Thomas Hofweber takes the semantic paradoxes to motivate a radical reconceptualization of logical validity, rejecting the idea that an inference rule is valid just in case every instance thereof is necessarily truth-preserving. Rather than this “strict validity”, we should identify validity with “generic validity”, where a rule is generically valid just in case its instances are truth preserving, and where this last sentence is a generic, like “Bears are dangerous”. While sympathetic to Hofweber’s view (...) that strict validity should be replaced by something allowing for exceptions, I argue that this should instead be truth-conduciveness, a matter of a large majority of instances being truth-preserving. The fact that inference rules have uncountably many instances, I argue, can be handled by defining truth-conduciveness as relative to finite sets of instances. Moreover, I argue that Hofweber’s position, while seemingly radical, may be less so under closer scrutiny. For the mere claim that classical rules and unrestricted truth rules are generically valid (or truth-conducive) is not in itself controversial. Also, if there is an answer to the question of which of these are also strictly valid, then the claim that generic validity is the central notion in logic is at most an interest-relative matter, since there is then also a fact of the matter as to which inference rules are (not) strictly valid. If no solution operating with strict validity to the paradoxes can be had, however, then the claim that validity should be identified with a weaker notion is better motivated. I argue that it is reasonable, in view of past failures, to conjecture that no ordinary solution will score high enough relative to standard (uncontroversial) desiderata to merit justified belief. Hence, it is unknowable which solution is correct. I further argue that this is best explained by its being metaphysically indeterminate which solution is correct. If this conjecture is true, then we ought instead to think of validity as allowing exceptions, and then take the “true logic” to be one that takes both the classical rules and the truth rules to be valid, i.e., truth-conducive. This logic scores very high on the desiderata on logics, and is therefore preferable to any logic operating with strict validity. (shrink)

There is a standard quantificational view of generic sentences according to which they have a tripartite logical form involving a phonologically null generic operator called 'Gen'. Recently, a number of theorists have questioned the standard view and revived a competing proposal according to which generics involve the predication of properties to kinds. This paper offers a novel argument against the kind-predication approach on the basis of the invalidity of Generic Excluded Middle, a principle according to which any (...) sentence of the form ⌜Either Fs are G or Fs are not G⌝ is true. I argue that the kind-predication approach erroneously predicts that GEM is valid, and that it can only avoid this conclusion by either collapsing into a form of the quantificational analysis or otherwise garnering unpalatable metaphysical commitments. I also show that, while the quantificational approach does not validate GEM as a matter of logical form, the principle may be validated on certain semantic analyses of the generic operator, and so, such theories should be rejected. (shrink)

It is unknown to what extent medical researchers generalize study findings beyond their samples when their sample size, sample diversity, or knowledge of conditions that support external validity do not warrant it. It is also unknown to what extent medical researchers describe their results with precise quantifications or unquantified generalizations, i.e., generics, that can obscure variations between individuals. We therefore systematically reviewed all prospective studies (n = 533) published in the top four highest ranking medical journals, Lancet, New England (...) Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), from January 2022 to May 2023. We additionally reviewed all NEJM Journal Watch clinical research summaries (n = 143) published during the same time. Of all research articles reporting prospective studies, 52.5% included generalizations beyond specific national study populations, with the numbers of articles with generics varying significantly between journals (JAMA = 12%; Lancet = 77%) (p < 0.001, V = 0.48). There was no evidence that articles containing broader generalizations or generics were correlated with larger or more nationally diverse samples. Moreover, only 10.2% of articles with generalizations beyond specific national populations reported external validity strengthening factors that could potentially support such extrapolations. There was no evidence that original research articles and NEJM Journal Watch summaries intended for practitioners differed in their use of broad generalizations, including generics. Finally, from the journal with the highest citation impact, articles containing broader conclusions were correlated with more citations. Since there was no evidence that studies with generalizations beyond specific national study populations or with generics were associated with larger, more nationally diverse samples, or with reports of population similarity that may permit extensions of conclusions, our findings suggest that the generalizations in many articles were insufficiently supported. Caution against overly broad generalizations in medical research is warranted. (shrink)

Formalization of the semantics of generics has been considered extremely challenging for their inherent vagueness and context-dependence that hinder a single fixed truth condition. The present study suggests a way to formalize the semantics of generics by constructing flexible acceptance conditions with comparative probabilities. Findings from our in-depth psycholinguistic experiment show that two comparative probabilities—cue validity and prevalence—indeed construct the flexible acceptance conditions for generics in a systematic manner that can be applied to a diverse types of generics: Acceptability (...) of IS_A relational generics is mostly determined by prevalence without interaction with cue validity; feature-describing generics are endorsed acceptable with high cue validity, albeit mediated by prevalence; and acceptability of feature-describing generics with low cue validity is mostly determined by prevalence irrespective of cue validity. Such systematic patterns indicate a great potential for the formalization of the semantics of generics. (shrink)

Are strangers sincere in their moral praise and criticism? Here we apply signaling theory to argue ceteris paribus moral criticism is more likely sincere than praise; the former tends to be a higher-fidelity signal (in Western societies). To offer an example: emotions are often self-validating as a signal because they're hard to fake. This epistemic insight matters: moral praise and criticism influence moral reputations, and affect whether others will cooperate with us. Though much of this applies to generic praise (...) and criticism too, moral philosophers should value sincere moral praise and moral criticism for several reasons: it (i) offers insight into how others actually view us as moral agents; (ii) offers feedback to help us improve our moral characters; and (iii) encourages some behaviors, and discourages others. And so as moral agents, we should care whether moral praise and moral criticism is sincere. (shrink)

