn” must be true. However,“tigers are striped” is true, yet “animals arestriped” is false. (1a) does not entail that animals are striped, but (1b) entails that animals are on the front lawn (Lawler 1973; Laca 1990;Krifka et al. 1995).

Another test concerns whether we can insert an adverb ofquantification with minimal change of meaning (Krifka et al. 1995).For example, inserting “usually” in the sentences in (1a) (e.g., “tigers are usually striped”) produces only asmall change in meaning, while inserting “usually” in (1b) dramatically alters the meaning of the sentence (e.g., “tigersare usually on the front lawn”). (For generics such as“mosquitoes carry malaria”, the adverb“sometimes” is perhaps better used than“usually” to mark off the generic reading.)

1.2 Stage Level and Individual Level Predicates

Having distinguished two quite different meanings of these seeminglysimilar sentence pairs, the question arises: what is the basis ofthese two interpretations? This is of course a matter of debate, butone important thesis is that it is the predicate that determines whichof the two readings the subject will receive, particularly in the caseof bare plural generics. In his 1977 dissertation, Greg Carlson arguedthat the distinction between “stage level” and“individual level” predicates is key here, and proposedthat stage level predications give rise to existential readings ofbare plurals and indefinite singulars, while individual level onesgive rise to generic readings. The distinction between the two typesof predicates can be drawn intuitively, and also on the basis oflinguistic patterns (Milsark 1974; Carlson 1977; Stump 1985).Semantically, individual level predicates express properties thatnormally are had by items for quite extended periods, often comprisingthe items’ whole existence. Stage-level predicates, on the otherhand, express properties normally had by items for relatively shorttime intervals. Some examples of both types are as follows:

Individual level predicates
“is tall”; “is intelligent”; “knowsFrench”; “is a mammal”; “is female”;“is a singer”; “loves Bob”; “hatesBob”

Stage level predicates
“is drunk”; “is barking”; “is speakingFrench”; “is taking an exam”; “issober”; “is sick”, “is sitting”;“is on the lawn”, “is in the room”.

Clearly the semantic distinction is not hard and fast: a teetotalermay be sober for the entire course of his existence, and thechronically ill may be sick for the entire course of theirs, and Alicein Wonderland is tall at some times but short at others. In the normalcourse of affairs, individual level predicates express more stable andless temporally intermittent properties than stage level ones do.

The distinction also manifests itself linguistically. Stage levelpredicates are permissible in the following constructions, whileindividual level ones are not:

(4): John saw Bill drunk/sober/sick/naked.
(5): John saw Bill speaking French/taking an exam/smokingcigarettes.
(6): John saw Bill on the lawn/in the room.
(7): *John saw Bill intelligent/tall/a mammal/male.
(8): *John saw Bill knowing French/hating Bob.

There-insertion constructions behave similarly:

(9): There are men drunk/sober/sick/naked.
(10): There are men speaking French/taking an exam/smokingcigarettes.
(11): There are men on the lawn/in the room.
(12): *There are men intelligent/tall/mammals/male.
(13): *There are men knowing French/hating Bob.

Stage level predicates can be modified by locatives, while individuallevel ones cannot:

(14): John is drunk/speaking French/smoking in 1879 Hall.
(15): *John is a mammal/intelligent/male in 1879 Hall.
(16): *John knows French/hates Bob in 1879 Hall.

Carlson noted the difference in syntactic behavior between individualand stage level predicates, and proposed that the distinction betweenthe classes of predicates underlies the distinction betweenexistential and generic readings of bare plurals:

(17): Students are drunk/speaking French/on the lawn. (existential)
(18): Students are intelligent/mammals/tall/male. (generic)
(19): Students know French/hate Bob. (generic)

Stage level predicates appear to give rise to the existential readingof bare plurals, while individual level ones give rise to genericreadings. Carlson also took the distinction to underwrite thedifference between existential and generic readings of the indefinitesingular:

(20): A student is drunk/speaking French/on the lawn. (existential)
(21): A student is intelligent/a mammal/tall/male. (generic)
(22): A student knows French/hates Bob. (generic)

This seems to be correct, though there is more to say about theindefinite singular in this regard. In particular, the indefinitesingular receives an existential interpretation even with individuallevel predicates when the property attributed is “out of theblue”, or to a very unnatural kind. Yael Greenberg (2003) asksus to note the contrast between the following pairs. Both statementsinvolve individual level predicates, and accordingly the bare pluralreceives a generic interpretation. It is, however, very difficult tointerpret the following indefinite singular statements as anythingother than existential statements, conveying a remarkable fact about aparticular individual:

(23): Famous semanticists sing German arias in the shower.
(24): A famous semanticist sings German arias in the shower.
(25): Tall, left-handed, brown-haired neurologists from France earn morethan $150,000 a year.
(26): A tall, left-handed, brown-haired neurologist from France earnsmore than $150,000 a year.

The contrast between stage level and individual level predicates wouldthus seem to be insufficient to explain the availability of thegeneric interpretation of indefinite singular statements.

It should further be noted that the distinction between stage leveland individual level predicates cannot explain the two readings ofdefinite singulars. If there is a salient tiger before us, anutterance of “the tiger is intelligent” or “thetiger is male” will easily be interpreted non-generically aspertaining to the particular tiger in question, despite the fact thatthese are individual level predications. The distinction is notirrelevant here since it is true that stage level predications mayreliably give rise to non-generic interpretations, but clearly thereis more to story in the case of the definite singular.

1.3 Deriving Generic vs. Existential Interpretations

How exactly might the distinction between stage level and individuallevel predicates give rise to existential vs. generic readings of bareplurals? The original proposal is due to Greg Carlson (1977), howeverCarlson himself later came to reject the basics of his account(Carlson 1989). More recent discussion can be found in Diesing (1992),Chierchia (1995), Kratzer (1995), Cohen and Erteschik-Shir (1997,2002), Kiss (1998), and others.

In Carlson’s original account, he proposed that stage levelpredicates are lexically represented with existential quantifiers.These quantifiers range overrealizations of individuals.Carlson’s metaphysical outlook was as follows: the set ofindividuals is composed of both objects (by which he meant regular,everyday concrete items) and kinds. Both objects and kinds haverealizations. A realization of an object is a temporal slice thereof.A realization of a kind iseither an object that belongs tothe kind, or a temporal slice of such an object. Kinds are directlydenoted by bare plurals, on Carlson’s view—that is, bareplurals are singular referring terms, like names.

Consider now the predicate “is smoking”. This is a stagelevel predicate; on Carlson’s view only stages (temporal slices)of objects are ever smoking. Natural language, however, does notsupply temporal slices as objects of predication, but ratherindividuals—at least on the surface. To resolve this mismatch,the predicate “is smoking” would have to be lexicalizedas

\[ \lambda x \exists y(R(y,x) \mathbin{\&} \textrm{smokes}(y)) \]

“R” here means “is a realization of”,in Carlson’s sense. The predicate can be applied to an object,such as John, to yield:

\[ \exists y(R(y, j) \mathbin{\&} \textrm{smokes}(y)) \]

Thus (setting aside tense), “John is smoking” is true iffsome realization (i.e., temporal stage) of John is engaged in smoking.The predicate can also be applied to kinds, as in “students aresmoking”:

\[ \exists y(R(y, s) \mathbin{\&} \textrm{smokes}(y)) \]

Here “s” picks out the kindstudent, andthe sentence is true iff there are some realizations of the kind thatare engaged in smoking. (Recall that the realizations of the kindstudent includeboth the particular individualstudentsand the temporal stages of those individualstudents.) Thus we obtain the existential reading of the bare pluralin virtue of the lexical representation of stage level predicates.

