PSYC 2650 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Prototype Theory, Exemplar Theory, Family Resemblance

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2650
• Professor: Anneke Olthof

Document Summary

Need way of identifying concepts that highlights what various members of category have in common (eg. what all dogs have in common) while simultaneously allowing exceptions to the proposed rule. We can do so by keeping the context of our definitions but being more flexible to our use of the definitions. For instance; a dog is an animal that probably has fur, 4 legs, and barks. Wittgenstein proposed that members of a category have a family resemblance to each other. Features that common in family, and so, if we consider family members, 2 or even 3 at a time, we can fine shared attributes. May be no features that shared by all dogs/all games, just as there no features that shared by everyone in family. More of these features an object has, the more likely we are to believe it is in the category. Family resemblance is a matter of degree, not all-or-none.