Why is space 3-dimensional? The fi rst answer to this question, entirely based on Physics, was given by Ehrenfest, in 1917, who showed that the stability requirement for n-dimensional two-body planetary system very strongly constrains space dimensionality, favouring 3-d. This kind of approach will be generically called "stability postulate" throughout this paper and was shown by Tangherlini, in 1963, to be still valid in the framework of general relativity as well as for quantum mechanical hydrogen atom, giving the same constraint (...) for space{dimensionality. In the present work, before criticizing this methodology, a brief discussion has been introduced, aimed at stressing and clarifying some general physical aspects of the problem of how to determine the number of space dimensions. Then, the epistemological consequences of Ehrenfest's methodology are critically reviewed. An alternative procedure to get at the proper number of dimensions, in which the stability postulate - and the implicit singularities in three-dimensional physics - are not an essential part of the argument, is proposed. In this way, the main epistemological problems contained in Ehrenfest's original idea are avoided. The alternative methodology proposed in this paper is realized by obtaining and discussing the n-dimensional quantum theory as expressed in Planck's law, de Broglie relation and the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. As a consequence, it is possible to propose an experiment, based on thermal neutron di raction by crystals, to directly measure space dimensionality. Finally the distinguished role of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in the determination of space dimensionality is stressed. (shrink)

Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture is a series of essays delineating the gray areas and black zones in present-day cultural production. Part One is an implicit critique of neo-liberal capitalism and its assault on the humanities through the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-empirical biases of academic and professional disciplines, while Part Two returns to apparent lost causes in the historical development of modernity and post-modernity, particularly the recourse to artistic production as both a form of mnemonics and periodic (and (...) renascent) avant-garde agitation. In-between these twin systems of taking the measure of things, Art and Architecture, as forms of speculative intellectual capital, emerge from the shadow-lands of half-conscious and half-unconscious forces to become gestures toward a type of knowledge that has no utilitarian or generic agency. Defying the tendencies of such discourses to fall prey to instrumental orders that effectively neuter the inherent radical agenda of both, Art and Architecture are represented in this series of essays as noetic apparatuses, operating at the edge of authorized systems of knowledge, quietly and secretly validating and valorizing the shadowy and recondite, collective and personal operations of intellect in service to no particular end. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a new view of the role of connectionist models in the study of human cognition through the conceptualization of the history of connectionism – from the simplest perceptrons to convolutional neural nets based on deep learning techniques, as well as through the interpretation of criticism coming from symbolic cognitive science. Namely, the connectionist approach in cognitive science was the target of sharp criticism from the symbolists, which on several occasions caused its marginalization and almost complete (...) abandonment of its assumptions in the study of cognition. Criticisms have mostly pointed to its explanatory inadequacy as a theory of cognition or to its biological implausibility as a theory of implementation, and critics often focused on specific shortcomings of some connectionist models and argued that they apply to connectionism in general. In this paper, we want to show that both types of critique are based on the assumption that the only valid explanations in cognitive science are instances of homuncular functionalism and that by removing this assumption and by adopting an alternative methodology – exploratory mechanistic strategy, we can reject most objections to connectionism as irrelevant, explain the progress of connectionist models despite their shortcomings and sketch the trajectory of their future development. By adopting mechanistic explanations and by criticizing functionalism, we will reject the objections of explanatory inadequacy, by characterizing connectionist models as generic rather than concrete mechanisms, we will reject the objections of biological implausibility, and by attributing the exploratory character to connectionist models we will show that practice of generalizing current to general failures of connectionism is unjustified. (shrink)

Logicism is the view that mathematical truths are logical truths. But a logical truth is commonly thought to be one with a universally valid form. The form of “7 > 5” would appear to be the same as “4 > 6”. Yet one is a mathematical truth, and the other not a truth at all. To preserve logicism, we must maintain that the two either are different subforms of the same generic form, or that their forms are not at (...) all what they appear. The historical record shows that Russell pursued both these options, but that the struggle with the logical paradoxes pushed him away from the first kind of response and toward the second. An object cannot itself have a kind of inner logical complexity that makes a proposition have a different logical form merely in virtue of being about it, nor can their representatives in logical forms be single things different for different forms, at least not without postulating too many such objects and thereby creating Cantorian diagonal paradoxes. There are only apparent objects which are actually fragments of logical forms, different in different cases. (shrink)

This essay endeavors to define the concept of indefinite extensibility in the setting of category theory. I argue that the generative property of indefinite extensibility for set-theoretic truths in category theory is identifiable with the Grothendieck Universe Axiom and the elementary embeddings in Vopenka's principle. The interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities of indefinite extensibility is defined via the epistemic interpretation of two-dimensional semantics. The semantics can be defined intensionally or hyperintensionally. By characterizing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logical (...) class='Hi'>validity, and thus the generic invariance of mathematical truth, modal coalgebras are further capable of capturing the notion of definiteness for set-theoretic truths, in order to yield a non-circular definition of indefinite extensibility. (shrink)

