Family Resemblance

Despite the many definitions of religion offered over the years, religion as a general concept remains “essentially contested” and characterized by a multiplicity of competing definitions and applications. This, however, has not impeded the proliferation of new religious subcategories (e.g., new age religion, secular religion, civil religion, and cultural religion, among others) that challenge the boundaries of religion as conventionally conceived. This article examines the logics underpinning these conceptual innovations with the objective of enhancing reflexivity and clarifying the processes they aim to elucidate. Critically integrating the writings of Weber and Wittgenstein on
definition and classification, I advance a framework based on ideal typification and family resemblance which allows for the intelligibility and analytic utility of unconventional subtypes, even when premised on root conceptions of religion that lack precise boundaries and defining attributes. I show how the logics underlying these subtypes are not limited to specification, but also include looser forms of family resemblance. More generally, my analysis explores conceptual classification and innovation as analytic practices involving the identification and creative interpretation of
similarities, affinities, linkages, and other kinds of relationships within the constraints of “language-games” relevant not only to academic debate, but also to more basic and quotidian structures of meaning.

In this paper I argue, controversially, that Plato's Meno anticipates Wittgenstein's critique of essentialism. Plato is usually read as an essentialist of the very kind that Wittgenstein was challenging, and the Meno in particular is usually taken as evidence that Plato thought that to know something you must be able to define it, and that if you can't define it you can't investigate any other questions on the topic. I suggest instead that Plato shows Socrates proposing such a position (much as Wittgenstein's imaginary interlocutor might do), only to have it knocked down by what happens in the dialogue. Plato shows that one knows a concept when one can apply it in practice, or, for virtue, when one typically chooses to act in certain ways, passes certain judgements and so on. It turns out, then, that one who claims to "know what virtue is" need not give necessary and sufficient conditions for it.

ÖZET Fen eğitimi alanındaki önemli bir araştırma alanı olan " Bilimin Doğası " ile ilgili yapılan birçok çalışma vardır. Bu alanda Bilimin Doğası'nın yeniden kavramsallaştırılması üzerine yazılan bir kitapta (Erduran ve Dagher, 2014a), bilimi anlamlandırmak için bilimin çeşitli yönlerinin bir araya getirilebileceği tartışılmıştır. Teorik olan bu makalede, yeniden kavramsallaştırılmış bilimin doğası Aile Benzerliği Yaklaşımı (ABY) çerçevesinde vurgulanarak ABY'nin fen eğitimine uygulanması tartışılmıştır. ABY kategorilerinden bilimsel pratikler ve bilimsel bilgi kategorileri ayrıntılı olarak ele alınmıştır. Bunun yanı sıra, Fen Bilimleri (2013a) ve Ortaöğretim Kimya (2013b) öğretim programları ABY kategorileri açısından analiz edilmiştir. Analiz sonuçları her bir programda bulunan ABY kategorileri (örneğin bilimin amaçları ve değerleri, bilimsel metotlar) ile ilgili örnekler verilerek sunulmuştur. Bilimin sosyal boyutu öğretim programlarında yeterince vurgulanmamaktadır. Sonuç olarak, öğrenciler okullarda, bilimin ne olduğu ile ilgili kısmi ve yetersiz bir bilgiye sahip olurlar. ABY kategorilerinin kullanımı, öğretim programlarında bilimin doğasına ilişkin eksikliklerin belirlenmesi açısından önemlidir. Fen öğretim programlarına ABY'nin dahil edilmesi ve de fen derslerinde bu kategorilerin öğretilmesi, öğrencilerin bilimi anlamlı bir şekilde öğrenmelerini ve bilime daha geniş bir perspektiften bakarak motive olmalarını sağlayacaktır. ABSTRACT There is substantial research on nature of science (NOS) in science education. A recent book (Erduran and Dagher, 2014a) has advocated for a holistic approach to the NOS. In this theoretical paper, we discuss the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) to NOS based on a reconceptualised account of NOS and explore the implications for science education. We consider the FRA categories of scientific practices and scientific knowledge. Furthermore,present an investigation based on the analysis of Turkish science curricula (MEB, 2013a,b). The analysis presents results based on the distribution of FRA categories (e.g. scientific aims and values, scientific methods) in the curricula. One of the observations is that the social context of science is underemphasized. A potential consequence of such lack of emphasis is that students would have partial or limited knowledge. The use of FRA categories is important to highlight the deficiencies in curriculum context. Inclusion of FRA in science curricula and teaching of FRA categories in science classes will contribute to students' meaningful learning of science and their motivation given a broader perspective of science.