Individual level predicates hold of individuals, not stages, and soare directly predicated of their subjects. There is no inherent typemismatch here, and so individual level predicates are lexicalizedwithout any such built-in quantifiers. As a first pass attempt at asemantic formalization, Carlson took all individual level predicatesto be directly applicable to kinds, so “Cats like Bob”would have as a logical form simply “$\textrm{Like}(c,b)$”. Carlson went on to note that this approach meets withdifficulties when faced with sentences such as “Cats likethemselves”. “$\textrm{Like}(c, c)$” is does notcapture the appropriate truth conditions, since it corresponds only to“cats like cats”, and not to “cats likethemselves”.

To deal with this, he introduces a monadic predicate operator $G'$to take object-level predicates to kind-level predicates. “Catslike themselves” would be formalized as “$G'(\lambda x(\textrm{Like}(x, x))(c)$”, which is to be understood as trueiff the object level predicate “$\lambda x (\textrm{Like}(x,x))$” holds with sufficient regularity of the realizations ofthe kind. Carlson took no stand on what this sufficient regularityamounts to, other than to say that it is not the job of semantics totell us when an item satisfies a predicate containing“$G'$”, anymore than it is the job of semantics to tellus when an item satisfiesany predicate. Semantics tells usthat “John is red” is true iff John satisfies “isred”, which in turn holds iff John is red. Semantics doesnot tell uswhether John is red, nor how to go aboutdetermining whether John is red. Whether an item has a property is nota question for semantics.

Carlson later came to reject this account of the logical form ofgenerics—in particular, he came to reject the idea that there isa one-place predicate operator such as $G'$, and instead embracedthe idea that any generic operator should instead be two-place (1989).This point is taken up below in the section on the logical form ofcharacterizing generics. First, though, it is helpful to draw adistinction between two different kinds of generics.

1.4 Characterizing Generics and Direct Kind Predications

It is helpful to separate out two categories of generic statements.Our first category includes statements such as “tigers arestriped”, “ravens are black”, “a lion has amane”, and “the leopard has spots”. These statementsare naturally thought of as expressing generalizations aboutindividual members of the kind. For example, we might suppose that“tigers are striped” is made true by enough individualtigers possessing stripes. The exact nature of these generalizationsis highly controversial.

In our second category, we have statements like “dinosaurs areextinct”, “the dodo is extinct”, “tigers arewidespread”, and “the domestic cat is common”, whichare often thought to predicate a property directly of the kind inquestion, rather than expressing generalizations concerning itsmembers. For example, in saying “dinosaurs are extinct”,one says something about the kinddinosaur, namely that thatkind of thing is extinct. We may notice that it is not possible to sayof an individual dinosaur, Dino, that Dino is extinct, since only akind can be extinct. Thus, for these generics, Carlson’soriginal idea—that bare plurals can refer directly to kinds, andthus that (at least some) generics involve predicating propertiesdirectly of kinds—remains widely accepted.

Examples of this second category are often referred to as“direct kind predications” while examples of the first areknown as “characterizing generics”. (Direct kindpredications are also known as D-generics (“D” for“definite”); characterizing generics are also known asI-generics (“I” for “indefinite”) (Krifka1987).) It should be noted that the indefinite singular form on itsstandard interpretation cannot be used to express a direct kindpredication: statements such as “a dinosaur is extinct”and “a tiger is widespread” are not felicitous. (They canof course be heard as felicitous if they are given a very differentinterpretation, so that their domain ranges over particularkinds—e.g., “a dinosaur, namely theT. rex, isextinct”—but this is not the relevant interpretation. Tosee the difference, consider statements involving kinds that do notthemselves have salient subkinds, e.g., perhaps “aT.rex is extinct”.)

Much of the work on the semantics of generics has been focused oncharacterizing generics, since they have proved the most elusive. Itis widely accepted that sentences like “dinosaurs areextinct”, “the dodo is extinct”, and “tigersare widespread” are singular statements that predicateproperties directly of kinds. For example, “tigers areextinct” predicates the property ofbeing extinctdirectly of the kindPanthera tigris, and would be true justin casePanthera tigris had the property of being extinct(Krifka et al. 1995). The semantics of characterizing generics haveproved much less tractable.

1.5 The Logical Form of Characterizing Generics

For the remainder of this entry, we will be concerned only withcharacterizing generics, since they have received the most attention,and been the subject of most controversy. Henceforth, we will use theterm “generics” to mean specifically characterizinggenerics. This section discusses the dominant theory of the logicalform of characterizing generics, and of necessity involves sometechnical material.

It is generally agreed nowadays that, contra Carlson’s earliestwork, there is a two-place operator, usually termedGen,which functions as an adverb of quantification (Lewis 1975). Adverbsof quantification include “usually”,“generally”, “typically”,“always”, “sometimes”, and so on. Theyfunction to relate one set of conditions containing at least one freevariable to another set. Adverbs of quantification are, inLewis’s sense, unselective, meaning that they bind any number offree variables in the sentence, be they objects, events, or locations.Consider, for example, the following sentence:

(27): Whenm andn are positive integers, the power$m^n$ can always be computed by successive multiplication.

Following Lewis (1975), we should understand “always” asrelating the material in the when-clause to the material in the mainclause in following way:

(28): Alwaysm,n [m andn arepositive integers] [the power $m^n$ can be computed by successivemultiplication]

This representation is based on Lewis’s (1975) paper, and issaid to be a tripartite structure, consisting of a quantifierQ, a RestrictorR (picking out the domain ofQ), and the ScopeS, also called the matrix (pickingout the properties attributed toQ elements ofR).Tripartite structures take the form “Q [R][S]”. The sentence represented by the tripartitestructure is true iffQRs satisfyS.

In the above examples (27) and (28), the material from the when-clause is placed in the Restrictor, andthe material from the main clause is placed in the Scope. There aretwo free variables in the Restrictor, namelym andn, and so both are bound by the adverb of quantification“always”, which is naturally understood as a universalquantifier.

Generics are most commonly assimilated to this model(but see Nguyen, 2020). Carlson himself (1989)rejected his original one-place generic operator, on the grounds thatit could not capture ambiguities as well as a two-place operator. Heconsiders the following sentence:

(29): Typhoons arise in this part of the Pacific.

This has two distinct generic readings, which can be paraphrased asfollows:

(30): Typhoons in general have a common origin in this part of thepacific.
(31): There arise typhoons in this part of the Pacific.

It would be a mistake to take the latter reading to be an existentialreading: it does not simply mean that there are some particulartyphoons that originated in the relevant location, but rather seems tobe saying something general about the relevant location: situationsinvolving that location are—with sufficientregularity—situations involving the arising of typhoons. Adyadic non-selective operator can easily accommodate bothreadings:

(32): $\textit{Gen } x [\textrm{Typhoon}(x)][\textrm{Arises-in-this-part-of-the-pacific}(x)]$
(33): $\textit{Gen } s [\textrm{In-this-part-of-the-pacific}(s)]\exists y [\textrm{Typhoon}(y)\ \mathbin{\&}$$\textrm{Arises-in}(y, s)]$

The monadic operator can only yield the first (less natural)interpretation:

\[G'(\textrm{arises-in-this-part-of-the-pacific}(x))(\textrm{typhoons}).\]

Schubert and Pelletier (1987) also offer compelling arguments in favorof a dyadic generic operator.

