It argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things. Games, which Wittgenstein used as an example to explain the notion, have become the paradigmatic example of a group that is related by family resemblances.
The idea is that when you consider a bunch of “games”, it’s easy to see the common features. But when you consider more and more “games” and things that are sometimes called “games”, it turns out that everything can be a game.
And yet no matter how you stretch the concept (e.g. say something like “love is just a game”), in a specific context the meaning is clear enough.
You can also call concepts like this “cluster properties” (explanation in Philosophy Tube video). Or even the (in)famous “social constructs”. In the text form:
Even more interestingly, Harris’ idea is an accidental ripoff of a theory developed by philosopher Richard Boyd in 1982, called: ‘The Homeostatic Cluster Property Theory of Metaethical Naturalism’ Sexy title. Boyd thought that words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ refer to real properties out there in the material world, and that therefore statements like ‘Murder is bad’ are capable of being objectively true, or at least true in the same way as scientific statements are. Which prompts the question, “To what exactly do these words refer?”
Boyd’s answer is that they are cluster properties—groups of things that tend to go together. The example he uses is actually the same one Harris does—health. There are all kinds of things we would want to include in a definition of the word “healthy,” like your heart should be beating and you should be able to breathe, but do you have to be a certain size in order to be healthy? Do you have to not be in pain? Can you have a beating heart and be unhealthy? There’s a cluster of properties here somewhere that makes up the definition of the word health but we’re never going to pin down a definite list because that’s just not how the concept works. Despite that vagueness it’s still very obviously useful and meaningful.
Similarly Boyd thinks that a word like ‘good’ refers to a cluster of things that are non-morally good for humans, like sharing friendship, sharing love, having fun, watching quality YouTube videos, but just like with health, you’re never going to be able to pin down a full list because the concept just isn’t like that.
And here’s the big takeaway—if we say ‘John is healthy’ we could be talking about any number of things in the cluster of health—whether he a has disease, whether he works out, whether he has a good relationship with his mother—all of which are objective—but whether the sentence ‘John is healthy’ is true will still depend on what aspect of his health we’re talking about. It will be relative to the context in which we’re saying it.
...
So, I call clusters like this (games, health, goodness) “vague concept”: those concepts obtain specific meaning in a specific context, but they can’t be defined outside of context.
How to understand a vague concept? You can try to memorize all contexts (that you know of) in which it’s used. Or you can learn to infer its meaning in new contexts and learn to create new contexts for this concept yourself. This is what I meant by “creating new contexts”.
I feel that it’s related to hypotheses generation because some general (scientific) ideas/paradigms don’t have any meaning outside of context
You could imagine a hypothesis based on vague concepts, for example “healthy people earn more money than unhealthy people” or “people who love games earn more money”. In their most abstract form, those theories can’t be falsified. But it’s easy to generate specific falsifiable hypotheses based on those ideas.
Scientific theories, too, can have an unfalsifiable core. This is Imre Lakatos’ model of scientific progress:
Lakatos’s second major contribution to the philosophy of science was his model of the “research programme”,[19] which he formulated in an attempt to resolve the perceived conflict between Popper’s falsificationism and the revolutionary structure of science described by Kuhn. Popper’s standard of falsificationism was widely taken to imply that a theory should be abandoned as soon as any evidence appears to challenge it, while Kuhn’s descriptions of scientific activity were taken to imply that science is most fruitful during periods in which popular, or “normal”, theories are supported despite known anomalies. Lakatos’ model of the research programme aims to combine Popper’s adherence to empirical validity with Kuhn’s appreciation for conventional consistency.
A Lakatosian research programme[20] is based on a hard core of theoretical assumptions that cannot be abandoned or altered without abandoning the programme altogether. More modest and specific theories that are formulated in order to explain evidence that threatens the “hard core” are termed auxiliary hypotheses. Auxiliary hypotheses are considered expendable by the adherents of the research programme—they may be altered or abandoned as empirical discoveries require in order to “protect” the “hard core”. Whereas Popper was generally read as hostile toward such ad hoc theoretical amendments, Lakatos argued that they can be progressive, i.e. productive, when they enhance the programme’s explanatory and/or predictive power, and that they are at least permissible until some better system of theories is devised and the research programme is replaced entirely.
