Games and Family Resemblances

Extract

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein introduces the notion of a ‘family resemblance’ to deal with certain problems. Talking of games and what they seem to have in common, he points out that there are no common features (or no common feature) in virtue of which we call all games ‘games’. Instead there are, he claims, many different similarities and relationships; he says ‘we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’. (§ 66.) He then goes on to add: ‘I can think of no better expression to characterise these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way,—And I shall say: “games form a family”.’ (§ 67.) Wittgenstein also instances numbers as forming a ‘family’ in the same manner. This notion of a ‘family resemblance’ has come to be used by many philosophers to deal with a range of situations where there appears to be a difficulty in finding a single definite common property and yet there exists a desire to call some set of things by the same name. I myself have succumbed to this temptation. Perhaps the widest claim for the use of this device is that made by Mr Bambrough in an article entitled ‘Universals and Family Resemblances’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1960–61, pp. 207–222). This begins with the words ‘I believe that Wittgenstein solved what is known as “the problem of universals”’.