In keeping with this proposal, a common assumption (Heim 1982; Kamp1981; Kamp and Reyle 1993; Diesing 1992; Kratzer 1995; and manyothers) is that indefinites such as bare plurals and indefinitesingulars contribute predicates with unbound variables to the logicalforms containing them. In the course of syntactic operations, thematerial in the sentence is divided up into the restrictor and scope(e.g., Diesing 1992). If the sentence contains a quantificationaladverb (e.g., “usually”, “always”), then anyunbound variables in the restrictor are bound by that quantificationaladverb, as in example (28) above. However, if there is no quantificational adverb, the genericoperatorGen is introduced to bind those variables. Thus, totake a simple example, the logical form of a sentence like“ravens are black” may be given as follows:

(34): Genx [Ravens(x)][Black(x)]

Even theorists who do not agree with the assumption that indefinitescontribute just predicates and unbound variables to their logicalforms (see, e.g., Chierchia 1998) tend to agree that a tripartitestructure nonetheless is the correct analysis for generics. Onenotable exception is David Liebesman (2011), who argues thatcharacterizing generics are themselves direct kindpredications—that, e.g., “tigers have stripes” isbest understood as simply the attribution of the predicate “havestripes” to the kindtigers. (See also Cohen 2012;Teichman 2016. Cohen argues that although pragmatic factors lead manygenerics to ultimately receive reinterpretations involving Gen,generics are always in the first instance kind predications.) It isnot clear, however, whether a view such as Liebesman’s is ableto account for the full range of semantic data. Recall that sentencessuch as “cats lick themselves” led Carlson (1977) tointroduce a G‘ operator to capture the dominant interpretation,namely that individual cats lick themselves (i.e., their ownbodies)—an interpretation which is not captured by the logicalform Lick(cats, cats). Similar complications arise for genericsinvolving so-called donkey anaphora, e.g., “lions that see agazelle chase it”. Without the additional structure provided byan operator, it is not clear how these sentences can be adequatelycaptured (Leslie 2015a).

The term “generic” is sometimes extended to sentences suchas “Mary smokes after work”, since these habitualstatements share various features with generics, although they do notexpress generalizations concerningkinds. It is oftenbelieved that these statements should be analyzed withGen(e.g., Lawler 1972; Schubert and Pelletier 1989; Krifka et al. 1995,and many others):

(35): Gene [Relevant-event-involving-Mary(e)& Occurs-after-work(e)][Event-of-Mary-smoking(e)]

For the remainder of this entry, the term “habitual”rather than “generic” will be used for thesestatements.

2. Semantic Analyses ofGen

A great deal of work has been done on the semantics of(characterizing) generics, particularly on bare plural(characterizing) generics. It is easy to see why this is so:“Ducks lay eggs” is a true generic, while “ducks arefemale” is false, yet it is only the female ducks who ever layeggs. “Mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus” is true, and“books are paperbacks” is false, yet less than one percentof mosquitoes carry the virus, while over eighty percent of books arepaperbacks. How are we to account for these puzzling facts?

It is clear that generics are not equivalent to universal statements,but rather permit exceptions—that is, generics can be true evenif some (or sometimes many) members of the kind lack the property inquestion. Generics also do not mean “most”; it is falsethat most mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus and true that mostbooks are paperbacks, but our intuitions about the truth/falsity ofthe corresponding generics are reversed.

As these examples suggest,Gen cannot be analyzed as sharinga meaning with any of the standard quantifiers. One question thatcomes up immediately is whetherGen can be considered aquantifier in any sense. Carlson (1977) argued informally that itcould not, since generics do not tell ushow much orhowmany. He notes that, if asked “how many tigers arestriped”, one could reply “most/all/many/some tigers arestriped”, but not simply “tigers are striped” (seeLeslie (2007) for a more formal argument, which goes by way of thepremise that quantifiers exhibit isomorphism invariance, whileGen does not.).

A significant number of theories concerning the meaning of genericshave been offered over the years. Most theories have focused primarilyon bare plural generics, though some theories are intended to coverindefinite and definite singulars too. We will conclude with someremarks concerning issues specific to indefinite and definitesingulars.

2.1 Possible Worlds and Normalcy-Based Approaches

Many accounts of generics are framed in terms of some or other type ofquantification over possible worlds (Dahl 1975, Delgrande 1987,Schubert and Pelletier 1989, Asher and Morreau 1995, Krifka et al.1995, Pelletier and Asher 1997, Greenberg 2003, and others). Often,these possible worlds are employed to capture the intuition thatgenerics tell us something about what isnormal for membersof a kind (see Nickel 2008, 2016). For example, it is natural to thinkthat a generic such as “tigers are striped” tells ussomething about normal tigers; the only exceptions to it are thosetigers who are albino, and so, one could argue, in some respectout-of-step with the norm for the kind. Similarly, “dogs havefour legs” may strike us as true because the only dogs that donot have four legs either have birth defects or have met withmisfortune.

Possible worlds are helpful here, because they allow us to consider,say, worlds in which things goas normally as possible for agiven tiger, even if life isactually quite abnormal for thattiger. For example, Asher, Morreau, and Pelletier argue that“Ks Φ” is true iff for each individualK, the most normal worlds for thatK (according to acontextually determined ordering base), are such that thatKΦs (Asher and Morreau 1995; Pelletier and Asher 1997). Glossed inmore intuitive terms, the account states that a generic“Ks Φ” is true iff each individualKwould have the property Φ if all were to go as normally aspossible for thatK with respect to the relevant property.Thus, while in actuality some dogs are three legged, one might supposethat,had things gone more normally for each of those dogs withrespect to how many legs they have, they would have had fourlegs.

Pelletier, Asher, and Morreau connect their semantic account ofgenerics to the literature on defeasible validity (McCarthy 1986;Reiter 1987, and others). A set of premises defeasibly ornon-monotonically entails a conclusion if the conclusion islikely or reasonable given the premises, yet it is nonethelesspossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Theyargue that there are many defeasibly valid patterns of entailment thatinvolve generics, and that their semantics explains why this is so.For example, if Fido is a dog and dogs have four legs, then theinference that Fido has four legs is held to be defeasibly valid. Itispossible that Fido is a three legged dog, but it is stillreasonable to suppose that Fido is four legged on the basisof the premises. The reasonableness of this inference is explained onPelletier, Asher, and Morreau’s semantics—the generic“dogs have four legs” guarantees that, if things gonormally for a given dog with respect to its number of legs, then thatdog will have four legs. Since we have been given no reason to supposethat Fido is abnormal, one may defeasibly conclude that Fido is fourlegged.

Indisputably, a large number of true generics of the form“Ks Φ” are such that, if things go normallyfor a givenK, then it has the property Φ. However, therewould seem to also be a number of true generics which do not fit thisprofile: “ducks lay eggs”, “lions have manes”,“mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus”, and “sharksattack swimmers”. The last two generics present a significantdifficulty for normalcy-based accounts, since it is surely notnormal for a mosquito to carry the virus, nor is itnormal for a shark to attack a bather. For generics such as“ducks lay eggs” and “lions have manes”,several theorists have argued that the domain of discourse isrestricted so that we are talking about only the female ducks and themale lions respectively, and thus have aimed to rescue normalcy-basedapproaches from this criticism (e.g., Pelletier and Asher 1997), sinceperhaps it is abnormal for a given female duck to fail to lay eggs.Pelletier and Asher suggest that a generic can be restricted to asubkind of the kind in question in this way; that is, “ducks layeggs” meansfemale ducks lay eggs becausefemaleducks constitute a subkind of the kindducks.

However, on such a proposal, it is difficult to avoid the predictionthat “ducks are female” should also be a truegeneric—why can this generic not be made true by similarlyrestricting the domain to include only this subkind of ducks? Orconversely, consider “ducks don’t lay eggs”.Certainly one subkind of ducks—namely the maleducks—don’t lay eggs, but this does not seem to suffice tomake the generic “ducks don’t lay eggs”true. Asher and Pelletier (2012) offer a development of thenormalcy-based account intended to remedy these problems.

