Family Resemblance Research Articles

From the Referential to the Relational: Duchamp and Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance

This essay identifies and discusses certain affinities between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Duchamp’s artistic work. While acknowledging the great differences between the one and the other, it cannot fail to strike one that the two take similar attitudes on certain issues concerning the way they look at mathematics and numbers, the importance given to the relational over the referential, and the peculiar use made of the notion of context.

Establishing a Comprehensive Hierarchical construct of Eustress (CHE)

AbstractEustress as a positive response to challenging situations has received increasing attention across diverse literatures, reflecting its potential to improve wellbeing, work performance, and personal growth. In the process, eustress has been defined, measured, and manipulated in myriad ways, leading to fragmentation and vagueness. Because a unified and well-specified construct would significantly support eustress research, we developed one here. Rather than basing it on our subjective views, we developed it empirically, extracting 57 unique features of eustress from 80 theoretical, interventional, empirical, and psychometric articles. Organizing and interpreting these 57 features produced a Comprehensive Hierarchical construct of Eustress (CHE). According to CHE, eustress emerges from three sources: (1) successful goal-directed action, (2) experiencing the moment in an enjoyable, fulfilling, or meaningful manner, and (3) positive stable qualities of the individual. Within each source, CHE establishes specific facets of eustress hierarchically, which in turn organize the 57 eustress features extracted initially. Bibliometric analyses identified CHE’s hierarchical elements addressed most often in the eustress literatures. Overall, these results suggest that eustress cannot be specified with a simple definition but should instead be viewed as a family resemblance structure having statistical properties. Rather than taking a single form, eustress manifests itself as diverse states during successful goal-directed action and fulfilling momentary experience. Regularly producing eustress in these manners likely establishes CHE’s trait-like qualities for generating eustress effectively on future occasions. Interestingly, these qualities overlap highly with well-established elements of wellbeing, suggesting that wellbeing contributes to eustress in challenging situations.

Morphology and Metaphilosophy: Goethe, Wittgenstein and Waismann

The paper explores how Wittgenstein and Waismann interpreted Goethe’s ideas from The Metamorphosis of Plants. These ideas laid the foundation for Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance”, which Waismann also embraced in The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy. However, the paper argues that Wittgenstein’s and Waismann’s metaphilosophical implications evolved differently in their later works. Notably, it is Waismann, rather than Wittgenstein, who took these ideas to their extreme, concluding in How I See Philosophy that all forms of philosophical theorizing should be rejected. By contrast, Wittgenstein rejected only the kind of theorizing in philosophy which aims at offering monistic and reductionist explanations of key philosophical concepts.

Nonreligion jako kategoria relacjonalna

The article analyses the terms “nonreligion” and “religion-related field” — its aim being to better translate their pragmatic meanings into Polish. Moreover, the author argues that the term “religion-related field”, understood as a general category for the entire area of nonreligion studies, entails the adoption of unnecessary presuppositions. Postulating such a field should always be grounded on empirical material. In order to formulate a general description of the perspective developed in nonreligions studies, the author proposes that Loïc J. D. Wacquant’s interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology be adopted. Within this framework, the category of nonreligion can be understood as a set of practices delineated by researchers based on familial resemblance within the social space being examined.

Cricket Australia’s Code of Conduct and the need for a ‘clear family resemblance’ in purpose, values, and principles

ABSTRACT This article examines Cricket Australia’s (CA) Code of Conduct and draws theoretical connections to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). In so doing, the article considers the nature and scope of CA’s Code of Conduct, and challenges for the effective implementation of the code. The purpose of a Code of Conduct is to set out expectations for behaviour and disciplinary processes for failure to adhere to these standards. However, while public image and popularity remain central objectives of the Code, there is ambiguity and conflict between these objectives and the third objective: integrity, an ethical value that underpins codes of conduct. Our recommendation to remove public image and popularity from the purpose of the Code of Conduct is consistent with The Ethics Centre 2018 Report that recommended a ‘core consistency (a clear ‘family resemblance’) between How We Play, the Spirit of Cricket, and any additional Ethical Framework applying to elite players’. We suggest that ‘core consistency’ starts with a clear and consistent purpose in the Code of Conduct, one that is not clouded by public image and popularity, and one that is focused on the ethical values of integrity, transparency, and accountability.

Reconceptualizing Gender (from the Stream of Life)

Abstract In this paper, we consider a range of trans-inclusive approaches to gender concepts and how they relate to the world, from family resemblance theories to conceptual engineering. In so doing, we shall also examine several concepts that are analogous to gender and other controversial and not-so-controversial concepts, such as “vegan cheese” and “adoptive parents.” Having assessed their merits and demerits, we argue that our gender concepts are not fixed in stone but, rather, evolve alongside human practices and behavior.

