We are experiencing a new phase of the crisis of the universality in the transmodern era. In the XXIst century there is room for the common search for the human unity starting from the acceptance of our fundamental diversity and the experiencing of an insular, local universality in the Digital Realm of the Net. There are good reasons to consider the Human Being has a ground non generic universality, inviting us to search the human integrality as a process, not as (...) a result and to accept that the digital natives are naturally adapted to the Transmodern Era. (shrink)

We show that every two-dimensional class of topological similarity, and hence every diagonal conjugacy class of pairs, is meager in the group of order preserving bijections of the rationale and in the group of automorphisms of the ordered rational Urysohn space.

This paper is about an underappreciated aspect of generics: their non-specificity. Many uses of generics, utterances like ‘Seagulls swoop down to steal food’, express non-specific generalisations which do not specify their quantificational force or flavour. I consider whether this non-specificity arises as a by-product of context-sensitivity or semantic incompleteness but argue instead that generics semantically express non-specific generalisations by default as a result of quantifying existentially over more specific ones.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of the US generic drug supply chain to foreign production. Many policies have been proposed to mitigate this vulnerability. In this article, we argue that nonprofit drug manufacturers have the potential to make important contributions.

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

Generic statements express generalizations about categories. Current theories suggest that people should be especially inclined to accept generics that involve threatening information. However, previous tests of this claim have focused on generics about non-human categories, which raises the question of whether this effect applies as readily to human categories. In Experiment 1, adults were more likely to accept generics involving a threatening property for artifacts, but this negativity bias did not also apply to human categories. Experiment 2 examined an alternative (...) hypothesis for this result, and Experiments 3 and 4 served as conceptual replications of the first experiment. Experiment 5 found that even preschoolers apply generics differently for humans and artifacts. Finally, Experiment 6 showed that these effects reflect differences between human and non-human categories more generally, as adults showed a negativity bias for categories of non-human animals, but not for categories of humans. These findings suggest the presence of important, early-emerging domain differences in people's judgments about generics. (shrink)

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

Hrushovski originated the study of “flat” stable structures in constructing a new strongly minimal set and a stable 0-categorical pseudoplane. We exhibit a set of axioms which for collections of finite structure with dimension function δ give rise to stable generic models. In addition to the Hrushovski examples, this formalization includes Baldwin's almost strongly minimal non-Desarguesian projective plane and several others. We develop the new case where finite sets may have infinite closures with respect to the dimension function δ. In (...) particular, the generic structure need not be ω-saturated and so the argument for stability is significantly more complicated. We further show that these structures are “flat” and do not interpret a group. (shrink)

The project of this paper is to deliver a semantics for a broad subset of bare plural generics about racial kinds, a class which I will dub 'Type C generics.' Examples include 'Blacks are criminal' and 'Muslims are terrorists.' Type C generics have two interesting features. First, they link racial kinds with ​ socially perspectival predicates ​ (SPPs). SPPs lead interpreters to treat the relationship between kinds and predicates in generic constructions as nomic or non-accidental. Moreover, in computing their content, (...) interpreters must make implicit reference to socially privileged​ ​ perspectives which are treated as authoritative about whether a given object fits into the extension of the predicate. Such deference grants these authorities influence over both the conventional meaning of these terms and over the nature of the ​ objects ​ in the social ontology that these terms purport to describe, much the way a baseball umpire is authoritative over the meaning and metaphysics of 'strike'/​ strike ​. Second, terms like 'criminal' and 'terrorist' receive default ​ racialized ​ interpretations in which these terms conventionally token racial or ethnic identities. I show that neither of these features can be explained by Sarah-Jane Leslie's influential 'weak semantics' for generics, and show how my own 'socially perspectival semantics' fares better on both counts. Finally, I give an analysis of 'Blacks are criminal' which explores the semantic mechanisms that underlie default racialized interpretations. (shrink)

