Family Resemblances and Criteria
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Heather J. Gert, Associate Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: In §66 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein looks for something common to various games and finds only an interconnecting network of resemblances. These are "family resemblances". Sympathetic as well as unsympathetic readers have interpreted him as claiming that games form a family in virtue of these resemblances. This assumes Wittgenstein inverted the relation between being a member of a family and bearing family resemblances to others of that family. (The Churchills bear family resemblances to one another because they belong to the same family, they don't belong to the same family because they resemble one another.) A close reading of Investigations gives no evidence that Wittgenstein made this mistake. Rather, family resemblances may play a role like the one criteria play for psychological terms. They give excellent but fallible evidence for membership in the extensions of some terms.
Family Resemblances and Criteria
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Created on 11/1/1995
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Synthese 105, no. 2, November, 1995, 177-190
- Language: English
- Date: 1995
- Keywords
- family resemblances, family membership, relation, criteria