Generics as Expectations : Typicality and Diagnosticity
(2025) In Ratio 38(1). p.16-26- Abstract
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... (More)
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.
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- author
- Gärdenfors, Peter LU and Osta-Vélez, Matías LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-03
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- conceptual spaces, diagnosticity, generics, reasoning, typicality
- in
- Ratio
- volume
- 38
- issue
- 1
- pages
- 11 pages
- publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85204672085
- ISSN
- 0034-0006
- DOI
- 10.1111/rati.12424
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- cba07cf4-bb35-482a-844c-a32911c05557
- date added to LUP
- 2024-12-02 11:56:59
- date last changed
- 2025-06-03 13:47:03
@article{cba07cf4-bb35-482a-844c-a32911c05557,
abstract = {{<p>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.</p>}},
author = {{Gärdenfors, Peter and Osta-Vélez, Matías}},
issn = {{0034-0006}},
keywords = {{conceptual spaces; diagnosticity; generics; reasoning; typicality}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{1}},
pages = {{16--26}},
publisher = {{Wiley-Blackwell}},
series = {{Ratio}},
title = {{Generics as Expectations : Typicality and Diagnosticity}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rati.12424}},
doi = {{10.1111/rati.12424}},
volume = {{38}},
year = {{2025}},
}