Generic sentences involving phrasal conjunctions present a prima facie problem for the standard theory of generics according to which they express quasi-universal generalisations about what is characteristic for members of a particular kind. For example, the sentence ‘Elephants live in Africa and Asia’ is true, even though it is uncharacteristic for an elephant to live in both Africa and Asia. In response to this problem, theorists have recently proposed radical departures from the standard view. This paper argues that such departures (...) are unwarranted: not only do they fail to fully accommodate the data involving generic conjunctions, their scope is overly narrow, since the phenomena in question also arise in non-generic contexts. I propose a new theory of generics that aims to account for generic conjunctions in a principled manner and which sheds new light on the mereological commitments of natural language. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the semantics of bare plural I-generics such as ‘Tigers are striped’, ‘Chickens lay eggs’, and ‘Kangaroos live in Australia’. In a series of recent papers, Bernhard Nickel has developed a comprehensive view of a certain class of bare plural I-generics, which he calls characterizing sentences :629–648, 2009. doi:10.1007/s10988-008-9049-7; Linguist Philos 33:479–512, 2010a. doi:10.1007/s10988-011-9087-4; Philos Impr 10:1–25, 2010b). Nickel’s ambitious proposal includes a detailed account of their truth-conditions, an account of certain pragmatic phenomena that they give (...) rise to, a metaphysical picture of their truth-makers in terms of mechanisms, and an epistemological story connecting characterizing sentences to such concepts as induction and explanation. This paper offers an extended critique of the central truth-conditional component of Nickel’s proposal. In a nutshell, his account has it that ‘Tigers are striped’ is true iff, for tigers, there is a way of being normal with respect to fur-pattern such that all tigers that are normal that way are striped. I begin by explaining what characterizing sentences are and distinguish several readings that are available for sentences with bare plurals in subject position. I then introduce Nickel’s account and discuss some of its predictions which, in my view, seem highly problematic. Moreover, I argue that Nickel’s principle of Homogeneity does not go together well with his proposed truth-conditions, and that his truth-conditional account violates a plausible principle about the logic of generics, a principle I call generic non-contradiction. (shrink)

We show that K-generic projective planes have Morley rank either two or infinity. We also show give a direct argument that such planes are not Desarguesian.

The goal of this paper is to facilitate ongoing dialogue between open and non-open theists. First, I try to make precise what open theism is by distinguishing the core commitments of the position from other secondary and optional commitments. The result is a characterization of ‘generic open theism’, the minimal set of commitments that any open theist, qua open theist, must affirm. Second, within the framework of generic open theism, I distinguish three important variants and discuss challenges distinctive to each. (...) The significance of this approach is that it helps avoid conflating arguments bearing on specific versions of open theism with arguments pertaining to open theism simpliciter. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Generic Chaplaincy: Providing Spiritual Care in a Post-Christian Age, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morali.

I argue for two major claims in this paper. First, I argue that the linguistic evidence best supports a certain form of contextualism about predicates of personal taste (PPTs) like ?fun? and ?tasty?. In particular, I argue that these adjectives are both individual-level predicates (ILPs) and anaphoric implicit argument taking predicates (IATPs). As ILPs, these naturally form generics. As anaphoric IATPs, PPTs show the same dependencies on context and distributional behavior as more familiar anaphoric IATPs, for example, ?local? and ?apply?. (...) Moreover, they are subject to important binding-related phenomena, for example, various kinds of anaphora, binding arguments, and strict-sloppy ambiguities. The latter are particularly problematic for relativism, contextualism's major competitor. I argue that relativism cannot account for these binding facts in a non-ad hoc manner. Second, I argue that disagreement is a predictable feature of dialogues involving PPTs in conjunction with the contextualist semantics defended. Appealing to ?off the shelf? analyses of genericity, I show how disagreement arises in just the cases we would expect, licensing just the kinds of responses we would expect. They also suggest promising explanations, unavailable to relativists, of various otherwise puzzling features of disagreements involving PPTs. (shrink)