More and Happier Women: On the Political Significance of Wittgenstein and Hinge Epistemology

Abstract The paper presents a Wittgensteinian account of the concept woman, in terms of family resemblance. This approach is deemed superior to the Carnapian account, championed by Sally Haslanger, in that it allows for more inclusivity and to locate the source of sexism not so much in the very concept of woman but in the beliefs sexist people have about women. The compatibility of this account with semantic externalism is explored, as well as its relationship with stereotypes and paradigmatic examples of women. It is further shown how present-day attempts to extend the application of the concept of woman beyond human females may be made sense in terms of a change of hinges—that is, of the rules of evidential significance, which a community of speakers brings to bear on the determination of whether a person is a woman. Finally, it is argued that, despite Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism, such an account is politically significant. This in turn shows that in fact Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical pronouncements far from being inimical to political and societal change may in fact be conducive to it.

Woman: Concept, Prototype and Stereotype

ABSTRACT Drawing on previous work, I argue that a family resemblance account of the concept woman has several beneficial consequences. Namely, it promotes hermeneutical justice, and, in time, it may serve to change the prototypes and stereotypes people tend unreflectively to associate with woman. I claim that only at that point will full hermeneutical justice be achieved. To this end, I propose a reconceptualization of the notion of hermeneutical injustice, first presented by Fricker (2007). First, I present the family resemblance account of woman. Accordingly, that concept isn’t identified by a set of necessary and (jointly) sufficient conditions, but, roughly, by different criteria. Second, I show how concepts, prototypes and stereotypes relate to one another and how they may contribute to hermeneutical injustice. Finally, I show how the proposed account of woman may in time foster a change in the associated prototype and stereotypes, which will ameliorate societies by doing more justice to the lived experience of trans women – that is, by promoting full hermeneutical justice.

Mary Midgley’s meta-ethics and Neo-Aristotelian naturalism

ABSTRACT This paper has two aims: First, to provide an elucidation of the kind of meta-ethical programme at work in Mary Midgley's (1919-2018) Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (published in 1978). Second, to make the case for Midgley's placement within the philosophical and philosophical-historical canon, specifically, as an important figure within the meta-ethical movement of ‘Neo-Aristotelian naturalism'. On historical and systematic grounds, I argue that Midgley should be classified as a neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalist notwithstanding the distinctive features of Midgley’s specific brand of neo-Aristotelianism. In doing so, I suggest a more generally applicable family resemblance approach to the history of philosophy in order to classify and re-introduce into the canon figures in the history of philosophy that are in danger of falling into oblivion.

The etymological evolvement and redefinition of ‘game’

ABSTRACT This research revisits the conceptual foundations and definitions of ‘game’, distinguishing it from ‘sport’ and ‘play’ through an etymological and philosophical lens. Given the vast range of ‘game’ in everyday use and the enormous diversity of the activities called games, Wittgenstein argued that games cannot be defined at all but have only ‘Family Resemblances’. Philosophers such as Bernard Suits have rejected Wittgenstein’s claim that there is no commonality among all games. But in recent years, some researchers have questioned Suits’ failure to refute Wittgenstein’s claim that games are definable on the basis of Wittgenstein’s anti-essentialist stance. Our analysis incorporates the interplay of etymology, historical context and philosophical discourse, clarifies the incompleteness of Suits’s definition, and addresses Meier’s physical-skill-fixed logical difficulties regarding conceptual models of ‘game’. By proposing a nuanced Venn diagram illustrating the intersections and divergences among play, game, and sport, we offer a redefinition that integrates the intrinsic motivations and societal influences underlying these activities. This redefinition emphasizes the voluntary goal-oriented, rule-constrained and non-utility nature of games while acknowledging the complex relationships between play, games, and sports within a broader socio-historical framework.

A Cognitive Analysis of “Power”

Cognitive linguistics, as a newly established method for the study of language that emerged in the 1970s, focuses on the study of general cognitive abilities and conceptual processes of human beings. With the development of society, many new lexical items and concepts emerge, and they all need to be encoded in the form of language expression. An economical and practical way is to give a word multiple meaning. Based on the prototypical theory of cognitive linguistics, this paper analyzed the semantic network and semantic distribution of the polysemous word “power.” Fourteen senses of “power” used as nouns were collected from the Oxford Advanced English-Chinese Dictionary (9th Edition), and connections between different senses were explored by analyzing the semantic features. Meanwhile, 100 sentences containing “power” were randomly extracted from the BNC corpus to figure out the distribution of different senses. It was found that the prototypical sense and extended senses of “power” revealed the characteristics of family resemblance, and extended senses centered on the prototypical sense and extended radially outward. Among the 14 senses of “power,” the sense of “political right” is the most commonly used, while the senses of “multiplication” and “deity” are rarely used. Finally, some suggestions on the teaching of polyseme are put forward hopefully to offer valuable guidance for English learners.