The Logic of Causation: Definition, Induction and Deduction of Deterministic Causality is a treatise of formal logic and of aetiology. It is an original and wide-ranging investigation of the definition of causation (deterministic causality) in all its forms, and of the deduction and induction of such forms. The work was carried out in three phases over a dozen years (1998-2010), each phase introducing more sophisticated methods than the previous to solve outstanding problems. This study was intended as part of a (...) larger work on causal logic, which additionally treats volition and allied cause-effect relations (2004). The Logic of Causation deals with the main technicalities relating to reasoning about causation. Once all the deductive characteristics of causation in all its forms have been treated, and we have gained an understanding as to how it is induced, we are able to discuss more intelligently its epistemological and ontological status. In this context, past theories of causation are reviewed and evaluated (although some of the issues involved here can only be fully dealt with in a larger perspective, taking volition and other aspects of causality into consideration, as done in Volition and Allied Causal Concepts). Phase I: Macroanalysis. Starting with the paradigm of causation, its most obvious and strongest form, we can by abstraction of its defining components distinguish four genera of causation, or generic determinations, namely: complete, partial, necessary and contingent causation. When these genera and their negations are combined together in every which way, and tested for consistency, it is found that only four species of causation, or specific determinations, remain conceivable. The concept of causation thus gives rise to a number of positive and negative propositional forms, which can be studied in detail with relative ease because they are compounds of conjunctive and conditional propositions whose properties are already well known to logicians. The logical relations (oppositions) between the various determinations (and their negations) are investigated, as well as their respective implications (eductions). Thereafter, their interactions (in syllogistic reasoning) are treated in the most rigorous manner. The main question we try to answer here is: is (or when is) the cause of a cause of something itself a cause of that thing, and if so to what degree? The figures and moods of positive causative syllogism are listed exhaustively; and the resulting arguments validated or invalidated, as the case may be. In this context, a general and sure method of evaluation called ‘matricial analysis’ (macroanalysis) is introduced. Because this (initial) method is cumbersome, it is used as little as possible – the remaining cases being evaluated by means of reduction. Phase II: Microanalysis. Seeing various difficulties encountered in the first phase, and the fact that some issues were left unresolved in it, a more precise method is developed in the second phase, capable of systematically answering most outstanding questions. This improved matricial analysis (microanalysis) is based on tabular prediction of all logically conceivable combinations and permutations of conjunctions between two or more items and their negations (grand matrices). Each such possible combination is called a ‘modus’ and is assigned a permanent number within the framework concerned (for 2, 3, or more items). This allows us to identify each distinct (causative or other, positive or negative) propositional form with a number of alternative moduses. This technique greatly facilitates all work with causative and related forms, allowing us to systematically consider their eductions, oppositions, and syllogistic combinations. In fact, it constitutes a most radical approach not only to causative propositions and their derivatives, but perhaps more importantly to their constituent conditional propositions. Moreover, it is not limited to logical conditioning and causation, but is equally applicable to other modes of modality, including extensional, natural, temporal and spatial conditioning and causation. From the results obtained, we are able to settle with formal certainty most of the historically controversial issues relating to causation. Phase III: Software Assisted Analysis. The approach in the second phase was very ‘manual’ and time consuming; the third phase is intended to ‘mechanize’ much of the work involved by means of spreadsheets (to begin with). This increases reliability of calculations (though no errors were found, in fact) – but also allows for a wider scope. Indeed, we are now able to produce a larger, 4-item grand matrix, and on its basis find the moduses of causative and other forms needed to investigate 4-item syllogism. As well, now each modus can be interpreted with greater precision and causation can be more precisely defined and treated. In this latest phase, the research is brought to a successful finish! Its main ambition, to obtain a complete and reliable listing of all 3-item and 4-item causative syllogisms, being truly fulfilled. This was made technically feasible, in spite of limitations in computer software and hardware, by cutting up problems into smaller pieces. For every mood of the syllogism, it was thus possible to scan for conclusions ‘mechanically’ (using spreadsheets), testing all forms of causative and preventive conclusions. Until now, this job could only be done ‘manually’, and therefore not exhaustively and with certainty. It took over 72’000 pages of spreadsheets to generate the sought for conclusions. This is a historic breakthrough for causal logic and logic in general. Of course, not all conceivable issues are resolved. There is still some work that needs doing, notably with regard to 5-item causative syllogism. But what has been achieved solves the core problem. The method for the resolution of all outstanding issues has definitely now been found and proven. The only obstacle to solving most of them is the amount of labor needed to produce the remaining (less important) tables. As for 5-item syllogism, bigger computer resources are also needed. (shrink)