The D-CTC condition, introduced by David Deutsch as a condition to be fulfilled by analogues for processes of quantum systems in the presence of closed timelike curves, is investigated for classical statistical bi-partite systems. It is shown that the D-CTC condition can generically be fulfilled in classical statistical systems, under very general, model-independent conditions. The central property used is the convexity and completeness of the state space that allows it to generalize Deutsch’s original proof for q-bit systems to more general (...) classes of statistically described systems. The results demonstrate that the D-CTC condition, or the conditions under which it can be fulfilled, is not characteristic of, or dependent on, the quantum nature of a bi-partite system. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a novel treatment of generic sentences, which proceeds by means of different levels of analysis. According to this account, all generic sentences (I-generics and D-generics alike) are initially treated in a uniform manner, as involving higher-order predication (following the work of George Boolos, James Higginbotham and Barry Schein on plurals). Their non-uniform character, however, re-emerges at subsequent levels of analysis, when the higher-order predications of the first level are cashed out in terms of quantification over (...) individuals: this last step, I suggest, involves knowledge concerning the lexical meaning of the predicates in question. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that gratitude is not necessarily affective or motivating. Against a common trend in recent philosophical treatments of the notion, indeed, I argue for the introduction of an important but neglected kind of gratitude that is simply a matter of believing that one has been benefitted by a benevolent benefactor. I will call this non-affective, non-motivating kind of gratitude “generic,” and the kind – taking center stage in the literature – that is affective and motivating “deep.” (...) After defending the distinction, I explore the connection between these kinds of gratitude. (shrink)

For a supersimple SU-rank 1 theory T we introduce the notion of a generic elementary pair of models of T . We show that the theory T* of all generic T-pairs is complete and supersimple. In the strongly minimal case, T* coincides with the theory of infinite dimensional pairs, which was used in 1184–1194) to study the geometric properties of T. In our SU-rank 1 setting, we use T* for the same purpose. In particular, we obtain a characterization of linearity (...) for SU-rank 1 structures by giving several equivalent conditions on T*, find a “weak” version of local modularity which is equivalent to linearity, show that linearity coincides with 1-basedness, and use the generic pairs to “recover” projective geometries over division rings from non-trivial linear SU-rank 1 structures. (shrink)

In this paper we study generic complexity of undecidable problems. It turns out that some classical undecidable problems are, in fact, strongly undecidable, i.e., they are undecidable on every strongly generic subset of inputs. For instance, the classical Halting Problem is strongly undecidable. Moreover, we prove and analog of the Rice theorem for strongly undecidable problems, which provides plenty of examples of strongly undecidable problems. Then we show that there are natural super-undecidable problems. i.e., problem which are undecidable on every (...) generic (not only strongly generic) subset of inputs. In particular, there are finitely presented semigroups with super-undecidable word problem. To construct strongly- and super-undecidable problems we introducea method of generic amplification (an analog of the amplification in complexity theory). Finally, we construct absolutely undecidable problems, which stay undecidable on every non-negligible set of inputs. Their construction rests on generic immune sets. (shrink)

We show that if M is a countable transitive model of $\text {ZF}$ and if $a,b$ are reals not in M, then there is a G generic over M such that $b \in L[a,G]$. We then present several applications such as the following: if J is any countable transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ and $M \not \subseteq J$ is another countable transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ of the same ordinal height $\alpha $, then there is a forcing extension N of (...) J such that $M \cup N$ is not included in any transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ of height $\alpha $. Also, assuming $0^{\#}$ exists, letting S be the set of reals generic over L, although S is disjoint from the Turing cone above $0^{\#}$, we have that for any non-constructible real a, $\{ a \oplus s : s \in S \}$ is cofinal in the Turing degrees. (shrink)

The generic Vopěnka principle, we prove, is relatively consistent with the ordinals being non-Mahlo. Similarly, the generic Vopěnka scheme is relatively consistent with the ordinals being definably non-Mahlo. Indeed, the generic Vopěnka scheme is relatively consistent with the existence of a \-definable class containing no regular cardinals. In such a model, there can be no \-reflecting cardinals and hence also no remarkable cardinals. This latter fact answers negatively a question of Bagaria, Gitman and Schindler.