Further, a recent experiment examined whether people think that a kindin which a property is had only by one sex (i.e., where domainrestriction to a subkind is possible) is a better satisfier of thegeneric than a kind in which half the members, regardless of sex, havethe property (i.e., where no such restriction to a subkind ispossible). If generics like “ducks lay eggs” are onlyaccepted because people are implicitly restricting the domain to asubkind whose members generally possess the property, then they shouldshow a preference for one of the possible distributions over theother. However, no such preference was found (Cimpian, Gelman andBrandone 2010). Khemlani, Leslie, and Glucksberg (2012) also reportempirical evidence that further suggests that people do not understandthese generics to involve domain restriction—in particular, thatpeople are more likely to judge that an arbitrary duck lays eggs thanthey are to judge that an arbitrary duck is female (but seeLazaridou-Chatzigoga and Stockall (2013) for some evidence in favor ofdomain restriction). This pattern is difficult to explain if peopleonly accept “ducks lay eggs” because of domainrestriction. If one cannot appeal to domain restriction to handle“ducks lay eggs”, then such generics would appear toconstitute counterexamples to this sort of approach.

2.2 Relevant Quantification and Situation Semantics

Appeals to domain restriction are not limited to normalcy-basedapproaches. In light of generics such as “ducks lay eggs”,some theorists have argued that generics involve quantification overrelevant individuals (actual or possible), where contextdetermines which individuals are relevant (e.g., Schubert andPelletier 1987; Declerk 1991; Chierchia 1995). On such views, when weconsider a generic such as “ducks lay eggs”, only themature, fertile female ducks enter into our evaluation of thesentence, because, e.g., they are the only potential egg-layers. Thequestion that arises is how exactly to determine which individuals arerelevant. Schubert and Pelletier (1987) offer a detailed discussion ofhow some of these restrictions arise—e.g., via presupposition,focus, linguistic context, or explicit restriction as appropriate.

Ter Meulen (1986), Gerstner-Link (1988), and Cavedon and Glasbey(1994) offer treatments of generics in the framework of situationsemantics (Barwise and Perry 1983). On such views, generics expressconstraints on situations—e.g., “tigers arestriped” expresses the constraint that every situation involvinga tiger involves a striped tiger. Constraints are not reducible to theproperties of individuals (Cavedon and Glasbey 1994). Theinterpretation of a generic on these views is relative to a givencontext (or “channel” as they style it), so as on theabove views, generics such as “ducks lay eggs” areevaluated only with respect to the female ducks (Cavedon and Glasbey1994).

As noted above, there are philosophical and empirical difficulties(Cimpian, Gelman et al. 2010; Leslie 2008; Khemlani et al. 2012)facing any accounts that rely on domain restriction to handle genericssuch as “ducks lay eggs”. For these accounts to succeed,these difficulties would need to be addressed in more detail.

2.3 The Indexical Approach

Sterken (2015a) has recently argued that relevant quantification alonecannot capture the extent to which generics are context-sensitive.According to Sterken, not only does lexical restriction vary as afunction of context, but so does quantificational force. As anillustration, consider the generic “cats are black”. Thiscould be uttered by parents trying to teach their children about cats,or it could be uttered in response to a teacher asking the class whatcolors cats are. In the first context, the truth of “cats areblack” seems to require that all cats be black. In the secondcontext, the truth of “cats are black” seems to requireonly that some cats are black.

Sterken argues that the best explanation of why the truth conditionsof generics vary across context in this way and others is thatGen is an indexical. In terms of logical form, this meansthatGen is composed of two free variables: one representingquantificational force and one representing lexical restriction. Likeall indexicals,Gen has what Kaplan (1989) calls acharacter, a function from contexts of utterance to thesemantic values. Given a context of utterance, the character ofGen assigns semantic values to the free variables, resultingin the generic expression having as its content a particulargeneralization. The resulting view is intended to capture the variousways the truth conditions of a generic depend not only on the kind inquestion and the property being predicated, but also on the widercontext of utterance.

The main challenge for the indexical approach is that of specifyingthe character ofGen. Sterken suggests that the character ofGen is such that the content of a generic utterance dependson what generalization the speaker intends the utterance to expressand whether her intention could be recognized by a sufficientlyidealized person that is privy to the conversation. If the characterofGen is as described, this seems to explain why genericscan be so flexible. However, it also seems to make genericstoo flexible: some generics (e.g., “tigers don’thave stripes”, “ravens are white”) seemstraightforwardly false and some generics seem straightforwardly true(e.g., “triangles have three sides”, “primatesaren’t avians”), regardless of the speaker’sintentions (and of anyone’s ability to detect those intentions).Whether such an account can handle such cases remains to be seen.Moreover, the indexical account is supplemented by Sterken with anerror theory for generics such as “mosquitoes carry West Nilevirus” (2015b), further increasing its flexibility. For criticaldiscussion of the motivation for the error theory, see Almotahari(forthcoming). More generally, the indexical account—unless itis supplemented with a rich metasemantic account of the character ofGen—is not clearly constrained enough to issue insubstantive predictions concerning the truth/falsity of generics.

2.4 Stereotypes and Prototypes

A somewhat different approach to the semantics of generics is taken bytheorists who suppose that generics express stereotypes or prototypes.On such views, “tigers are striped” would express that thestereotypical or prototypical tiger is striped, and likewise,“sharks attack bathers” would express a belief about thestereotypical or prototypical shark. Geurts (1985) and Declerk (1986)suggest that generics may be interpreted as expressing culturallyaccepted stereotypes, and Platteau (1980), Nunberg and Pan (1975), andHeyer (1985, 1990) claim that generics express prototypes, in thesense of Rosch (1978). Thus on such views, “tigers arestriped” would express the fact that the stereotypical orprototypical tiger is striped.

A general concern with views of this type is that they would seem tomake the holding of the relevant sort of false belief sufficient torender the generic true. For example, suppose that people falselyassociate sliminess with snakes in the relevant way (e.g., as aculturally held stereotype, or part of the Roschean prototype, etc).This does not make the generic “snakes are slimy” true(Krifka et al. 1995). While it is plausible that people oftenassert generics on the basis of theirprototypical/stereotypical beliefs, it is implausible to think thatthese beliefs enter into thetruth conditions of generics.Stereotypical beliefs can be, and often are, false.

2.5 Probabilitistic Approaches

Cohen (1996, 1999, 2004) argues that generics can be understood interms of comparative probabilities. There are two different ways for ageneric to be true on Cohen’s view. The first way (Absolute) canbe illustrated by “tigers are striped”. This is a truegeneric because (roughly speaking) a randomly chosen tiger is morelikely than not to be striped. The second way (Relative) a generic canbe true involves comparison with other kinds. For example, onCohen’s account, “mosquitoes carry the West Nilevirus” is true because (again roughly speaking) if we pick amosquito and another insect at random, the mosquito is more likelythan the insect to carry the West Nile virus. Thus on Cohen’sview, generics are made true (or false) by such probabilisticconsiderations. More precisely, Cohen’s categories are asfollows:

Absolute generics
“Ks areF” is true iff the probabilitythat an arbitraryK that satisfies some predicate inAlt(F) satisfies “isF” is greater than.5.

Relative Generics
“Ks areF” is true iff the probabilitythat an arbitraryK that satisfies some predicate inAlt(F) satisfies “isF” is greater thanthe probability that an arbitrary member of Alt(K) thatsatisfies some predicate in Alt(F) satisfies “isF”.

