Generics

Generics have been a vividly debated topic since the 1970s. Several aspects make them especially interesting, from their ubiquity to their tricky truth-conditions, from their distinctive cognitive implications to their (still debated) harmfulness in the social domain. This annotated bibliography aims to provide a guide to the massive scholarship on generics ranging through different fields. In linguistics and philosophy of language, generics are subject to inquiries for a number of reasons (see Linguistic Overviews). First, no one specific element in the linguistic surface identifies generics and, thus, a primary goal of a theory of generics is to provide a way to clearly distinguish them from nongeneric sentences. This enterprise includes providing a definition as well as tests for genericity (see Foundational Works on Genericity). Moreover, a vast number of theorists have attempted to specify the truth-conditions of generic sentences by appealing to semantic and pragmatic mechanisms (see Semantic Accounts, Pragmatic Accounts, and Normative Generics and Definitions). This task, however, has proven especially challenging, to the point that none of the theories proposed to date can account for the full range of data. Generics are further at the center of research programs in psychology revolving around their role in human cognition. Generics are a common means of expressing generalizations. They are further central to the development and shaping of our conceptual knowledge. A variety of developmental data show that generics are early acquired (see Acquisition of Generic Language). To account for this evidence, it has been hypothesized that generics express cognitively default generalizations (see Generics as Default Generalizations). Such a hypothesis led to several predictions, some of which found empirical support. Furthermore, several empirical studies investigated the relation between generics and essentialism, a cognitive bias that leads to believe that the members of certain categories share properties and dispositions due to a common essence (see Essentialism). Other studies concerned a distinctive asymmetry characterizing generics: they are taken to express broad generalizations but are, at the same time, accepted based on relatively weak evidence (see Inferential Asymmetry). Together with prior theorizing, these findings sparked a debate over the potential harmfulness of social generics, i.e., generics concerning social categories (see Detrimental Effects of Social Generics). In philosophy, the discussion revolves around the question of whether generics are especially harmful compared to other means of expressing generalizations, whether there are circumstances in which the use of social generics is useful, and how to effectively counter them to prevent their possible harmful effects (see Debate on the Use of Social Generics). In recent years, moreover, some scholars started exploring the use and interpretation of generics in the scientific domain (see Generics in Scientific Communication). For this work, Federico Cella was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under project UIDP/00183/2020 while he was a postdoc fellow at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (NOVA University of Lisbon).