Hospital chaplaincy, in its exposure to clients, colleagues, and care-takers from different faith backgrounds, can be understood in either generic or catholic terms. The first understanding, often merely implicit in denominationalist approaches, assumes that some “Absolute” can be prayerfully invoked through the medium of diverse rituals, confessions, and symbols. This position combines the advantage of unprejudiced acceptance of other creeds and traditions with the disadvantage of lacking resources for discriminating among the spiritualities that may be operative within those other creeds (...) and traditions. Catholicism, in linking true spirituality with the one true church as the mystical body of the Tri-une God, secures such a criterion but fails to satisfy the tolerance-of-acknowledgement in the secular sense, which is canonical in contemporary ecumenism. The Orthodox understanding of Catholicism is portrayed as imposing a non-judgemental humility and repentance which provides a solution to that spiritual-human dilemma of inter-faith cooperation in the hospital. (shrink)

General theoretical aspects are reviewed of models for microbial growth and endogenous metabolism. The focus is on a generic cell model with two components. Growth is represented as the increase of one of these components (the structural scaffolding or 'frame'). A novel feature of the present generic model is the explicit modelling of (partial) metabolic shutdown under conditions where maintenance requirements cannot be met.Two different approaches to mechanistic underpinnings for the classic models are outlined. The first approach is based on (...) a bimolecular reaction between the non-permanent biomass component and the permanent biomass component. The second approach is based on cellular control systems. (shrink)

Because of the intellectual attraction of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, its conccpts are often borrowed to conceptualized evolutionary change also in non-biological domains. However, a heuristic strategy like that is problematic. An attempt is therefore made to identify generic features of evolution which transcend domain-specific characteristics. Epistemological, conccptual, and methodological implications are discussed, and the ontological question is raised how non-biological evolutionary theories can be accommodated within the Darwinian world view of modern sciences.

Accounts of ability in the philosophical literature have tended to be modal ones: claims about an agent’s abilities are understood in terms of what she does in certain non-actual scenarios. In contrast, a prominent account of ability ascriptions in the recent semantics literature appeals to genericity: claims about an agent’s abilities are understood in terms of what she generally manages to do. The latter account resolves some long-standing problems for modal accounts, but encounters problems of its own. I propose (...) a hybrid view, on which ability involves both a modal and a generic element. (shrink)

A P-point ultrafilter over \(\omega \) is called an interval P-point if for every function from \(\omega \) to \(\omega \) there exists a set _A_ in this ultrafilter such that the restriction of the function to _A_ is either a constant function or an interval-to-one function. In this paper we prove the following results. (1) Interval P-points are not isomorphism invariant under \(\textsf{CH}\) or \(\textsf{MA}\). (2) We identify a cardinal invariant \(\textbf{non}^{**}({\mathcal {I}}_{\tiny {\hbox {int}}})\) such that every filter base (...) of size less than continuum can be extended to an interval P-point if and only if \(\textbf{non}^{**}({\mathcal {I}}_{\tiny {\hbox {int}}})={\mathfrak {c}}\). (3) We prove the generic existence of slow/rapid non-interval P-points and slow/rapid interval P-points which are neither quasi-selective nor weakly Ramsey under the assumption \({\mathfrak {d}}={\mathfrak {c}}\) or \(\textbf{cov}({\mathcal {B}})={\mathfrak {c}}\). (shrink)

This paper deals with the exceptions-tolerance property of generic sentences with indefinite singular and bare plural subjects (IS and BP generics, respectively) and with the way this property is connected to some well-known observations about felicity differences between the two types of generics (e.g. Lawler's 1973, Madrigals are popular vs. #A madrigal is popular). I show that whereas both IS and BP generics tolerate exceptional and contextually irrelevant individuals and situations in a strikingly similar way, which indicates the existence of (...) a basically equivalent tolerance mechanism, there is also a difference between them, unnoticed so far, which concerns the degree to which the properties of the legitimate exceptions can be characterized in advance. Following claims in Greenberg (2003), I argue that both this newly observed difference as well as the traditional felicity differences result from an underlying contrast in the type of ‘non-accidentalness’ expressed by the two types of generic sentences, and more formally, in the accessibility relations that their generic quantifier (Gen) is compatible with. To capture the new difference in tolerance of exceptions, I develop an improved version of the exceptions-tolerance mechanism for generic sentences suggested in Kadmon & Landman (1993), namely, a restriction on the set of individuals and situations quantified by Gen, which is partially vague to two different degrees using supervaluationist methods. The different degrees of vagueness in this restriction are shown to be systematically dependent on the two types of accessibility relations that IS and BP generics are compatible with, which are redefined as precise and vague restrictions on the generic quantification over worlds. (shrink)

