PSYCH 2H03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Exemplar Theory, Prototype Theory, Family Resemblance

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH 2H03
• Professor: Judith Shedden

Document Summary

Ordinary concepts are the building blocks of which all our knowledge is created. What we need is a way of identifying concepts that highlights what the members of a category have in common, while allowing exceptions. We can keep the content of our definitions but be more flexible in how we use the definitions. We can say with these conditions, it is probably a dog, and without these features, it is unlikely to be a dog : these phrasings allow some degree of uncertainty, some number of exceptions to the rule. Wittgenstein"s proposal: members of a category have family resemblance to each other: family resemblance: features that are common in the family o. Boundaries set the boundaries for a category. Prototype theory: perhaps the best way to identify a category is to specify the center of the category rather than the boundaries.