CONCEPT
Family Resemblances
Wittgenstein's alternative to the classical theory of meaning — concepts pick out overlapping similarities rather than shared essences — and the framework that dissolves the dream of perfect language at its root.
Consider the word game. Board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, war games, children's games. What is the single property that makes each a game? The classical answer is that there must be one, because the word applies to all. Wittgenstein's response is: look and see. What you find is not a common essence but a network of overlapping similarities, the way members of a family resemble each other without sharing any single feature. Some games involve competition, some do not. Some have rules, some do not. Some entertain, some do not. The resemblances overlap and criss-cross. The concept game has no boundary, no essence, no single definition. And yet we use it successfully.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept dismantles the classical theory of meaning that had dominated Western philosophy since Plato — the assumption that every meaningful word must name a property shared by all its instances. If no such property exists for game,