In this paper I explore a position on which it is possible to eliminate the need for postulating abstract objects through abstraction principles by treating terms for abstracta as ‘incomplete symbols’, using Russell's no-classes theory as a template from which to generalize. I defend views of this stripe against objections, most notably Richard Heck's charge that syntactic forms of nominalism cannot correctly deal with non-first-orderizable quantifcation over apparent abstracta. I further discuss how number theory may be developed in a system (...) treating apparent terms for numbers using these definitions. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a generic format for adaptive vague logics. Logics based on this format are able to (1) identify sentences as vague or non-vague in light of a given set of premises, and to (2) dynamically adjust the possible set of inferences in accordance with these identifications, i.e. sentences that are identified as vague allow only for the application of vague inference rules and sentences that are identified as non-vague also allow for the application of some extra (...) set of classical logic rules. The generic format consists of a set of minimal criteria that must be satisfied by the vague logic in casu in order to be usable as a basis for an adaptive vague logic. The criteria focus on the way in which the logic deals with a special ⊡-operator. Depending on the kind of logic for vagueness that is used as a basis for the adaptive vague logic, this operator can be interpreted as completely true, definitely true, clearly true , etc. It is proven that a wide range of famous logics for vagueness satisfies these criteria when extended with a specific ⊡-operator, e.g. fuzzy basic logic and its well known extensions, cf. [7], super- and subvaluationist logics, cf. [6], [9], and clarity logic, cf. [13]. Also a fuzzy logic is presented that can be used for an adaptive vague logic that can deal with higher-order vagueness. To illustrate the theory, some toy-examples of adaptive vague proofs are provided. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a generic format for adaptive vague logics. Logics based on this format are able to (1) identify sentences as vague or non-vague in light of a given set of premises, and to (2) dynamically adjust the possible set of inferences in accordance with these identifications, i.e. sentences that are identified as vague allow only for the application of vague inference rules and sentences that are identified as non-vague also allow for the application of some extra (...) set of classical logic rules. The generic format consists of a set of minimal criteria that must be satisfied by the vague logic in casu in order to be usable as a basis for an adaptive vague logic. The criteria focus on the way in which the logic deals with a special ⊡-operator. Depending on the kind of logic for vagueness that is used as a basis for the adaptive vague logic, this operator can be interpreted as completely true, definitely true, clearly true, etc. It is proven that a wide range of famous logics for vagueness satisfies these criteria when extended with a specific ⊡-operator, e.g. fuzzy basic logic and its well known extensions, cf. [7], super- and subvaluationist logics, cf. [6], [9], and clarity logic, cf. [13]. Also a fuzzy logic is presented that can be used for an adaptive vague logic that can deal with higher-order vagueness. To illustrate the theory, some toy-examples of adaptive vague proofs are provided. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a generic format for adaptive vague logics. Logics based on this format are able to (1) identify sentences as vague or non-vague in light of a given set of premises, and to (2) dynamically adjust the possible set of inferences in accordance with these identifications, i.e. sentences that are identified as vague allow only for the application of vague inference rules and sentences that are identified as non-vague also allow for the application of some extra (...) set of classical logic rules. The generic format consists of a set of minimal criteria that must be satisfied by the vague logic in casu in order to be usable as a basis for an adaptive vague logic. The criteria focus on the way in which the logic deals with a special ⊡-operator. Depending on the kind of logic for vagueness that is used as a basis for the adaptive vague logic, this operator can be interpreted as completely true, definitely true, clearly true, etc. It is proven that a wide range of famous logics for vagueness satisfies these criteria when extended with a specific ⊡-operator, e.g. fuzzy basic logic and its well known extensions, cf. [7], super- and subvaluationist logics, cf. [6], [9], and clarity logic, cf. [13]. Also a fuzzy logic is presented that can be used for an adaptive vague logic that can deal with higher-order vagueness. To illustrate the theory, some toy-examples of adaptive vague proofs are provided. (shrink)