Anachronism is one of the central themes of the discipline of history. This study discusses the problem anachronism from various perspectives. The main aim of the work is to develop ways of identifying anachronisms.

In the firs part I discuss Quentin Skinner's methodological writings' relevance to the problem of anachronism. Skinner's methodological ideas offer both important views and a ground for further research on the topic. In this work I highlight some, partly unnoticed, original insights of Skinner and partly develop his ideas further by pointing out problems and offering a solution to them. The most important section is a rereading of Skinner's article (1969) "Meaning and Understanding In the History of
Ideas" in which Skinner presents a typology of anachronisms which is much richer than has so far been noticed. I demarcate thirteen types of anachronisms instead of the four that commentators usually notice and add four more form Skinner's other works. I also highlight the fact that Skinner already in this article maintains that it is impossible to get totally rid of one's contemporary perspective when studying thepast. I conclude that even though we are tied to the contemporary view it does not
follow that it is impossible to avoid all kinds of anachronism.

In the second part this is done by marking potential points of discontinuity in history of concepts. For this I develop a framework which I call conceptual prism. Its backbone is Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance of concepts and I use W. B. Gallie's and Quentin Skinner's ideas to fill in the details. Conceptual prism offers a way to analyse concepts both on semantic and pragmatic levels which enables the historian to notice conceptual changes on different levels. The advantages of the conceptual prism are demonstrated by a case study on the concept of liberty. In general I regard that such questions ––sometimes addressed by historians and philosophers–– as how much changes a concept can go through and still remain the same concept and how this can be determined are not informative. The main point is to describe similarities and differences, and concluding whether the concept remains the same or not, does not add any information.

However, I consider that the main tool for a historian who wishes to avoid anachronisms is his or her imagination and that there is no universal method to avoid anachronisms. Every model has to be reconsidered and challenged.

Any biological species of biparental organisms necessarily includes, and is fundamentally dependent on, sign processes between individuals. In this case, the natural category of the species is based on family resemblances (in the Wittgensteinian sense), which is why a species is not a natural kind. We describe the mechanism that generates the family resemblance. An individual recognition window and biparental reproduction almost suffice as conditions to produce species naturally. This is due to assortativity of mating which is not based on certain individual traits, but on the difference between individuals. The biosemiotic model described here explains what holds a species together. It also implies that boundaries of a species are fundamentally fuzzy, and that character displacement occurs in case of sympatry. Speciation is a special case of discretisation that is an inevitable result of any communication system in work. The biosemiotic mechanism provides the conditions and communicative restrictions for the origin and persistence of diversity in the realm of living (communicative and semiotic) systems.

У раду се разматрају епистемолошке консеквенце Витгенштајновог концепта „породичних сличности“ [„Familienähnlichkeit“] и важност овог филозофског појма за појаву нових генолошких концептуализација. Најпре доносимо осврт на разне потешкоће, које се јављају при покушају дефинисања путописног жанра, а које потичу од рестрикција наметнутих аристотеловским моделом категоризације. Други део рада разматра могућност примене Витгенштајновог концепта приликом дефинисања и дескрипције жанрова: указује на употребу овог појма у когнитивној психологији (Еленор Рош), естетици (Морис Вајц) и науци о књижевности, нарочито теорији жанрова (Мари-Лор Рајан).