(In the above, Alt(F) is the set of contextually relevantalternatives to the property in question, and Alt(K) is theset of contextually relevant alternative kinds to the kind inquestion.) As it stands, however, Cohen’s account incorrectlypredicts that generics such as “bees are sterile” will betrue, since the probability that a given bee is sterile is greaterthan .5. To deal with such cases, Cohen introduces the homogeneityconstraint:

Homogeneity Constraint
The above probability conditions (exceeding .5, or exceeding that ofthe arbitrary alternative to the kind) should hold inall salientpartitions of the kind.

Generics such as “bees are sterile” are now predicted tobe false, because there is a salient partition of bees into workers,queens, and drones, and queen bees have a very low probability ofbeing sterile.

However, Cohen’s account may face some counterexamples. Forexample, humans are more likely to suffer from autism than othermammals, and so “humans are autistic” would seem to befalsely predicted to be a true (relative) generic, and it is hard tosee how homogeneity could undermine this prediction (Leslie 2008).This example illustrates that unique possession of a property by akind is not generally sufficient for the truth of a generic, yet thecategory of relative generic predicts that, modulo homogeneity, thisshould suffice.

Conversely, consider “mosquitoes carry West Nile virus”.This is a true relative generic on Cohen’s view. However,suppose that fleas also carried the virus, and did so at a somewhathigher rate than mosquitoes. Suppose further that the flea populationswelled to immense proportions, so that fleas outnumbered all otherinsects. As the flea population increases, there will come a point atwhich mosquitoes cease to be more likely than the arbitrary insect tocarry West Nile virus, and so the generic “mosquitoes carry WestNile virus” would be predicted to become false. It is perhapsnatural to think, though, that these are circumstances under which“mosquitoes carry West Nile virus” would remaintrue—after all, one could still catch the virus from a mosquito!If this is correct, then it suggests that the analysis in terms ofrelative probability may not be correct (Leslie 2008).

Empirical work also suggests that the homogeneity constraint does notguide people’s understanding of generics. For example, Cimpian,Gelman, and Brandone (2010) found that adults are not at all reluctantto accept a generic that involves a property found only in one salientpartition of a kind,contra the predictions of thehomogeneity constraint (though this was not the intent behind theexperiment).

Nickel (2012) offers a different kind of counterexample toCohen’s account: cases involvingpolarization. Toillustrate, Nickel asks us to consider a case in which some Dutchsailors are among the best in the world. Moreover, the proportion ofDutch sailors who meet this high standard exceeds the proportion ofGerman sailors and the proportion of French sailors who meet it.Nevertheless, suppose that most Dutch sailors are very poor sailors.Intuitively, the generic “Dutchmen are good sailors” seemsfalse in this case. But Cohen’s account implies that it is true,for the probability that a Dutchmen is a good sailor is higher thanthe probability that someone from a relevant alternative country is agood sailor, and the homogeneity constraint is satisfied.

3. Indefinite, Definite, and Bare Singular Generics

The above discussion was primarily centered on accounts of bare pluralgenerics, which have received the most discussion in the literature.Singular generics introduce their own sets of complications.

3.1 Indefinite Singular Generics and Normativity

Unlike bare plurals, singular generics can easily be infelicitous. Forexample, it is perfectly fine to say (36) or (37):

(36): A madrigal is polyphonic
(37): A football hero is popular

But not (38):

(38): *A madrigal is popular

(Notice, however, that the plural version of (38) “madrigals are popular” is perfectly felicitous (thoughperhaps false, unfortunately).)

Lawler (1973) notes that indefinite singulars are only felicitous whenthey express properties that are somehow “necessary”,“essential” or “inherent” to the kind.Burton-Roberts (1977) argues that indefinite singulars carry a specialnormative force, while Krifka et al. (1995) take a different tact,arguing that the facts can be accounted for in terms of logicalform.

More generally, linguists such as Carlson (1995), Cohen (2001), andGreenberg (2003) have noted that generics can sometimes have anormative flavor, e.g. “a gentleman opens the door forladies” or “boys don’t cry.” A connectionbetween linguistic form (e.g., bare plural vs. indefinitely singular)and normativity is often drawn, with some theorists such as Greenberg(2003) and Cohen (2001) arguing that indefinite singulars can expressonly “rules and regulations”, in the sense of Carlson(1995).

Greenberg and Cohen offer distinct semantic analyses of the phenomenonof normative generics: Greenberg (2003) implements her analysis by wayof possible worlds semantics, while Cohen proposes that the logicalform of such normative generics are entirely different from that ofdescriptive generics. In particular, for Cohen (2001), normativegenerics assert that certain rules are in effect, as opposed toexpressing generalizations over kinds.

Leslie (2015b) offers an alternative account of how some generics canhave normative force, building on the work of Knobe, Prasada, andNewman (2013) on dual character concepts. Knobe et al. note thatcertain concepts seem to have dual normative/descriptive senses. Forexample, we might say of a professional scientist who cares only aboutgetting grants and publications and not at all about discovering thetruth thatthough there is a sense in which they are clearly ascientist, there is also a sense in which they are not a (true)scientist. Conversely, we might say of a postal worker whoapplies the scientific method whenever they can and who cares abouttruth above all else thateven though there is a sense in whichthey are clearly not a scientist, there is nonetheless a sense inwhich they are a (true) scientist. Leslie proposes that a givengeneric has normative reading just in case the kind in question isassociated with a dual character concept.

Unlike Greenberg, Cohen, and Leslie, Hesni (2021) argues that thenormative force of generic statements cannot be located in thesemantics of generic statements. Instead, Hesni proposes that when weconsider a wider variety of generic sentences that do not contain dualcharacter concepts but appear to have normative force in certaincontexts (e.g., “Rocks aren’t breakfast”), we mustappeal to Gricean pragmatics to explain their normative force.

3.2 Definite and Bare Singular Generics

Definite singular generics appear to invoke constraints similar tothose of indefinite singulars, but also some more besides. Forexample, definite singular subjects are often infelicitous if they donot refer to well-established kinds (Krifka et al. 1995; example fromCarlson 1977, attributed to Barbara Partee):

(39): The coke bottle has a narrow neck
(40): *The green bottle has a narrow neck

What does it take to be a well-established kind? Krifka et al. suggestthat almost anything can become a well-established kind given anappropriate body of background knowledge. For example, suppose it iswell known that green bottles preserve the effectiveness of certainlife-saving antibiotics. In this context, a definite singular genericlike “The green bottle saves lives” might be true.

Other constraints on the acceptability of definite singulars have beennoted by Nunberg and Pan (1975), Carlson (1977), Dahl (1985), andothers. However, definite singular generics have received lessattention overall than indefinite singulars, while bare plurals havereceived by far the most discussion in the literature.

In addition to definite and indefinite singular generics, there arealso bare singular generics, which feature mass nouns in the subjectposition (Ojeda 1991; Heyer 1987; Bäck 1996, Carlson 2011;Wilkinson 1995). For example, “Gold is a metal” and“Nicotine is highly addictive” are two true bare singulargenerics. Like definite singular generics, bare singular generics havereceived less attention than definite singular generics and bareplural generics.

4. Generics and Psychology

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in genericgeneralizations among psychologists. Cognitive psychology has longbeen interested in understanding how our conceptual knowledgeconcerning kinds is organized and represented; however, until somewhatrecently the connection with generic sentences, and thegeneralizations they articulate, had not been explored.Psychologists’ interest in generics lies primarily with whatthese sentences can reveal about our basic ways of conceiving ofkinds, rather than specifically with formulating a semantic analysisofGen. However, several results from psychology arguablyplace important constraints on what the semantics of generic sentencesmight look like.