Although there is a large literature on referentiality, going back to at least the nineteenth and early twentieth century, much of this early work is based on constructed data and most of it is on English. The chapters in this volume contribute to a growing body of work that examines referentiality through naturalistic data in context. Taking an interactional approach to (non)referentiality, contributors to this volume ask how participants talk in real time about persons and things as individuals or as (...) categories, and what distinguishes 'referential' from 'nonreferential', 'specific' from 'nonspecific', and 'generic' from 'nongeneric'. Crucially, we ask whether these distinctions even matter to participants in conversation, and if they do, what the evidence for that would be. Contributors investigate these issues using data from conversational interaction in a variety of social contexts - from close friends and family to more casual acquaintances, in service encounters, and between adults and children - and in a range of languages: English, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin. Collectively, the chapters develop insights showing that reference is often fluid, dynamic, and indeterminate, that referential indeterminacy is typically unproblematic for participants, that shifts in referentiality tend to be tied to specific social goals, and that reference and referentiality emerge dialogically and interactionally. (shrink)

From off-brand products to elevator music, the "generic" is discarded as the copy, the knock-off, and the old. In The Copy Generic, anthropologist Scott MacLochlainn insists that more than the waste from the culture machine, the generic is a universal social tool, allowing us to move through the world with necessary frames of reference. It is the baseline and background, a category that includes and orders different types of specificity yet remains non-specific in itself. Across arenas as diverse as city (...) planning, social media, ethnonationalism, and religion, the generic points to spaces in which knowledge is both over-produced and desperately lacking. Moving through ethnographic and historical settings in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States, MacLochlainn reveals ways the "generic" is crucial to how things repeat, circulate, and are classified in the world. (shrink)

Numerous results about capturing complexity classes of queries by means of logical languages work for ordered structures only, and deal with non-generic, or order-dependent, queries. Recent attempts to improve the situation by characterizing wide classes of finite models where linear order is definable by certain simple means have not been very promising, as certain commonly believed conjectures were recently refuted (Dawar's Conjecture). We take on another approach that has to do with normalization of a given order (rather than with defining (...) a linear order from scratch). To this end, we show that normalizability of linear order is a strictly weaker condition than definability (say, in the least fixpoint logic), and still allows for extending Immerman-Vardi-style results to generic queries. It seems to be the weakest such condition. We then conjecture that linear order is normalizable in the least fixpoint logic for any finitely axiomatizable class of rigid structures. Truth of this conjecture, which is a strengthened version of Stolboushkin's conjecture, would have the same practical implications as Dawar's Conjecture. Finally, we suggest a series of reductions of the two conjectures to specialized classes of graphs, which we believe should simplify further work. (shrink)

An amalgamation base p in a simple theory is stably definable if its canonical base is interdefinable with the set of canonical parameters for the ϕ-definitions of p as ϕ ranges through all stable formulae. A necessary condition for stably definability is given and used to produce an example of a supersimple theory with stable forking having types that are not stably definable. This answers negatively a question posed in [8]. A criterion for and example of a stably definable amalgamation (...) base whose restriction to the canonical base is not axiomatised by stable formulae are also given. The examples involve generic relations over non CM-trivial stable theories. (shrink)

We prove that every Turing degree a bounding some non-GL₂ degree is recursively enumerable in and above (r.e.a.) some 1-generic degree.

A statement is generic if it expresses a generalization about the members of a kind, as in, ’Pear trees blossom in May,’ or, ’Birds lay egg’. In classical logic, generic statements are formalized as universally quantified conditionals: ‘For all x, if..., then....’ We want to argue that such a logical interpretation fails to capture the intensional character of generic statements because it cannot express the generic statement as a simple proposition in Aristotle’s sense, i.e., a proposition containing only one single (...) predicate. On the contrary, we want to show that typed lambda-abstraction can help us transform the classical, non-simple and extensional expression of generic statements into a new, simple and intensional formalization, through the introduction of an abductively defined operator ALL*. This new operator allows for the possibility of a single predication, e.g. fly(), because it builds, out of a concept like ‘bird’, a concrete universal, e.g. ‘birds’, upon which the single predicate can be applied to authentically formalize a generic statement, e.g. ‘birds fly’. (shrink)

We prove that each ∀1 free amalgamation class K over a finite relational language L admits a countable generic structure M isometrically embedding all countable structuresin K relative to a fixed metric. We expand L by infinitely many binary predicates expressingdistance, and prove that the resulting expansion of K has a model companion axiomatizedby the first-order theory of M. The model companion is non-finitely axiomatizable, evenover a strong form of the axiom scheme of infinity.