The term “Complex Systems Biology” was introduced a few years ago [Kaneko, 2006] and, although not yet of widespread use, it seems particularly well suited to indicate an approach to biology which is well rooted in complex systems science. Although broad generalizations are always dangerous, it is safe to state that mainstream biology has been largely dominated by a gene-centric view in the last decades, due to the success of molecular biology. So the one gene - one trait approch, which (...) has often proved to be effective, has been extended to cover even complex traits. This simplifying view has been appropriately criticized, and the movement called systems biology has taken off. Systems biology [Noble, 2006] emphasizes the presence of several feedback loops in biological systems, which severely limit the range of validity of explanations based upon linear causal chains (e.g. gene → behaviour). Mathematical modelling is one the favourite tools of systems biologists to analyze the possible effects of competing negative and positive feedback loops which can be observed at several levels (from molecules to organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, ecosystems). Systems biology is by now a well-established field, as it can be inferred by the rapid growth in number of conferences and journals devoted to it, as well as by the existence of several grants and funded projects.Systems biology is mainly focused upon the description of specific biological items, like for example specific organisms, or specific organs in a class of animals, or specific genetic-metabolic circuits. It therefore leaves open the issue of the search for general principles of biological organization, which apply to all living beings or to at least to broad classes. We know indeed that there are some principles of this kind, biological evolution being the most famous one. The theory of cellular organization also qualifies as a general principle. But the main focus of biological research has been that of studying specific cases, with some reluctance to accept (and perhaps a limited interest for) broad generalizations. This may however change, and this is indeed the challenge of complex systems biology: looking for general principles in biological systems, in the spirit of complex systems science which searches for similar features and behaviours in various kinds of systems. The hope to find such general principles appears well founded, and I will show in Section 2 that there are indeed data which provide support to this claim. Besides data, there are also general ideas and models concerning the way in which biological systems work. The strategy, in this case, is that of introducing simplified models of biological organisms or processes, and to look for their generic properties: this term, borrowed from statistical physics, is used for those properties which are shared by a wide class of systems. In order to model these properties, the most effective approach has been so far that of using ensembles of systems, where each member can be different from another one, and to look for those properties which are widespread. This approach was introduced many years ago [Kauffman, 1971] in modelling gene regulatory networks. At that time one had very few information about the way in which the expression of a given gene affects that of other genes, apart from the fact that this influence is real and can be studied in few selected cases (like e.g. the lactose metabolism in E. coli). Today, after many years of triumphs of molecular biology, much more has been discovered, however the possibility of describing a complete map of gene-gene interactions in a moderately complex organism is still out of reach. Therefore the goal of fully describing a network of interacting genes in a real organism could not be (and still cannot be) achieved. But a different approach has proven very fruitful, that of asking what are the typical properties of such a set of interacting genes. Making some plausible hypotheses and introducing some simplifying assumptions, Kauffman was able to address some important problems. In particular, he drew attention to the fact that a dynamical system of interacting genes displays selforganizing properties which explain some key aspects of life, most notably the existence of a limited number of cellular types in every multicellular organism (these numbers are of the order of a few hundreds, while the number of theoretically possible types, absent interactions, would be much much larger than the number of protons in the universe). In section 3 I will describe the ensemble based approach in the context of gene regulatory networks, and I will show that it can describe some important experimental data. Finally, in section 4 I will discuss some methodological aspects. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that normativity is not subject to truth values. The underlying reasoning is that truth values can only be predicated of descriptive statements; normative statements are prescriptive, not descriptive; thus truth value predicates cannot be assigned to normative statements. Hence, deonticity lacks logical semantics. This semantic monism has been challenged over the last decades from a series of perspectives that open the way for legal logics with imperative semantics. In the present paper I will go back to Kant (...) and review his understanding of practical judgments, presenting it as supported by a pluralistic semantics. From this perspective a norm of Law is a logical expression that includes as content a generic description of a possible behavior by a generality of juridical agents, and assigns to that content the assertion of its obligatory character, accompanied by a disincentive for non-compliance. From this perspective legal norms can be syntactically formalized and assigned appropriate semantic values in such terms that they can be incorporated into valid inferential schemes. The consequence is that we can put together legal logics that handle both the phenomenal and the deontic dimensions of legality. (shrink)

Zeno’s Arrow and Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way Chapter 2 contain paradoxical, dialectic arguments thought to indicate that there is no valid explanation of motion, hence there is no physical or generic motion. There are, however, diverse interpretations of the latter text, and I argue they apply to Zeno’s Arrow as well. I also find that many of the interpretations are dependent on a mathematical analysis of material motion through space and time. However, with modern philosophy and (...) physics we find that the link from no explanation to no phenomena is invalid and that there is a valid explanation and understanding of physical motion. Hence, those arguments are both invalid and false, which banishes the MMK/2 and The Arrow under this and derivative interpretations to merely the history of philosophy. However, a view that maintains their relevance is that each is used as a koan or sequence of koans designed to assist students in spiritual meditation practice. This view is partly justified by the realization that both Nāgārjuna and Zeno were likely meditation masters in addition to being logicians. The works are, therefore, not works that should be assessed as having valid arguments and true conclusions by the standards of modern analytic philosophy—contrary to some of the literature—but rather are therapeutic and perhaps more appropriately considered as part of an experientially focused philosophy such as existentialism, phenomenology or religion. (shrink)

