Family resemblance (german: Familienähnlichkeit, link=no) is a philosophical idea made popular by
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
, with the best known exposition given in his posthumously published book ''
Philosophical Investigations
''Philosophical Investigations'' (german: Philosophische Untersuchungen) is a work by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, published posthumously in 1953.
''Philosophical Investigations'' is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgens ...
'' (1953). It argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping
similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things. Games, which Wittgenstein used as an example to explain the notion, have become the paradigmatic example of a group that is related by family resemblances. It has been suggested that Wittgenstein picked up the idea and the term from
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
, who had been using it, as did many nineteenth century philologists, when discussing
language families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hi ...
.
The first occurrence of the term ''family resemblance'' is found in
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
(1788–1860; ''The World As Will and Representation §§17, 27, 28'') who attributed the term to the school developed by
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him be ...
(1775–1854). The next occurrence appeared in a note from 1930, commenting on
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best kno ...
's ideas. The notion itself features widely in Wittgenstein's later work, and in the ''Investigations'' it is introduced in response to questions about the general form of
proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
s and the essence of language – questions which were central to Wittgenstein throughout his philosophical career. This suggests that family resemblance was of prime importance for Wittgenstein's later philosophy; however, like many of his ideas, it is hard to find precise agreement within the secondary literature on either its place within Wittgenstein's later thought or on its wider philosophical significance.
Since the publication of the ''Investigations'', the notion of family resemblance has been discussed extensively not only in the philosophical literature, but also, for example, in works dealing with classification where the approach is described as "polythetic", distinguishing it from the traditional approach known now as "monothetic".
Prototype theory
Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. I ...
is a recent development in
cognitive science where this idea has also been explored. As the idea gained popularity, earlier instances of its occurrence were rediscovered e.g. in 18th-century
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
,
[Winsor M., 2003, ''Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy'', Biology and Philosophy 18 (2003) 387–400] in the writings of
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
or
Władysław Tatarkiewicz
Władysław Tatarkiewicz (; 3 April 1886, Warsaw – 4 April 1980, Warsaw) was a Polish philosopher, historian of philosophy, historian of art, esthetician, and ethicist.
Early life and education
Tatarkiewicz began his higher education at ...
.
Philosophical context
The local context where the topic of family resemblances appears is Wittgenstein's critique of language. In ''
Philosophical Investigations
''Philosophical Investigations'' (german: Philosophische Untersuchungen) is a work by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, published posthumously in 1953.
''Philosophical Investigations'' is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgens ...
'' §65-71 the plurality of language uses is compared to the plurality of games. Next it is asserted that games have common features but no one feature is found in all of them. The whole argument has become famous under the heading 'language games'.
The larger context in which Wittgenstein's philosophy is seen to develop considers his uncompromising opposition to essences, mental entities and other forms of idealism which were accepted as a matter of fact in
continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...
at the turn of the preceding century. In his view, the main cause for such errors is language and its uncritical use. In the received view, concepts, categories or classes are taken to rely on necessary features common to all items covered by them.
Abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
is the procedure which acknowledges this necessity and derives
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
s, but in the absence of a single common feature, it is bound to fail.
Terminology
The term "Family resemblance" as feature of Wittgenstein's philosophy owes much to its translation in English. Wittgenstein, who wrote mostly in German, used the compound word , but as he lectured and conversed in English he used 'family likeness' (e.g. ''The Blue Book'', p. 17,33; ''The Brown Book'',§66). However, in the ''Philosophical Investigations'' the separate word has been translated as 'similarity' (§§11,130,185,444) and on two occasions (§§9,90) it is given as 'like'. The German family-word is common and it is found in
Grimm's dictionary; a rare occurrence of 'family likeness' has been noted in a lecture by
J. F. Moulton in 1877.
Examples and quotes
Games are the main example considered by Wittgenstein in his text where he also mentions numbers and makes an analogy with a thread. He develops his argument further by insisting that in such cases there is not a clear cut boundary but there arises some ambiguity if this indefiniteness can be separated from the main point.