This article presents a series of experiments which were conducted among native speakers of German to determine the influence of different types of German generics on the cognitive inclusion of women. Results indicate that the inclusion of women is higher with ‘non-sexist’ alternatives than with masculine generics, a tendency which was consistent across different studies. The different alternatives, however, showed different effects which also varied depending on the context. These results are discussed with regard to their practical consequences in situations (...) such as nominating women and men for awards or political offices. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate problems about densities ofe-generic,s-generic andp-generic degrees. We, in particular, show that allp-generic degrees are non-branching, which answers an open question by Jockusch who asked: whether alls-generic degrees are non-branching and refutes a conjecture of Ingrassia; the set of degrees containing r.e.p-generic sets is the same as the set of r.e. degrees containing an r.e. non-autoreducible set.

We construct an ab initio generic structure for a predimension function with a positive rational coefficient less than or equal to 1 which is unsaturated and has a superstable non-ω-stable theory.

A definition of an analytic, a contradictory and a generic sentence, based on the notion of presupposition, is proposed. A sentence is analytic iff it presupposes itself, is contradictory iff it presupposes its own negation, and is generic iff its presuppositions are analytic. A difference is made between an analytic and a necessarily true sentence, and between a contradictory and a necessarily false sentence. There are sentences which are both analytic and contradictory- they are never true and never false. Analytic (...) sentences can have non-trivial consequences, but they are not asserted but presupposed. This fact permits to avoid some classical difficulties with the definition of analytic sentences. A paralleHsm between analytic and generic sentences is indicated. (shrink)

Generic noun phrases (e.g. 'bats live in caves') provide a window onto human concepts. They refer to categories as 'kinds rather than as sets of individuals. Although kind concepts are often assumed to be universal, generic expression varies considerably across languages. For example, marking of generics is less obligatory and overt in Mandarin than in English. How do universal conceptual biases interact with language-specific differences in how generics are conveyed? In three studies, we examined adults' generics in English and Mandarin (...) Chinese. The data include child-directed speech from caregivers interacting with their 19-23-month-old children. Examples of generics include: 'baby birds eat worms' (English) and da4 lao3shu3 yao3 bu4 yao3 ren2 ('do big rats bite people or not?') (Mandarin). Generic noun phrases were reliably identified in both languages, although they occurred more than twice as frequently in English as in Mandarin. In both languages, generic usage was domain-specific, with generic noun phrases used most frequently to refer to animals. This domain effect was specific to generics, as non-generic noun phrases were used most frequently for artifacts in both languages. In sum, we argue for universal properties of 'kind' concepts that are expressed with linguistically different constructions. However, the frequency of expression may be influenced by the manner in which generics are expressed in the language. (shrink)

The subject of Labelled Non-Classical Logics is the development and investigation of a framework for the modular and uniform presentation and implementation of non-classical logics, in particular modal and relevance logics. Logics are presented as labelled deduction systems, which are proved to be sound and complete with respect to the corresponding Kripke-style semantics. We investigate the proof theory of our systems, and show them to possess structural properties such as normalization and the subformula property, which we exploit not only to (...) establish advantages and limitations of our approach with respect to related ones, but also to give, by means of a substructural analysis, a new proof-theoretic method for investigating decidability and complexity of (some of) the logics we consider. All of our deduction systems have been implemented in the generic theorem prover Isabelle, thus providing a simple and natural environment for interactive proof development. Labelled Non-Classical Logics is essential reading for researchers and practitioners interested in the theory and applications of non-classical logics. (shrink)

Nguyen argues that only his radically pragmatic account and Sterken’s indexical account can capture what we call the positive data. We present some new data, which we call the negative data, and argue that no theory of generics on the market is compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. We develop a novel version of the indexical account and show that it captures both the positive data and the negative data. In particular, we argue that there is (...) a semantic constraint that, in any context, the semantic value of GEN is upward monotone and non-symmetric. On the other hand, the pragmatic account has difficulty accommodating the negative data. This is because no pragmatic principles have been developed that can explain the negative data. In the paper, we focus on only the pragmatic account and the indexical account, but our discussion has broad implications for the debate on generics: any empirically adequate accounts of generics must be flexible enough to accommodate the positive data and yet constrained enough to accommodate the negative data. (shrink)