4.1 The Generics-as-Defaults Hypothesis

Infants are able to make generalizations concerning kinds andcategories in their first year of life (e.g., Baldwin, Markman, andMelartin 1993), and by the mid-preschool years, children hold richlystructured and detailed beliefs about the general properties ofmembers of kinds (e.g., Gelman 2003). An important question incognitive development concerns the nature of these generalizations.How might we characterize these cognitively fundamentalgeneralizations? To what sorts of information is our most basic way ofgeneralizing sensitive? And how might these generalizations bearticulated in natural language, once it is acquired?

Several researchers have proposed that generic sentences articulatecognitively fundamental, default generalizations, and that quantifiedstatements, in contrast, articulate cognitively more sophisticatedones (e.g., Cimpian and Erickson 2012; Gelman 2010; Leslie 2007, 2008,2012). Generics are acquired early in development, by approximately 30months of age (Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka and Flukes 2008; Gelman andRaman 2003; Graham, Nayer and Gelman 2010). By 30 months, childrenunderstand that generics tolerate exceptions (Gelman and Raman 2003),and several studies have found that children’s judgments ofgenerics are similar to adults’ judgments throughout thepreschool years (e.g., Brandone, Cimpian, Leslie and Gelman 2012;Brandone, Gelman, Hedglen 2015; Hollander, Gelman and Star 2002).Interestingly, preschool children, like adults, understand that, e.g.,“birds lay eggs” can be true yet “birds aregirls” false, even though only “girl” birds layeggs. Thus even preschoolers understand at least some of the“troublesome” generics—the generics that causedifficulties for the standard semantic analyses of generics—inthe same way that adults do.

Interestingly, several studies have found that, throughout thepreschool years, children have a tendency to interpret kind-widequantified statements as generics—e.g., evaluating a statementquantified with “all”, “most” or“some” as though it were a generic. This phenomenon hasbeen documented among English-, Mandarin-, and Quechua-speakingchildren (Brandone et al. 2015; Hollander et al. 2002; Leslie andGelman 2012; Mannheim et al. 2011; Tardif et al. 2010; see also Gelmanand Tardif 1998 for more discussion of the acquisition of generics byMandarin-speaking children). The tendency is not limited to childreneither; under some circumstances, adults will also“default” to the generic interpretation when confrontedwith a quantified statement. For example, adults show a consistenttendency to accept, e.g., “all ducks lay eggs”, despiteknowing that male ducks don’t lay eggs (a tendency which doesnot seem to be due to adults interpreting the quantified statement asranging over subkinds of ducks; Leslie, Khemlani and Glucksberg 2011;Meyer, Gelman and Stilwell 2011; but see Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Katsos,and Stockall 2015). Further, a range of adult reasoning errors withuniversal quantifiers are readily explicable on the hypothesis thatadults sometimes interpret universally quantified statements asgenerics (Jönsson and Hampton 2006; Sloman 1993, 1998).Additionally, both adults and preschoolers frequently recallquantified statements as generics, but notvice versa, atendency that has been documented in both Spanish and English (Gelman,Sánchez Tapia, and Leslie 2015; Leslie and Gelman 2012).

If generics do indeed give voice to cognitively fundamental, defaultgeneralizations, this would explain an otherwise puzzling fact: theabsence of an articulated word “gen” in most or perhapseven all natural languages. That is, languages rarely if ever containa dedicated, articulated operator that uniquely signals a genericstatement, in the way that “all” signals a universalstatement. Rather, languages overwhelmingly exploit less markedsyntactic forms to express generic statements (Dahl 1985; Krifka etal. 1995; see also Carlson 2012). If generics express defaultgeneralizations, this pattern can be explained: in general, if asystem has a default way of operating, then it is inefficient toexplicitly instruct the system to operate in this way, since it willdo so anyway, even in the absence of instruction. If processing auniversal statement requires the cognitive system todeviatefrom its default way of generalizing, then explicit instruction isrequired—hence the word “all”. If generics requireno such deviation, then languages need not contain a word“gen” (Leslie 2008).

The empirical findings suggest that these cognitively fundamentalgeneralizations are articulated as generics rather than quantifiedstatements. Compared to generic generalizations, quantifiedgeneralizations represent cognitively more taxing and sophisticatedgeneralizations. This is potentially of philosophical interest sincemany of the semantic analyses ofGen reviewed above aim insome way or other to reduceGen to the more theoreticallytractable quantifiers—for example, the possible worlds andnormalcy-based approaches often analyzeGen in terms ofuniversal quantification over worlds, individuals, or both. Thus, onsuch an account, generic generalizations constitute a specific kind ofuniversal quantification—the restriction of universalquantification to a range of (often complex, abstract) entities. Onsuch an account, generics depend on universal quantification, and thelatter is in some sense more fundamental than the former. Depending onone’s view of the subject matter of semantics, it may be achallenge to reconcile such a view with the available psychologicaldata.

4.2 Are Generics Sensitive to Content-Based Factors?

Researchers who take a psychological approach to generics have alsorecently proposed that our judgments of generics may be sensitive to arange of content-based factors. That is, while standard semanticanalyses of generics aim to treat them in an abstract, formalframework, psychologically-oriented theorists have argued instead thatgeneric generalizations are sensitive to the nature of the propertybeing generalized. For example, consider the generics“mosquitoes carry West Nile virus”, “sharks attackswimmers”, and “ticks carry Lyme disease”. Peoplerobustly accept such generics, despite knowing that very few membersof the kind have the property in question. One possibility is thatsuch familiar generics are accepted at low prevalence levels becausethe property in question is dangerous—the sort of property onewould do well to avoid (Leslie 2008). This hypothesis issupported by experimental data that finds that people are more likelyto acceptnovel generics at low prevalence levels if theproperty in question is a dangerous one (Cimpian, Brandone and Gelman2010). As noted above, generics like “ticks carry Lymedisease” have proved difficult for the formal semanticapproaches to accommodate. If generics are indeed sensitive to factorssuch as whether the property is question is dangerous or not, thisdifficulty would be expected—since formal semantic frameworks donot normally take into account such features of the property, butrather aim to abstract away from such content-basedconsiderations.

If generic generalizations are indeed sensitive to the nature of theproperty being generalized, might that account for other“troublesome” generics? In addition to being sensitive towhether the property is dangerous or not, it has been proposed thatgenerics may also be sensitive to whether the property in question ischaracteristic of the kind (Cimpian, Brandone et al. 2010; Cimpian,Gelman et al. 2010; Gelman and Bloom 2007; Leslie 2007, 2008; Prasadaand Dillingham 2006, 2009). Examples of characteristic properties ofkinds would include salient, distinctive physical features (e.g.,“lions have manes”), methods of reproduction for animalkinds (e.g., “ducks lay eggs”), and functions for artifactkinds (e.g., “Orange-Crusher-2000s crush oranges”). If ageneric attributes a characteristic property to the kind, then thegeneric may be accepted even if few members of the kind have theproperty in question.

If generics are indeed sensitive to such factors, it may be possibleto explain why some generics are accepted even though the property isnot prevalent among members of the kind. What, though, of genericssuch as “books are paperbacks” or “school teachersare female”? People tend to reject such generics, despitejudging that the property in question is highly prevalent (Prasada etal. 2013). One proposal is that generics may be sensitive to thenature of theexceptions to the generic claim (Leslie 2007,2008). That is, amongst the members of the kind that fail to have thepredicated property, it may matterhow they fail to have theproperty—in particular whether they simply lack the property, orwhether they have an equally salient, concrete, positive propertyinstead. The non-infected ticks simplydo not carry Lymedisease—they do not have an alternative property instead.However, the books that are not paperbacks are instead hardcover.Similarly, people who are not right-handed are insteadleft-handed; elementary school teachers who are not femalearemale. Intuitively, one might feel as though one would be“overlooking” these hardcover books, these left-handedindividuals, and these male school teachers if one accepted thegenerics in question. Thus, it is possible that generics may besensitive to the nature of the exceptions to the generalization.However, more empirical investigation is needed on this point.