Any adequate semantics of generic sentences (e.g., “Philosophers evaluate arguments”) must accommodate both what we call the positive data and the negative data. The positive data consists of observations about what felicitous interpretations of generic sentences are available. Conversely, the negative data consists of observations about which interpretations of generic sentences are unavailable. Nguyen argues that only his pragmatic neo-Gricean account and Sterken’s indexical account can accommodate the positive data. Lee and Nguyen have advanced the debate by (...) arguing that the negative data is a problem for both Nguyen’s and Sterken’s accounts; these two accounts seem to incorrectly predict that generics have felicitous interpretations that they, in fact, fail to have. In this paper, we advance this debate—and, more generally, the task of developing an adequate formal semantics of generics—by arguing that a neglected class of theories are compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. Specifically, we argue that treating the generic operator GEN as a relative gradable expression with a positive, upper- and lower- bounded scale helps accommodate the positive data and the negative data. While developing this view, we show how several previously developed semantics of generics may systematically accommodate both sets of data. One broad contribution of this paper is to show that, while they generate important desiderata, the positive and negative data cannot determine a unique semantics for generics. A further contribution of this paper is to highlight previously unnoted ways in which degree semantics may inform semantic theories of generic meaning. (shrink)

Some generic sentences seem to be true despite the fact that almost all the members of the relevant kind are exceptions. It’s controversial whether generics of this type express relatively weak generalizations or relatively strong ones. If the latter, then we’re systematically mistaken about their truth, but they make no trouble for our semantic theorizing. In this brief note, I present several arguments for the former: sentences of the relevant type are weak generics.

Generic stereotypes are generically formulated generalizations that express a stereotype, like “Mexican immigrants are rapists” and “Muslims are terrorists.” Stereotypes like these are offensive and should not be asserted by anyone. Yet when someone does assert a sentence like this in a conversation, it is surprisingly difficult to successfully rebut it. The meaning of generic sentences is such that they can be true in several different ways. As a result, a speaker who is challenged after asserting a (...) class='Hi'>generic stereotype can often simply dismiss the objection and maintain that the stereotype is true in a way that is compatible with the challenger’s objection. In this paper, a semantic theory for generics is presented that accounts for this type of defensive shifting in upholding generic stereotypes. This theory is then used to develop two strategies to object more efficiently. The first strategy is to immediately deny that either of the two possible ways in which a generic can be true obtains. The second strategy is to deny the satisfaction of an additional condition that is necessary for a generic sentence to be true. (shrink)

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a (...) certain property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

Generic statements play a crucial role in concept learning, communication and education. Despite many efforts, the semantics of generics remain a controversial issue, as they do not seem to fit our standard theories of meaning. In this article, we attempt to shed light on this problem by focusing on how these sentences function in reasoning. Drawing on a distinction between property and diagnostic generics, we defend three theses: First, property generics are not about facts but express relations between concepts. (...) Second, generics play an important role in everyday reasoning by interacting with our expectations about the world. Third, diagnostic generics emphasise properties that separate the category in the generics from other categories in the same contrast class. We use the theory of conceptual spaces to advance measures of typicality and diagnosticity capable of modelling different aspects of generics and apply them to the modifier effect and the inverse conjunction fallacy. Finally, we discuss the pragmatics of generics. (shrink)

The project of this paper is to deliver a semantics for a broad subset of bare plural generics about racial kinds, a class which I will dub 'Type C generics.' Examples include 'Blacks are criminal' and 'Muslims are terrorists.' Type C generics have two interesting features. First, they link racial kinds with ​ socially perspectival predicates ​ (SPPs). SPPs lead interpreters to treat the relationship between kinds and predicates in generic constructions as nomic or non-accidental. Moreover, in computing their (...) content, interpreters must make implicit reference to socially privileged​ ​ perspectives which are treated as authoritative about whether a given object fits into the extension of the predicate. Such deference grants these authorities influence over both the conventional meaning of these terms and over the nature of the ​ objects ​ in the social ontology that these terms purport to describe, much the way a baseball umpire is authoritative over the meaning and metaphysics of 'strike'/​ strike ​. Second, terms like 'criminal' and 'terrorist' receive default ​ racialized ​ interpretations in which these terms conventionally token racial or ethnic identities. I show that neither of these features can be explained by Sarah-Jane Leslie's influential 'weak semantics' for generics, and show how my own 'socially perspectival semantics' fares better on both counts. Finally, I give an analysis of 'Blacks are criminal' which explores the semantic mechanisms that underlie default racialized interpretations. (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and developmentally early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work suggests that generics display a unique asymmetry between the prevalence levels required to accept them and the prevalence levels typically implied by their use. This asymmetry effect is thought to have serious social consequences: if speakers use socially problematic generics based on prevalence levels that are systematically lower than what is typically inferred by their recipients, then using generics (...) will likely exacerbate social stereotypes and biases. This paper presents evidence against the popular hypothesis that this asymmetry effect is unique to generics. Correcting for various shortcomings of previous studies, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics and various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’). In addition, to better understand the conditions under which generalized asymmetry effects may exacerbate biases, we examine whether speakers choose generalizing sentences based simply on their acceptance conditions, or are systematically sensitive to the implications likely drawn by their typical recipients. In support of the latter view, we found that, in neutral or cooperative scenarios, speakers reliably choose generalizing sentences whose implied prevalence levels closely match the actual ones. In non-cooperative scenarios, speakers exploit asymmetry effects to further their own goals by choosing generalizing sentences that are strictly true but likely to mislead their recipients. These results refine our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and the conditions under which they may introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would (...) make. (shrink)