In §66 Wittgenstein invites us to
The section mentions card games, board games, ball games, games like ring-a-ring-a-roses and concludes:
The following §67 begins by stating:
and extends the illustration
The problem of boundaries begins in §68
Formal models
There are some simple
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure.
Models c ...
s
[Needham R., 1975]
''Polythetic classification: Convergence and consequences''
Man 10 (1975) 349
which can be derived from the text of §66-9. The most simple one, which fits Wittgenstein's exposition, seems to be the
sorites type. It consists in a collection of items ''Item_1'', ''Item_2'', ''Item_3''... described by features A, B, C, D, ...:
''Item_1'': A B C D
''Item_2'': B C D E
''Item_3'': C D E F
''Item_4'': D E F G
''Item_5'': E F G H
......... . . . .
In this example, which presents an indefinitely extended ordered family, resemblance is seen in shared features: each item shares three features with his neighbors e.g. ''Item_2'' is like ''Item_1'' in respects B, C, D, and like ''Item_3'' in respects C, D, E. Obviously what we call 'resemblance' involves different aspects in each particular case. It is also seen to be of a different 'degree' and here it fades with 'distance': ''Item_1'' and ''Item_5'' have nothing in common.
Another simple model is described as:
''Item_1'': A B C
''Item_2'': B C D
''Item_3'': A C D
''Item_4'': A B D
It exhibits the presence of a constant degree of resemblance and the
absence of a common feature without extending to infinity.
Wittgenstein rejects the
disjunction
In logic, disjunction is a logical connective typically notated as \lor and read aloud as "or". For instance, the English language sentence "it is raining or it is snowing" can be represented in logic using the disjunctive formula R \lor S ...
of features or 'properties', i.e. the set , as something shared by all items. He admits that a 'sharing' is common to all but deems that it is only verbal:
Notable applications
*
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm ...
uses Wittgenstein's concept in chapter V ('The Priority of Paradigms) of his famous ''
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1962; second edition 1970; third edition 1996; fourth edition 2012) is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philoso ...
'' (1962).
Paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Etymology
''Paradigm'' comes f ...
s are not reducible to single discoverable sets of scientific rules, but consist of assumptions that relate to other rules that are recognized by parts of a scientific community.
*
Morris Weitz
Morris Weitz (; July 24, 1916 – February 1, 1981) "was an American philosopher of aesthetics who focused primarily on ontology, interpretation, and literary criticism". From 1972 until his death he was Richard Koret Professor of Philosophy at ...
first applied family resemblances in an attempt to describe
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
. which opened a still continuing debate.
*Ezra LaFleur argues for using the idea of family resemblance to clarify discussion of musical genre.
*
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of th ...
argued that while regimes may differ wildly in their particulars, manifestations of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
can be recognized by a kind of family resemblance.
*
Renford Bambrough
John Renford Bambrough (29 April 1926 – 17 January 1999) was a British philosopher. He was fellow of St John's College, Cambridge from 1950-1999, where he held the positions of Dean (1964–1979) and President (1979–1983).
Life
John Renfor ...
proposed that "Wittgenstein solved what is known as "the
problem of universals
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist be ...
and said of his solution (as Hume said of Berkeley's treatment of the same topic) that it is "one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters".
[Bambrough, R.: 1961, ''Universals and Family Resemblance'', Proc. Aris. Soc. 61, 207–22] His view provided the occasion for numerous further comments.
*
Rodney Needham
Rodney Needham (15 May 1923 – 4 December 2006 in Oxford) was an English social anthropologist.
Born Rodney Phillip Needham Green, he changed his name in 1947; the following year he married Maud Claudia (Ruth) Brysz. The couple would collaborat ...
explored family resemblances in connection with the problem of
alliance
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
and noted their presence in taxonomy where they are known as a polythetic classification.
*
Eleanor Rosch
Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider;"Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May 1973), p. 328. born 1938) is an American psychologist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, s ...
used family resemblances in her cognitivist studies. Other cognitive research has shown that children and even
rhesus monkeys
The rhesus macaque (''Macaca mulatta''), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies that are split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally b ...
tend to use family resemblance relationships rather than explicit rules when learning categories.