4.3 A Bayesian Model of Generics

Tessler and Goodman (2019) offer an account of generics that is rootedin a Bayesian computational approach to cognition. They modelacceptance/rejection of a generic as a speaker’s decision toproduce an utterance of the generic to a naive listener. The goal ofthe speaker, on their model, is to produce an utterance that alignsthe listener’s beliefs about the prevalence of the propertyamong members of the kind (the “referent prevalence” intheir terminology) with the speaker’s beliefs. Thespeaker’s decision is driven by whether the referent prevalenceis more likely under the listener’s prior beliefs vs. theirposterior beliefs after hearing the generic. On their model, genericshave a threshold semantics, according to which a generic is true ifthe referent prevalence exceeds a threshold, however this threshold isunspecified and unknown by both speaker and hearer. Bayesiancomputational modeling provides a mathematical framework in which suchuncertainty can be readily handled; specifically, interpretation onthe model involves integrating over the possible values of thisthreshold. A listener’s posterior beliefs are arrived at byBayesian updating, such that they are proportional to the product ofthe listener’s prior beliefs about the distribution of theprevalence $p$ of the property in question (i.e., over comparablekinds), $Pr(p),$ the probability of possible thresholds $\theta$,$Pr(\theta),$ and a delta function that is 1 if $p \gt \theta$ and0 otherwise.

To put the model in less precise but more intuitive terms, thedecision to utter a generic “$K$s are $F$” depends onbeliefs a naive listener would likely have concerning the distributionof the property $F$ over comparable kinds. Consider, for example,the distribution of the propertylaying eggs over animalkinds. For most animal kinds, the proportion that lay eggs isapproximately zero, but there are some animal kinds for which ~50% ofmembers lay eggs. Any other proportions of egg-laying are quiteunusual. This describes the shape of the prevalence prior forlaying eggs. Consider, then, an utterance of the generic“robins lay eggs”: approximately 50% of robins lay eggs,and hearing such a generic will, according to the mathematics of themodel, lead the naive listener to update their prevalence prior insuch a way that most of the probability distribution will be clusteredaround 50% and very little will remain around 0%. Thus, uttering thisgeneric will lead the listener’s prevalence posterior to bebetter aligned with the speaker’s beliefs than their prevalenceprior, and so the generic is endorsed.

Tessler and Goodman’s model does a remarkable job of predictingthe degree to which people endorse a given generic with greatquantitative accuracy, and it extends a growing body of evidence incognitive science that much of human cognition, including earlycognitive development, involves or approximates to Bayesian inference(e.g., for a recent review, see Ullman and Tenenbaum 2020). Whiletheir model predicts that prior beliefs about the distribution of theprevalence of the property over comparable kinds mediates allendorsement/rejection of generics, they allow that these priors may beinfluenced by content-based factors. For example, “mosquitoescarry West Nile virus” is predicted to be accepted with a highdegree of confidence by the model because the prevalence prior forcarrying West Nile virus is almost entirely bunched up veryclose to zero, and correspondingly the prevalence posterior uponhearing the generic shifts modestly over to low but decidedly non-zerovalues. If people have a higher order prior expectation thatstrikingly dangerous properties are rare, such that the prevalencepriors for such properties resemble that ofcarrying West Nilevirus, then this would mean that people would be disposed toaccept generics that predicate such properties, even though thereferent prevalence is low.

4.4 Inferences from Generics

Despite the fact that people are often willing to accept genericsdespite knowing that only a minority of the kind has the property(e.g., Brandone et al. 2012; Cimpian, Brandone et al. 2010), theavailable data suggest that people are nonetheless disposed to treatgenerics as quite inferentially powerful. For example, if people aretold that a given percentage of a novel animal kind has a property,they are often willing to accept the corresponding generic atprevalence levels of 50%, 30%, or even 10%, particularly if theproperty being described is dangerous and/or characteristic of thekind. However, if people are instead presented with the generic andasked to estimate the prevalence of the property, the estimates arevery high indeed—often reaching 100% (Cimpian, Brandone et al.2010). Preschool-aged children show a similar pattern (Brandone et al.2015).

These studies show that people give very high estimates of prevalencewhen presented with a generic statement concerning a novel animalkind. When the generics concern familiar kinds, prevalence estimatescan be more realistic. Nevertheless, accepting a generic increasespeople’s tendency to believe a given member of the kind willhave the property in question, over and above their beliefs about theprevalence of the property (Khemlani, Leslie, and Glucksberg 2012).For example, people correctly give comparable prevalence estimatesconcerning the number of ducks that are female vs. lay eggs. However,when asked to judge whether a given duck would have a property (e.g.,“suppose you are told that Quacky is a duck. Evaluate thefollowing statement: Quacky lays eggs”), people weresignificantly more likely to agree that the duck would lay eggs thanthey were that the duck would be female (Khemlani et al. 2012). Theseresults suggest that people may treat generics as being inferentiallyquite powerful, in a way that cannot be reduced to their backgroundbeliefs about the prevalence of the property. When people are asked tojudge whether a given member of a kind will have a property or not,they rely in part on their background judgment of the generic, ratherthan solely on their beliefs about how prevalent the property is.

These findings support the idea that accepting a generic disposespeople—all else being equal—to believe that an arbitraryinstance of the kind will have the property, as has long beensuggested in the defeasible reasoning literature (e.g., Pelletier andAsher 1997). However, the defeasible reasoning literature has tendedto focus on “non-troublesome”, high prevalence genericslike “tigers are striped”; it is notable that people showa tendency to draw such inferences even for lower prevalencegenerics.

5. Beyond Language: Philosophical Applications of Generics

The study of generics is not only of interest from the perspective ofunderstanding language, or the psychology associated with that portionof language. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest inthe applications of generics. The range of potential applications ofgenerics has proved extremely broad, and comprises issues from socialprejudice to the sorites paradox and the principle of sufficientreason.

5.1 Generics, Stereotyping and Prejudice

From a young age, we conceive of certain kinds, both natural andsocial, as having a fundamental, underlying nature that is shared byits members (e.g., Gelman 2003). That is, we believe that, while somekinds may group individuals together on the basis of superficialproperties (as an extreme example, consider the kindtrinkets), other kinds group their members together on thebasis of deep, intrinsic similarities (animal kinds are paradigmaticexamples here). Kinds that fall in the latter category are said to beessentialized in the psychological sense. Members of anessentialized kind are believed to be deeply similar to eachother—even if they seem to differ superficially—and arebelieved to share a range of important properties, which are thecausal upshot of their shared natures (Gelman 2003). In the socialrealm, essentialist beliefs can be very damaging, and the groups thatare most highly essentialized often face the worst forms of socialprejudice (Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst 2000, 2002).