An adequate semantics for generic sentences must stake out positions across a range of contested territory in philosophy and linguistics. For this reason the study of generic sentences is a venue for investigating different frameworks for understanding human rationality as manifested in linguistic phenomena such as quantification, classification of individuals under kinds, defeasible reasoning, and intensionality. Despite the wide variety of semantic theories developed for generic sentences, to date these theories have been almost universally model-theoretic and representational. (...) This essay outlines a range of proof-theoretic analyses for characterizing generics. Particular attention is given to an expressivist proof-theory that can be traced to 1) work on logical syntax that Carnap undertook prior to his turn toward truth-conditional model theory in the late 1930s, and 2) research on sequent calculi and natural deduction systems that originate in work from Gentzen and Prawitz.11 This essay offers a more precise exposition of some of the material discussed in the first two chapters of my dissertation (Stovall Citation2015a). These ideas developed in the context of a working group on non-monotonic logic run by Robert Brandom, and they were subsequently clarified through the work of Nissim Francez (particularly Francez Citation2015). I am indebted to many people for feedback and criticism on this essay, though I am sure none among them would agree with everything I say and do here. I would particularly like to thank Brandom, Francez, Ulf Hlobil, Daniel Kaplan, Jared Millson, Bernhard Nickel, Jaroslav Peregrin, Jeffry Pelletier, Thomas Ricketts, Mark Risjord, Shawn Standefer, and two reviewers for this journal. Work on this essay was supported by the joint Lead-Agency research grant between the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality, GF17-33808L. It was substantially revised prior to its final submission. (shrink)

According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence, and lead to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this paper (...) is to bring these results together in a comprehensive narrative and systematically evaluate their impact on the hypothesis that generics have a uniquely problematic effect on our social and cognitive capacities. (shrink)

The generic pronoun 'one' (or its empty counterpart, arbitrary PRO) exhibits a range of properties that show a special connection to the first person, or rather the relevant intentional agent (speaker, addressee, or described agent). The paper argues that generic 'one' involves generic quantification in which the predicate is applied to a given entity ‘as if’ to the relevant agent himself. This is best understood in terms of simulation, a central notion in some recent developments in the (...) philosophy of mind and cognitive science (Simulation Theory). (shrink)

This paper is about an underappreciated aspect of generics: their non-specificity. Many uses of generics, utterances like ‘Seagulls swoop down to steal food’, express non-specific generalisations which do not specify their quantificational force or flavour. I consider whether this non-specificity arises as a by-product of context-sensitivity or semantic incompleteness but argue instead that generics semantically express non-specific generalisations by default as a result of quantifying existentially over more specific ones.

A prevailing thought is that generics have a covert modal operator at logical form. I claim that if this is right, the covert generic modality is a weak necessity modal. In this paper, I pr...

What is the relationship between the claim that generics articulate psychologically primitive generalizations and the claim that they exhibit a unique form of context sensitivity? This article maintains that the two claims are compatible. It develops and defends an overlooked form of contextualism grounded in the idiosyncrasies of system 1 thought.

Theorists have had less success in analyzing the truth conditions of generics. Philosophers of language have offered a number of theories. This chapter surveys several semantic accounts of generics. However, the focus is on generics and experimental philosophy. It briefly reviews empirical work that bears on these semantic accounts. While generics constitute an interesting linguistic phenomenon worthy of study in their own right, the study of generics also has wide‐ranging implications for questions beyond the philosophy of language, including questions in (...) social psychology and cognitive science more generally. The chapter also reviews empirical work on the relationship between generics and cognition. Existing empirical work strongly supports the generics‐as‐defaults hypothesis: the hypothesis that generics reflect a cognitively default, fundamental mode of generalizing in humans. Finally, the chapter elucidates evidence that generic language and generic modes of generalizing play an important role in stereotyping and prejudice. (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work found that generics display a unique asymmetry between their acceptance conditions and the implications that are typically drawn from them. This paper presents evidence against the hypothesis that only generics display an asymmetry. Correcting for limitations of previous designs, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics, various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’), and variations in (...) types of predicated properties (striking vs. neutral). We discuss implications of these results for our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and whether and in which ways these effects might introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the particular structure of the content of so-called generic memories, specifically of those of recurring events from one's past. This way of remembering has two central features that are in tension to each other: what is mentally represented is both rather specific as one is typically simulating a scene and sufficiently abstract as the represented scene stands for a series of similar former events. It will be argued that the phenomenon can be adequately described as (...) a mental state representing personal event prototypes. This description further allows to account for the dynamic process of remembering, in which, depending on the context, different forms of personal remembering may come to the fore. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of generics in social cognition. First, we explore the nature and effects of the most common form of generics about social kinds. Second, we discuss the nature and effects of a less common but equally important form of generics about social kinds. Finally, we consider the implications of this discussion for how we ought to use language about the social world.

Scientists often communicate using generic generalizations, which are unquantified generalizations such as ‘Americans overestimate social class mobility’ or ‘sound waves carry gravitational mass’. In this paper, I explain the role of such generic generalizations in science, based on a novel theory about their characteristic meaning. According to this theory, a scientific generalization of the form ‘Ks are F’ says that F is one property based on which category K qualifies as a scientific kind. Because what it takes to (...) qualify as a scientific kind varies depending on the discipline, what a generic sentence entails also varies. Based on this semantic theory, I discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using generic language in science. (shrink)

How do generics interact with modals? This note offers one observation about an interaction with 'might' that presents a challenge for standard theories.