Family resemblance in color-patch size is not affected by stress experience in a cichlid fish.

Animal body coloration is often linked to social dominance and mating success. This is because it can carry information on an animal's body condition and competitive ability by reflecting the genetic quality of individuals or by responding to their current or past living conditions. The present study investigates genetic and environmental effects on a conspicuous color pattern of the cichlid fish Tropheus sp. black "Ikola," in which the size of a carotenoid-based yellow area on the body co-varies with social dominance. To examine environmental plasticity of the color pattern, we tested for effects of early-life stress, induced by reduced feeding of juveniles prior to color pattern formation, as well as effects of a stress treatment administered to fully colored adult fish. None of the stress treatments affected the color pattern as quantified by the width of the yellow bar. However, offspring bar width was correlated to parental values in mid-parent-mid-offspring regression analyses, and animal models estimated significant additive genetic effects on bar width, indicating heritability of the trait. Depending on the random effects structure of the animal models (i.e., whether including or excluding maternal and brood effects), narrow-sense heritability estimates for bar width ranged between 0.2 and 0.8, with the strongest statistical support for the highest estimate. In each of the alternative models, a large proportion of the total variance in bar width was explained by the included random effects, suggesting that bar width is strongly determined by genetic factors or shared maternal and brood environments, with limited scope for environmental influences later in life.

Familial Resemblance of Bone Health in Maternal Lineage Pairs and Triads: A Scoping Review.

Female bone health is influenced by familial resemblance, health parameters and maturational periods (puberty and menopause); this combination has been researched using familial multi-generational cross-sectional studies. This scoping review aimed to compile bone health research which uses sexually mature (grandmother-) mother-daughter pairs (and triads) and to determine the trends in its methodologies and familial comparisons. The Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews was used. Extraction included study and population characteristics, methodology (with an emphasis on imaging) and family-based results. Twenty-nine studies were included, and their generations were categorized into four developmental categories: late adolescent to young adult, pre-menopause, mixed-menopause, and post-menopause. Eleven different pair/triad combinations were observed; the most common was pre-menopausal daughters and post-menopausal mothers. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was the most utilized imaging modality, and the hip was the most imaged region of interest (ROI). Regardless of pairing, imaging modality and ROI, there was often a trend toward significant familial resemblance and heritability (h2 and h2L). This scoping review highlights the trends in bone health linked to familial resemblance, as well as the importance of menopause and late adolescence. This review compiles the commonalities and challenges within these studies to inform future research.

Apartheid in South Africa and Israel/Palestine: A Case of Convergent Evolution?

Abstract “Apartheid” is widely invoked to explain endemic conflict in Israel/Palestine. While oppression in South Africa and in Israel/Palestine bear striking familial resemblances, there are also fundamental differences. Analogy is not the same as rigorous comparison: It contributes little to the understanding of causality or process and may not be a sound guide for the development of political strategy. The two societies bear similarities with respect to their ethno-nationalist driving forces. Yet, whereas racial domination was a fundamental feature of apartheid racial capitalism, the displacement and expulsion of Palestinians has driven injustice in Israel/Palestine. Another key difference is that South Africa’s existence within its established borders was never seriously contested by the leading liberation movements, with the ANC holding firmly to the position that its struggle was to secure majority rule in a unitary nation-state with common citizenship. This presents a stark contrast to Israel, whose right to exist is frequently challenged. While Israel/Palestine and apartheid South Africa show more differences than similarities, this article concludes that they have been subject to convergent evolution, that is, the acquisition of similar characteristics, albeit from different starting points, and with subsequent divergence.

Professionalisation and convergence‐divergence of HRM: China, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom compared

AbstractHRM has long claimed professional status. The global prevalence of national‐level people management associations (PMA) supports this claim. Aside from prescribing practices appropriate for differing national contexts, PMAs simultaneously claim to share international best practices. This divergence/convergence tension raises questions about whether common institutional circumstances trigger PMA formation and if universal associational features develop over time. This article addresses both concerns by extrapolating a reanalysis of two historical accounts of PMA formation in the United Kingdom (from 1913) and Hong Kong (from 1968) to commensurate developments in contemporary China (from 2001). Its application of a modified version of trait theory with institutional analysis finds that a family resemblance occurs between PMAs created by adapting to employment regulation from the state while promoting employers' substantive interests. A path‐dependent legacy of these tensions reflects the HR professionalisation project's broader institutional subordination to state and market forces.

