Essentializing Inferences

Mind and Language 36 (4):570-591 (2021)
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Abstract

Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments.

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Katherine Ritchie
University of California, Irvine

References found in this work

Inferential Transitions.Jake Quilty-Dunn & Eric Mandelbaum - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3):532-547.
Reference and Generality.Peter Geach - 1962 - Studia Logica 15:301-303.
Genericity: An Introduction.Manfred Krifka, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Gregory Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Gennaro Chierchia & Godehard Link - 1995 - In Greg N. Carlson & Francis Jeffry Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book. University of Chicago Press. pp. 1--124.

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