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Trenton Merricks has recently raised three objections to combining pluralism with a generic way of being enjoyed by absolutely everything there is: first, that the resulting view contradicts the pluralist’s core intuition; second, that it is especially vulnerable to the charge—due to Peter van Inwagen—that it posits a difference in being where there is simply a difference in kind; and, third, that it is in tension with (...) various historically influential motivations for pluralism. I reply to each of these objections in turn. My replies will help to bring out the true nature of the pluralist’s basic commitments. (shrink)

We use generic sentences like ‘Blondes are stupid’ to express stereotypes. But why is this? Does the fact that we use generic sentences to express stereotypes mean that stereotypes are themselves, in some sense, generic? I argue that they are. However, stereotypes are mental and generics linguistic, so how can stereotypes be generic? My answer is that stereotypes are generic in virtue of the beliefs they contain. Stereotypes about blondes being stupid contain a belief element, (...) namely a belief that blondes are stupid. This belief is an attitude taken towards the same proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Blondes are stupid’, hence why we use the latter to articulate the former. -/- This generic account of stereotypes can help us better understand their inner workings. I focus on one feature of generics, variability in the types of facts that can make them true, and argue that it can explain how stereotypes shape inferential patterns and thereby guide how we treat members of stereotyped groups. This feature, in turn, illuminates the harms caused by stereotyping and suggests some courses of action. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

This paper looks at the question of what it means for a psychological test to have construct validity. I approach this topic by way of an analysis of recent debates about the measurement of implicit social cognition. After showing that there is little theoretical agreement about implicit social cognition, and that the predictive validity of implicit tests appears to be low, I turn to a debate about their construct validity. I show that there are two questions at (...) stake: First, what level of detail and precision does a construct have to possess such that a test can in principle be valid relative to it? And second, what kind of evidence needs to be in place such that a test can be regarded as validated relative to a given construct? I argue that construct validity is not an all-or-nothing affair. It can come in degrees, because both our constructs and our knowledge of the explanatory relation between constructs and data can vary in accuracy and level of detail, and a test can fail to measure all of the features associated with a construct. I conclude by arguing in favor of greater philosophical attention to processes of construct development. (shrink)

This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as Tigers have stripes and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as All tigers have stripes was acquired in Spanish-speaking children of two different age groups (4/5-year-olds and 8/9-year-olds), and then compare these results with those of adults. The starting point of this research was the semantic distinction (...) between GS and UQS in that the former admit exceptions, unlike the latter. On the other hand, several authors have observed a Generic overgeneralization effect (GOG) consisting in allowing for UQS to be felicitous in the face of exceptions, thus proposing that this “error” stems from GS being defaults (simpler, more easily learned and processed). In the current paper we aimed to test the “Generics as Default” (GaD) hypothesis by comparing GS and UQS in three different age ranges. Our data show that, overall, the accuracy of GS is greater than the accuracy of UQS. Moreover, we also confirm a hypothesized interaction between age and NP type (GS vs UQS). Further, we present several data points that are not predicted by the GaD, including an observed decline in the accuracy of GS in the older group of children as well as in adults, and that children fail at rejecting statements that are not considered to be true generalizations. (shrink)

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the semantics of generics. And a relatively mainstream view in this work is that the semantics of generics must appeal to kinds. But what are kinds? Can we learn anything about their nature by looking at how semantic theories of generics appeal to them? In this article, we overview recent work on the semantics of generics and consider their consequences for our understanding of the metaphysics of kinds.

Generics about social kinds (or GSKs) frequently propagate descriptions that carry normative force (e.g., 'women are emotional'). Some philosophers of language attribute this to GSKs’ tendency to transmit essentialist beliefs about social kinds. According to these accounts, utterances of GSKs implicate that there is something in the nature of social kinds that causes them to possess the properties described, and that individual members of these social kinds therefore ought to exhibit (or be expected to exhibit) these properties. Here, I draw (...) on empirical evidence to suggest an alternative account. According to my framework, an utterance of a GSK implicates a distinction between the social kind described and its salient conceptual opposite, producing what I call a dichotomizing perspective. For example, ‘women are emotional’ suggests that men are not. Importantly, such distinctions frequently persist in the societal common ground as a function of social power, in part due to their alignment with hierarchical social structures between dichotomized social kinds. This enables such GSKs to perpetuate biased patterns of attention, expectation, and behavior even in the absence of essentialist belief. (shrink)

This paper explores an idea of Stoic descent that is largely neglected nowadays, the idea that an argument is valid when the conditional formed by the conjunction of its premises as antecedent and its conclusion as consequent is true. As it will be argued, once some basic features of our naıve understanding of validity are properly spelled out, and a suitable account of conditionals is adopted, the equivalence between valid arguments and true conditionals makes perfect sense. The account of (...) validity outlined here, which displays one coherent way to articulate the Stoic intuition, accords with standard formal treatments of deductive validity and encompasses an independently grounded characterization of inductive validity. (shrink)