Whose Story? Competing versions of English in a London school

In this article, we look closely at two accounts of parallel lessons in the same London school. Early on in our pre-service teacher education programme, student teachers are asked to write about a lesson they have observed. Soumeya and Faduma each described a lesson where the novel, In the sea there are crocodiles by Fabio Geda, was being read. The observations are of parallel lessons taught by two different teachers. We use these accounts to explore differences in pedagogy and in the versions of English that are instantiated in the lessons. These forms of practice bear family resemblances to many other lessons—and have complex histories. Our interest lies in the ways in which they reflect or contest the view of the subject that dominates the landscape of policy in England today

Nature of science and domain-specificity: investigating the coverage of nature of science in physics, chemistry and biology curricula across grade levels

ABSTRACT The paper investigates the coverage of nature of science (NOS) in different science subject curricula to understand how they emphasise various aspects of NOS across grade levels in secondary science education. Although various science curriculum analyses exist in the literature, there is a paucity of investigations that have combined the elements of domain-specificity and learning progression in relation to NOS curriculum content. Furthermore, a holistic and inclusive account of NOS is used to examine the cognitive, epistemic, social and institutional aspects of NOS. Physics, chemistry and biology high school curricula from Turkey are investigated. Each subject curriculum is analysed and compared using an analytical framework guided by the Family Resemblance Approach. Mixed methods approaches are used to summarise the quantitative and qualitative results. Findings suggest an overemphasis on the cognitive-epistemic aspects of NOS, considerable variation across science subject areas and non-uniform progression of NOS themes across grade levels. Analysis of curricula incorporating the domain-specific and learning progression elements of NOS is likely to enhance understanding of how to design robust curricula in different science subjects and to improve the teaching and learning of NOS. Implications for curriculum reform are discussed.

Editors’ Introduction: Fictions in Law, Literature, and Philosophy

While several collections have been published recently from the perspective of common law focused specifically on jurisprudence and from the perspective of both literary theory and the philosophy of language, a more integrative approach that sharpens the underlying fundamental concept(s) by bringing together insights from legal theory/history, doctrinal legal scholarship, literary studies, and analytic philosophy has been missing so far. Not only has an examination of a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective been rare in research on fictions and fictionality, but also a decidedly integrative view of European and Anglo-American research approaches has been the exception. This special issue both addresses and seeks to bridge this research gap. In shedding light on the family resemblances and differences of “fiction(s)” in each of the aforementioned disciplines, we hope to identify blind spots and offer some fresh ideas with regard to a transdisciplinary theory of fiction(s) which considers their conceptual, functional, as well as historical characteristics. A particularly significant aspect of this project is that it fuses contributions from an anglophone law and literature perspective with contributions from European continental contexts, offering perspectives from related but also distinct legal and literary traditions.

Intergenerational transmission of brain structure and function in humans: a narrative review of designs, methods, and findings.

Children often show cognitive and affective traits that are similar to their parents. Although this indicates a transmission of phenotypes from parents to children, little is known about the neural underpinnings of that transmission. Here, we provide a general overview of neuroimaging studies that explore the similarity between parents and children in terms of brain structure and function. We notably discuss the aims, designs, and methods of these so-called intergenerational neuroimaging studies, focusing on two main designs: the parent-child design and the multigenerational design. For each design, we also summarize the major findings, identify the sources of variability between studies, and highlight some limitations and future directions. We argue that the lack of consensus in defining the parent-child transmission of brain structure and function leads to measurement heterogeneity, which is a challenge for future studies. Additionally, multigenerational studies often use measures of family resemblance to estimate the proportion of variance attributed to genetic versus environmental factors, though this estimate is likely inflated given the frequent lack of control for shared environment. Nonetheless, intergenerational neuroimaging studies may still have both clinical and theoretical relevance, not because they currently inform about the etiology of neuromarkers, but rather because they may help identify neuromarkers and test hypotheses about neuromarkers coming from more standard neuroimaging designs.

The entrepreneurial university concept as a narrative of change in HEIs

ABSTRACT The literature on entrepreneurial universities has grown exponentially over the past three decades. Concomitantly, the meanings attached to the terminology of entrepreneurial universities has proliferated, creating confusion amongst users. To fill this gap, an inductive analysis of entrepreneurial university conceptualisations from the term's first introduction to the literature in 1983–2021 was conducted. The results showed that, although conceptualisation approaches widely differed in their focus, normative appraisal, scope, and level of specificity, they tended to cluster around the core idea of change in higher education institutions that began to take shape in the early 1980s. The change process was found to be ongoing, context-sensitive, and contested, closely aligning with the framework of essentially contested concepts, as revised by Collier, Hidalgo, and Maciuceanu (2006, Essentially Contested Concepts: Debates and Applications. Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (3): 211–46). By showing the essentially contestedness of the entrepreneurial university concept, the current study not only offers a useful mechanism for understanding and explicating the proliferation of meanings but also interrogates the suitability of classical conceptual categorisation approaches commonly used in the entrepreneurial university literature. Furthermore, it calls for the use of flexible conceptual lenses, such as family resemblance and cluster concepts, and studies that establish a better link between the characteristics and context of entrepreneurial universities through individual and cross-case comparisons.