Against Imprecision: Mapping Generics’ Truth-Evaluability and Their Roles in Stereotype-Perpetuation

Abstract

This thesis examines epistemologies of generic statements, how to evaluate their truth/falsity, and what implications varied (mis)understandings of them have within human networks. Generics (e.g. “Sharks attack swimmers”) attribute a way of being (a property) to a category of thing (a kind). Grave societal harms result when stereotypic generics made about human subgroups are echoed spuriously, as though true, when they are simply pernicious misgeneralizations (e.g. “Men are murderers”). I suggest generics are revisable.