242 • CHAPTER 9 Knowledge
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) noted this problem with defi nitions
and offered a solution:Consider for example the proceedings we call “games.” I mean board-games, card-games,
ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. For if you look at them you will not see something
in common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. I can
think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances.”Wittgenstein proposed the idea of family resemblance to deal with the problem that
defi nitions often do not include all members of a category. Family resemblance refers to
the idea that things in a particular category resemble one another in a number of ways.
Thus, instead of setting defi nite criteria that every member of a category must meet, the
family resemblance approach allows for some variation within a category. Chairs may
come in many different sizes and shapes and be made of different materials, but every
chair does resemble other chairs in some way. Looking at category membership in this
way, we can see that the chair in Figure 9.2a and the beanbag chair in Figure 9.2c do
have in common that they offer a place to sit, a way to support a person’s back, and
perhaps a place to rest the arms while sitting.
The idea of family resemblance has led psychologists to propose that categorization
is based on determining how similar an object is to some standard representation of a
category. We begin considering the idea of comparison to a standard by introducing the
prototype approach to categorization.● FIGURE 9.2 Diff erent objects, all possible “chairs.”(c) (d)(a) (b)Bruce GoldsteinCopyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.