If someone unintentionally breaks the rules, do they break the rules? In the abstract, the answer is obviously “yes.” But, surprisingly, when considering specific examples of unintentional, blameless rule-breaking, approximately half of people judge that no rule was broken. This effect, known as excuse validation, has previously been observed in American adults. Outstanding questions concern what causes excuse validation, and whether it is peculiar to American moral psychology or cross-culturally robust. The present paper studies the phenomenon cross-culturally, focusing on Korean (...) and American adults, and proposes a new explanation of why people engage in excuse validation, in terms of competing forces in human norm-psychology. The principal findings are that Americans and Koreans engaged in excuse validation at similar levels, and older adults were more likely to engage in excuse validation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper offers a generic revenge-proof solution to the Sorites paradox that is compatible with several philosophical approaches to vagueness, including epistemicism, supervaluationism, psychological contextualism and intuitionism. The solution is traditional in that it rejects the Sorites conditional and proposes a modally expressed weakened conditional instead. The modalities are defined by the first-order logic QS4M+FIN. (This logic is a modal companion to the intermediate logic QH+KF, which places the solution between intuitionistic and classical logic.) Borderlineness is introduced modally (...) as usual. The solution is innovative in that its modal system brings out the semi-determinability of vagueness. Whether something is borderline and whether a predicate is vague or precise is only semi-determinable: higher-order vagueness is columnar. Finally, the solution is based entirely on two assumptions. (1) It rejects the Sorites conditional. (2) It maintains that if one specifies borderlineness in terms of the ‒suitably interpreted‒ modal logic QS4M+FIN, then one can explain why the Sorites appears paradoxical. From (1)+(2) it results that one can tell neither where exactly in a Sorites series the borderline zone starts and ends nor what its extension is. Accordingly, the solution is also called agnostic. (shrink)

I argue that generic generalizations expressed in language (i.e. ‘generics’) are apt for clinical reasoning. I introduce generics and describe two problems in the use and interpretation of generics: Generics may license inaccurate judgements about the frequency of events or properties within a group (i.e. a problem with the ‘truth-aptness’ of generics) and may facilitate problematic beliefs about social kinds (e.g. prejudice or essentializing). I provide an account of clinical reasoning and describe some features of what I call ‘good’ (...) clinical reasoning. I offer examples of generics in clinical contexts and examine how the two problems with generics (i.e. of truth-aptness and social generics) can harm patients and impair clinical reasoning. However, I ultimately argue that generics are important for good clinical reasoning because they track ‘conspicuous’ features of disease processes (e.g. severe possible outcomes). Further, I argue that prejudicial generics are often irrational to believe. Social generics that are rational to believe need not lead to problematic implicatures about social kinds and can instead facilitate meaningfully articulating societal injustices. I then argue that statistical statements, which are tempting alternatives to generics in clinical reasoning, are no better than generics for good clinical reasoning. (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare (...) plurals fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

While Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions does not specifically deal with validation, the validation of simulations can be related in various ways to Kuhn's theory: 1) Computer simulations are sometimes depicted as located between experiments and theoretical reasoning, thus potentially blurring the line between theory and empirical research. Does this require a new kind of research logic that is different from the classical paradigm which clearly distinguishes between theory and empirical observation? I argue that this is not the case. (...) 2) Another typical feature of computer simulations is their being ``motley'' (Winsberg 2003) with respect to the various premises that enter into simulations. A possible consequence is that in case of failure it can become difficult to tell which of the premises is to blame. Could this issue be understood as fostering Kuhn's mild relativism with respect to theory choice? I argue that there is no need to worry about relativism with respect to computer simulations, in particular. 3) The field of social simulations, in particular, still lacks a common understanding concerning the requirements of empirical validation of simulations. Does this mean that social simulations are still in a pre-scientific state in the sense of Kuhn? My conclusion is that despite ongoing efforts to promote quality standards in this field, lack of proper validation is still a problem of many published simulation studies and that, at least large parts of social simulations must be considered as pre-scientific. (shrink)

What is a valid measuring instrument? Recent philosophy has attended to logic of justification of measures, such as construct validation, but not to the question of what it means for an instrument to be a valid measure of a construct. A prominent approach grounds validity in the existence of a causal link between the attribute and its detectable manifestations. Some of its proponents claim that, therefore, validity does not depend on pragmatics and research context. In this paper, I (...) cast doubt on the possibility of a context-independent causal account of validity (what I call unconditional validity). I assess several versions, arguing that all of them fail to judge the validity of measuring instruments correctly. Because different research purposes require different properties from measuring instruments, no account of validity succeeds without referring to the specific research purpose that creates the need for measurement in the first place. (shrink)

In his book, "Prejudice", Endre Begby offers a novel and engaging account of the epistemology of prejudice which challenges some of the standard assumptions that have so far guided the recent discussion on the topic. One of Begby's central arguments against the standard view of prejudice, according to which a prejudiced person necessarily displays an epistemically culpable resistance to counterevidence, is that, qua stereotype judgments, prejudices can be flexible and rationally maintained upon encountering many disconfirming instances. By expanding on Begby's (...) analysis, I argue that, given the variety of truth conditions for true generic statements, the generic form of stereotype judgements can sometimes make prejudice extremely resistant to encounters with statistical facts about the distribution of the property among members of a certain group. At the same time, I argue that a more careful consideration of the generic form of stereotypes also allows us to recognize that evidence about how many members of the kind instantiate a property is not the only type of evidence which could disconfirm a prejudice. Evidence of no explanatory relation between a kind and a property should also have a direct effect on a prejudicial belief. For this reason, things may not look as dim for the standard view of prejudice in assessing paradigmatic instances of prejudicial beliefs as irrationally resistant to evidence. (shrink)