Generic statements, or shortly generics, are statements that express generalizations without containing explicit quantification (such as ‘Birds lay eggs’). One of the central problems about generics concerns their proper semantic analysis, which is generally understood in terms of giving a truth-conditional account of such statements. What are the criteria of evaluating such seemingly unspecific statements? One of the contemporary views on this topic is indexicalism, pioneered by Rachel Sterken. Indexicalism denies that there is a unified phenomenon of genericity and instead focuses on generics’ context-sensitivity (Sterken, 2015). Despite some critical discussions (Almotahari, 2024), an overall evaluation of Sterken’s account has been missing so far. My objective is to present Sterken’s account of generic statements and critically engage with it. I aim to apply to it the methodologies found in literature on context-sensitivity (Perry, 2001), and to evaluate indexicalism’s merits in contrast with Sarah-Jane Leslie’s primitivism (Leslie, 2008), which is currently the most influential semantic theory of generics. Thus, I will evaluate the relevance of Sterken’s theory of context-sensitivity of generics and its potential outcomes for the broader debate on generics.

Keywords: generics, context-sensitivity, semantics

References:

Almotahari, M. (2024). Generic cognition: A neglected source of context sensitivity. Mind & Language, 39(4), 472-491.

Leslie, S. J. (2008). Generics: Cognition and acquisition. Philosophical review, 117(1), 1-47.

Perry, John (2001). Reference and Reflexivity. Stanford, Calif.: Center for the Study of Language and Inf.

Sterken, R. K. (2015). Generics in Context. Philosophers‘ Imprint, 15.

Sterken, R. K. (2015). Leslie on generics. Philosophical Studies, 172(9), 2493-2512.