Vague concepts lead to vague hypotheses (“research programmes”). Vague hypotheses work the same way vague concepts do. (part 1⁄2)
What do you mean by “meaning” here? How does an attribute of size have inherent meaning?
It is absolutely unclear what you mean by this. What does “height” relate to and resonate with, and why does that change with object? What do you even mean by “relate and resonate”?
What do you mean by “part/property”? Something like “height”? How do you put “height” into a different context? “You can create a [...] different version of it”? What do you mean by “fundamentally different”? A version of what? Of “height”?
I tried to give 3 examples there (with paintings). But here’s a simpler example:
Imagine a cube and a tree. Think about their heights. Cube’s height has a different “meaning” because it’s the same thing as its width and length.
You may need to make a leap of faith/understanding here somewhere, it’s a new concept or perspective. I may try explaining it in different ways and analogies, but I can’t reduce this idea to simpler ideas.
For example, I could make an analogy with homology in biology:
Roughly spherical eggs of different animals give rise to unique morphologies, from jellyfish to lobsters, butterflies to elephants. Many of these organisms share the same structural genes for body-building proteins like collagen and enzymes, but biologists had expected that each group of animals would have its own rules of development. The surprise of evo-devo is that the shaping of bodies is controlled by a rather small percentage of genes, and that these regulatory genes are ancient, shared by all animals. The giraffe does not have a gene for a long neck, any more than the elephant has a gene for a big body. Their bodies are patterned by a system of switching which causes development of different features to begin earlier or later, to occur in this or that part of the embryo, and to continue for more or less time.[7]
Those topics talk about the ways animals’ parts and properties get differentiated.
And you can combine all properties of an object into just a single one.
I tried to give 3 examples of this. It’s some type of holism: “you should view a part in the context of the whole”, “a whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
I give this idea a fractal spin: “any part of a thing is equivalent to the whole”. The most similar philosophical idea I know of is Gottfried Leibniz’s Monadology, for example:
(III) Composite substances or matter are “actually sub-divided without end” and have the properties of their infinitesimal parts (§65). A notorious passage (§67) explains that “each portion of matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each organ of an animal, each drop of its bodily fluids is also a similar garden or a similar pond”.
You can compare colors to monads and spectrums to the “supreme monad” (God).
So you are describing art theory! That is something learned in 10th grade art. Contrast /homo-/heterogenity of form, color etc.
I don’t think it’s art theory. Not 10th grade.
No idea what you are getting at. Why are you calling your new super property “color” when you are also discussing classical form and color? This makes confusing these terms incredibly likely.
I believe I don’t discuss classical “color”. I only mention it in a single analogy (and one more time when I mention qualia).
My goal
I guess you are talking about categorizing arbitrary qualia properties and their relations, but that is a matter of art theory. How do you even propose to objectively study something inherently subjective? It does seem that what you describe is covered by artists. Beyond that it is incredibly unclear what you are talking about.
I can explain my goal with a story. I didn’t include it in the post to not make it too big, but maybe I should have:
Blind men and an elephant
Imagine a world where people don’t know the concept of a “circle”. People do see round things, but can’t consciously pick out the property of roundness. (Any object has a lot of other properties.)
Some people say “the Moon is like a face”. Other say “the Moon is like a flower”. Weirder people say “the Moon is like a tree trunk” or “the Moon is like an embrace”. The weirdest people say “the Moon is like a day” or “the Moon is like going for a walk and returning back home”. Nobody agrees with each other, nobody understands each other.
Then one person comes up and says: “All of you are right. Opinions of everyone contain objective and useful information.”
People are shocked: at least someone has got to be wrong? If everyone is right, how can the information be objective and useful?
The concept of a “circle” is explained. Suddenly it’s extremely easy to understand each other. Like 2 and 2. And suddenly there’s nothing to argue about. People begin to share their knowledge and this knowledge finds completely unexpected applications.