Criticism and comments
''
Philosophical Investigations
''Philosophical Investigations'' (german: Philosophische Untersuchungen) is a work by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, published posthumously in 1953.
''Philosophical Investigations'' is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgens ...
'' is the primary text used in discussing family resemblances, although the topic appears also in other works by Wittgenstein, notably
''The Brown Book''. Many contributions to the discussion are by people involved in philosophical research but concerned with more pragmatic questions such as taxonomy
or
information processing
Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that ''describes'' everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in posit ...
.
Hans Sluga
Hans D. Sluga (; born April 24, 1937) is a German philosopher who spent most of his career as professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Sluga teaches and writes on topics in the history of analytic philosophy, the history ...
has observed that "the notion of family resemblance... draws on two quite different sets of ideas, two different vocabularies, but treats them as if they were one and the same. The first is the vocabulary of kinship, of descent, of some sort of real and causal connection.. the second is that of similarity, resemblance, affinity and correspondence."
Wittgenstein's insistence that boundaries do not really exist but can be traced arbitrarily has been described as
conventionalism
Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality. Unspoken rules play a key role in the philosophy's structur ...
and more generally the acceptance of his conception has been seen to present a refined
nominalism
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings t ...
.
[Resemblance Nominalism. In N. Bunnin & J. Yu ds.(2004). ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy.'' Accessed Online at: http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=2241/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g978140510679519_ss1-101]
See also
*
Composite photography
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously ca ...
*
Composite portrait
Composite portraiture (also known as composite photographs) is a technique invented by Sir Francis Galton in the 1880s after a suggestion by Herbert Spencer for registering photographs of human faces on the two eyes to create an "average" photogra ...
*
Polyphyly
A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of converg ...
*
Prototype theory
Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. I ...
Notes
References
*Andersen H.,: 2000, ''Kuhn's account of family resemblance'', Erkenntnis 52: 313–337
*Bambrough, R.: 1961, ''Universals and Family Resemblance'', Proc. Arist. Soc. 61, 207–22
*Beardsmore, R. W.: 1992, ''The Theory of Family Resemblance'', Philosophical Investigations 15, 131–146
*Bellaimey, J. E.: 1990, ''Family Resemblances and the Problem of the Under-Determination of Extension'', Philosophical Investigations 13, 31–43.
* Drescher, F.: 2017, Analogy in Thomas Aquinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A comparison. New Blackfriars. doi:10.1111/nbfr.12273
*
Ginzburg C.,: 2004, ''Family Resemblances and Family Trees: Two Cognitive Metaphors'', ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring 2004), pp. 537–556
*Griffin, N.: 1974, ''Wittgenstein, Universals and Family Resemblance'', ''Canadian Journal of Philosophy III'', 635–651.
*Gupta, R. K.: 1970, ''Wittgenstein's Theory of "Family Resemblance", in his ''Philosophical Investigations'' (Secs. 65–80)'', Philosophia Naturalis 12, 282–286
*Huff D.:(1981), ''Family Resemblances and rule governed behavior'', ''Philosophical Investigations'' 4 (3) 1–23
*Kaufman D.: 2007,
Family resemblances Relationism and the meaning of "art"', ''British Journal of Aesthetics'', vol. 47, No. 3, July 2007,
*Prien B.:
Family Resemblances-A Thesis about the Change of Meaning over Time', Kriterion 18 (2004), pp. 15–24.
*Raatzsch R.
''Philosophical Investigations'' 65ff. :On Family Resemblance in ''Essays on Wittgenstein'' by P. Philipp and R. Raatzsch, ''Working papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen'' #6 (1993), pp. 50–76
*Wennerberg, H.: 1967, ''The Concept of Family Resemblance in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy'', Theoria 33, 107–132.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Family Resemblance
Analytic philosophy
Concepts in the philosophy of language
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Semantic relations