A Note on the Logic of Generics
Recently, an increasing number of philosophers have suggested that paying close attention to how generics work may provide new ways of approaching certain philosophical problems and concepts (e.g. the sorites-paradox, the problem of rule-following, ceteris paribus laws, dis- positions, implicit bias). While there are several worked-out semantic proposals for generics, somewhat less attention has so far been paid to the question what structural-logical principles govern generics. Based on the observation that certain inferences involving generics, negations, and disjunctions are valid, this paper argues for a positive and a neg- ative claim. The positive claim is that accounting for these validities gives us reason to accept a certain principle about the interplay be- tween generics and negation. The negative claim is that two of the most comprehensive truth-conditional accounts currently on the market are incapable of accounting for these validities: the normality-account de- veloped by Bernhard Nickel, and the probability-account defended by Ariel Cohen.
Recently, an increasing number of philosophers have suggested that paying close attention to how generics work may provide new ways of approaching certain philosophical problems and concepts (e.g. the sorites-paradox, the problem of rule-following, ceteris paribus laws, dis- positions, implicit bias). While there are several worked-out semantic proposals for generics, somewhat less attention has so far been paid to the question what structural-logical principles govern generics. Based on the observation that certain inferences involving generics, negations, and disjunctions are valid, this paper argues for a positive and a neg- ative claim. The positive claim is that accounting for these validities gives us reason to accept a certain principle about the interplay be- tween generics and negation. The negative claim is that two of the most comprehensive truth-conditional accounts currently on the market are incapable of accounting for these validities: the normality-account de- veloped by Bernhard Nickel, and the probability-account defended by Ariel Cohen.