The situation was just like in the story about blind men and an elephant, but even more ironic, since this time everyone was touching the same “shape”.
With my story I wanted to explain my opinions and goals:
I want to share my subjective experience.
I believe that it contains objective and important information.
I want to share a way to share subjective experiences. I believe everyone’s experience contains objective and important information.
I want to share a part of a conversation I had in order to explain my post better:
“Vague concepts”
Sorry for not making it more clear, I was just referring to this idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
The idea is that when you consider a bunch of “games”, it’s easy to see the common features. But when you consider more and more “games” and things that are sometimes called “games”, it turns out that everything can be a game.
And yet no matter how you stretch the concept (e.g. say something like “love is just a game”), in a specific context the meaning is clear enough.
You can also call concepts like this “cluster properties” (explanation in Philosophy Tube video). Or even the (in)famous “social constructs”. In the text form:
...
So, I call clusters like this (games, health, goodness) “vague concept”: those concepts obtain specific meaning in a specific context, but they can’t be defined outside of context.
How to understand a vague concept? You can try to memorize all contexts (that you know of) in which it’s used. Or you can learn to infer its meaning in new contexts and learn to create new contexts for this concept yourself. This is what I meant by “creating new contexts”.
You could imagine a hypothesis based on vague concepts, for example “healthy people earn more money than unhealthy people” or “people who love games earn more money”. In their most abstract form, those theories can’t be falsified. But it’s easy to generate specific falsifiable hypotheses based on those ideas.
Scientific theories, too, can have an unfalsifiable core. This is Imre Lakatos’ model of scientific progress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Research_programmes
Vague concepts lead to vague hypotheses (“research programmes”). Vague hypotheses work the same way vague concepts do. (part 1⁄2)
Properties, differences
I tried to give 3 examples there (with paintings). But here’s a simpler example:
Imagine a cube and a tree. Think about their heights. Cube’s height has a different “meaning” because it’s the same thing as its width and length.
You may need to make a leap of faith/understanding here somewhere, it’s a new concept or perspective. I may try explaining it in different ways and analogies, but I can’t reduce this idea to simpler ideas.
For example, I could make an analogy with homology in biology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology#The_control_of_body_structure
Those topics talk about the ways animals’ parts and properties get differentiated.
I tried to give 3 examples of this. It’s some type of holism: “you should view a part in the context of the whole”, “a whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
I give this idea a fractal spin: “any part of a thing is equivalent to the whole”. The most similar philosophical idea I know of is Gottfried Leibniz’s Monadology, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology
You can compare colors to monads and spectrums to the “supreme monad” (God).
I don’t think it’s art theory. Not 10th grade.
I believe I don’t discuss classical “color”. I only mention it in a single analogy (and one more time when I mention qualia).
My goal
I can explain my goal with a story. I didn’t include it in the post to not make it too big, but maybe I should have:
Blind men and an elephant
Imagine a world where people don’t know the concept of a “circle”. People do see round things, but can’t consciously pick out the property of roundness. (Any object has a lot of other properties.)
Some people say “the Moon is like a face”. Other say “the Moon is like a flower”. Weirder people say “the Moon is like a tree trunk” or “the Moon is like an embrace”. The weirdest people say “the Moon is like a day” or “the Moon is like going for a walk and returning back home”. Nobody agrees with each other, nobody understands each other.
Then one person comes up and says: “All of you are right. Opinions of everyone contain objective and useful information.”
People are shocked: at least someone has got to be wrong? If everyone is right, how can the information be objective and useful?
The concept of a “circle” is explained. Suddenly it’s extremely easy to understand each other. Like 2 and 2. And suddenly there’s nothing to argue about. People begin to share their knowledge and this knowledge finds completely unexpected applications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
The situation was just like in the story about blind men and an elephant, but even more ironic, since this time everyone was touching the same “shape”.
With my story I wanted to explain my opinions and goals:
I want to share my subjective experience.
I believe that it contains objective and important information.
I want to share a way to share subjective experiences. I believe everyone’s experience contains objective and important information.
(part 2⁄2)