Sally Haslanger (2011) offers a fascinating analysis of generics thatconcern social kinds, for example “women are submissive”(see also McConnell-Ginet 2012 and Leslie 2014 for relateddiscussion). It may be a fact that, given social circumstances, themajority of women defer to men on important decisions and lifechoices. With some complications (as noted above), this sort of highprevalence often suffices for a generic to count as true (e.g.,Prasada and Dillingham 2006, 2009). Haslanger poses the question: evenif we are in the circumstances that would plausibly render the generictrue, might there still be something objectionable about uttering thegeneric? She argues that indeed there is, if the generic makesreference to an essentialized social kind and thereby perpetuatesvarious forms of oppression. Generics, Haslanger argues, suggest thatthe property is grounded in the nature of the kind, and so anutterance of “women are submissive” invites theinterpretation that it lies in the very nature of women to besubmissive—rather than their submissiveness coming about as theresult of extrinsic, accidental, and changeable socialcircumstances.

Empirical evidence supports Haslanger’s hypothesis. For example,from a young age, we tend to interpret information conveyed viageneric language as indicating a stable and intrinsic property of thekind, whether the kind is natural or social (e.g., Cimpian andErickson 2012; Cimpian and Markman 2009, 2011). Further, hearinggeneric language about a novel social or animal kind leads bothchildren and adults to essentialize that kind in the first place . Forexample, even a wholly novel social group, composed of individuals whoare diverse for race, ethnicity, gender, and age will rapidly beessentialized by preschoolers and adults alike if they hear variousproperties being attributed to the group via generic language (Gelman,Ware and Kleinberg 2010; Rhodes, Leslie and Tworek 2012; Leshin,Leslie and Rhodes 2021). (An interesting quandary emerges when we notethat quantified statements are often interpreted and recalled asgenerics: is there any way to speak of social groups at a generallevel without inducing essentialist beliefs?)

As another illustration of the impact generic language, and languageabout identity categories more generally, can have on young children,Rhodes and Leslie noted that science is often described to youngchildren using identity-focused language, e.g., “Let’s bescientists! Scientist explore the world using their senses.”However, action-focused language offers an alternative way tocommunciate much the same content, e.g., “Let’s doscience! Doing science means exploring the world with oursenses.” In a series of experiments, Rhodes and Leslie andcollaborators have found that children who belong to social groupsthat are underrepresented in science (girls, children fromunderrepresented minorities or lower income backgrounds) show moreengagement and persistence when they hear science described usingaction-focused language as opposed to identity-focused language (e.g.,Rhodes, Cardarelli and Leslie 2020).

In addition to fostering essentialist beliefs, generics are also oftenused to communicate normative statements about social groups, e.g.,“boys don’t cry”, “a woman puts family beforecareer”, “friends don’t let friends drivedrunk” (see also section 3.2 above). Generics such as these arenot intended as descriptions of the facts on the ground, but rathercarry a particular normative force; “friends don’t letfriends drive drunk” was not introduced as a banal observationabout what is in fact the case, but rather was introduced precisely toaddress the fact that, all too often, people were allowing theirfriends to drive under the influence. In the context of gender, thesenormative generics can serve as a concise (and child-friendly) meansof communicating and sustaining problematic social norms. Moreover,recent empirical work reflects that very young children may interpretgenerics as having prescriptive force, even if those generics seems toadults to be only descriptive generalizations (Roberts, Ho and Gelman2017).

Generic generalizations may be relevant to understanding socialprejudice in other respects too. For example, “ticks carry Lymedisease” is accepted at low prevalence levels, perhaps becausecarrying Lyme disease is a dangerous property, of the sort one wouldwish to avoid. What then are we to make of similar generics in thesocial realm, e.g., “Muslims are terrorists”? Clearly,there is something deeply wrong with the latter that is not wrong withthe former. One possibility is that these “dangerousgenerics” involve the assumption that the members of the kind inquestion share a nature that ground the property in question (or atleast the corresponding disposition or propensity), and sogeneralizations such as “Muslims are terrorists” againinvolve false essentialist beliefs about social groups (Leslie2017).

As a final illustration of the significance of generics for the socialworld, consider the phenomenon of stereotype threat (Steele andAronson 1995; Steele 2010). Stereotype threat occurs when members of astigmatized social group perform worse than they otherwise would have,because their membership in that group was made salient to them. Forexample, the performance of women and African-Americans onstandardized tests is lowered if they are reminded first of theirgroup membership by, e.g., being asked to report their gender or racebefore the exam. Interestingly, stereotype threat on a totally noveltask can be induced by simply uttering a generic—e.g., telling agirl “boys are really good at this game” (Cimpian 2013;Cimpian, Mu and Erickson 2012). Simply hearing an evaluative genericstatement about a gender group was enough to impair children’sperformance.

These findings suggest that generic language has an undesirableinfluence on how we come to understand the social world around us.Nevertheless, Ritchie (2019) defends the use of some social generics(e.g., “Blacks face economic, legal, and socialdiscrimination”, “Women are expected to wantchildren”) on the grounds that they are uniquely apt fordescribing and ameliorating conditions of structural injustice.

5.2 Generics and Philosophy More Generally

Some philosophers have recently applied the study of generics to arange of long-standing philosophical issues and puzzles. As afascinating illustration, Roy Sorensen (2012) argues that a properunderstanding of generics can solve the sorites paradox. An example ofthe sorites paradox is the following:1 is a small number; smallnumbers have small successors; therefore 1,000,000,000 is a smallnumber. The second premise is the inductive step, and is hereformulated as a generic. Sorensen proposes that, like most generics,the inductive step admits of exceptions: there are some (or at leastone) small numbers whose successor is not itself a small number. Ifthis is so, then the paradox is resolved: the argument is simplyinvalid. In order for the argument to be valid, the inductive stepcannot be an exception-tolerating generic, but rather an exceptionlessuniversal, e.g.,for alln, ifn is a smallnumber, so is $n+1$. Indeed, the paradox is often formulated inthis way—i.e., with a universal as the inductive step. Here,however, Sorensen argues that we are simply interpreting the universalas a generic, just as when adults accept “all ducks layeggs” despite knowing that male ducks do not lay eggs (Leslie etal. 2011).

A similar strategy is applied by Mahrad Almotahari (2022) to thekalām cosmological argument:Everything that beginsto exist has a cause for its existence; the universe began to exist;therefore the universe has a cause for its existence. Almotahariargues that acceptance of the first premise of the argument rests onthe generic overgeneralization effect. Certainly, anything that weencounter in ordinary life that begins to exist has a cause, and it isentirely reasonable to accept the corresponding genericthingsthat begin to exist have causes for their existence. But thekalām cosmological argument requires a universalgeneralization, not a generic one, and Almotahari argues that this isa step to which we are not entitled.

Additionally, generics have been said to solve, or at leastilluminate, other long-standing philosophical puzzles. For example,Kai Yuan Cheng (2011) argues that a proper understanding of genericsand habituals can help resolve the Kripke/Wittgenstein rule-followingparadox. Bernhard Nickel (2010, 2014) has argued that generics can beused to analyzeceteris paribus laws; similarly, Asher andDaniel Bonevac (1996, 1997) have relied on a normalcy-based approachto generics to provide an account ofprima facie obligation.Michael Graff Fara (2005) and Ryan Wasserman (2011) both recruitgenerics and habituals to give accounts of dispositions.

Reflection on generics has also influenced debates about philosophicalmethodology. Mark Johnston (2016) suggests that certain well-knowninadequacies of the “method of cases” in the philosophy ofpersonal identity can be explained by the fact that we as philosophershave treated what is in fact merely generic-based—and thusexception-tolerating—knowledge of the application conditions ofour concepts as if it were knowledge of universal necessary andsufficient conditions for the application of the relevant concepts.Johnston and Leslie (2012, 2019) rely on similar considerations toquestion the philosophical methodology known as the Canberra Plan.Lastly, Lerner and Leslie (2013) argue that a greater understanding ofthe role of generics in moral cognition undermines certainapplications of the method of reflective equilibrium within normativeethics.

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