The sophisticated kind theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT Generic sentences are commonsense statements of the form ‘Fs are G,’ like ‘Bears have fur’ or ‘Rattlesnakes are poisonous.’ Kind theories hold that rather than being general statements about individual objects, they are particular statements about kinds. This paper examines the standard objections against the kind theory and argues that they only apply to the most simplified version of the theory. The more sophisticated version, which has received little discussion in the literature in spite of having been formulated concurrently with the simple version, is immune to this standard battery of objections. After discussing four distinctive features of generic sentences, the paper then presents a modernized extension of the sophisticated kind theory which explains the presence of these features. Although the choice between a kind theory and the more standardly accepted adverbial quantificational theory is complex, these considerations suggest that the two approaches are at least deserving of equal consideration for the purposes of natural language semantics.