2 Generics and Concepts

Abstract

Abstract This chapter points to the different uses of the terms “meaning” and “concept” in the literature that surrounds discussions of generic terms. It is usual in the linguistic and philosophical literature on the topic to take a truth‐conditional, “externalist” view as to what meaning is, while the psychological literature takes a mentalistic, “internalist” view. There is a similar conflict in how the term “concept” is used, with the philosophical literature favoring an “objective” sense (which might be cashed out independently of people, or maybe in terms of an interpersonal society in general) and the psychological and experimental literature employing a “subjective” sense of the term. This chapter considers what theorists might “want” from a theory of concepts and proceeds to show the ways that differing desires here lead to different accounts of the phenomena surrounding generics, even when the underlying data seem to be more or less the same.