This paper discusses the epistemological consequences of Wittgenstein's philosophical concept of family resemblance [Familienähnlichkeit] and its importance for the emergence of new conceptualisations in the genre theory. Primarily, we provide an overview of the various difficulties in defining the genre of travel book, with the main origin in Aristotelian model of categorization. The second part of the paper focuses on the possibility of applying this concept in cognitive psychology (Eleanor Rosch), aesthetics (Morris Weitz) and literary studies, especially in genre theory (Marie-Laure Ryan).

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The Society's artistic justification and value will grow and develop over time in synchrony with the scientific content, becoming an important illustration of the possibility of unifying science and art in the life of Man. This indeed may reveal itself to be the highest value generated by the study of the human visage in all its mysterious dimensions through the worldwide activities of the Society for Faces.

Readers are advised that this paper forms the foundation for three newer writings that should be read together with it for an integrated and particularized approach to the context, the form (or plan), the neurophysiological underpinnings, and the exhibition of the Trifurcated Face of Man (see 'Plan of Face Derived and Explained,' The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War,' and 'Desiderata for Primary Exhibition of the Face' on this page).

A fifth paper ('Convergences of Human Face in Life and Death') will, in due course, clarify and strengthen the contributions to the theory of the face by the present author and form the basis for substantial new research on the idealist theory of the Visage of Man by theorizing the integration of the individual facial conformation at first maturity with the totalized face in death (the Totenmask), all as envisioned by the 'Prospectus of the Society for Faces,' but now at last rooted in true psychology and demonstrable neurophysical reality.

Readers of this foundational paper originally dated 2000 will benefit from our recently uploaded analytical conspectus ('Analysis of Max Picard's "Human Face" With Implications for Portraiture and Its Exhibition') (which is essentially paper #6).

Coming soon in addition is a further paper ('Thematic Apperceptions of Max Picard's "Human Face" With Implications for Portraiture and Its Exhibition') (which will be #7) based on a close re-reading of Picard's masterwork in the astoundingly faithful poetical dress given to it by the late screenwriter S. Goldstein (1930), originally published in New York.

The translation of Picard is not mentioned in published accounts of Goldstein's career or in his 'New York Times' obituary (he died in 1970) but it undoubtedly constitutes Goldstein's most notable literary achievement. This is especially noteworthy since Goldstein, who studied languages at Columbia University, was by all accounts obstreperously leftist-materialist in outlook (actually a communist) but in Picard brilliantly and objectively handled the masterwork of an extraordinarily strong idealist at the height of his powers.

Each subsequent generation in Genji monogatari proceeds with yet more realism and often yet more tragedy. The misty nostalgia toward the past in the earliest chapters gradually fades in favor of unrelenting clarity, each theme repeated until the psychology of each character is as clear to us as our own. At the same time as we see ourselves reflected in the main character, Genji, he seems to be by self-admission more than usually prone to image transference, attempting to replace one lost or failed relationship with another. One curious aspect of transference in this text is that, more often than not, it involves an ersatz incestuous connection. Despite its whole narrative being focused around a single family, and while there are some positive examples, idealized parent-child relationships are overshadowed by self-interest, intrigues and even abuse. In many ways, Neo-Confucian critics of the text were justified in labeling the work "amoral" from a Confucian standpoint. 1 This paper will argue, however, that Murasaki Shikibu's intention in these pseudo-incestous relationships is to convey the unique ethos of Heian aristocratic family dynamics, centralized around separation and deprivation. Furthermore, that while parent-child love does indeed exist in her time, it is often interrupted and diverted into forced romanticization.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the stance of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) with respect to the problem of the definition of religion. Firstly, I defend the necessity of an approximate definition of religion due to the fact that (a) definitions are microtheories and (b) there is considerable social demand for a comprehensive definition of religion because of the inclusion of the concept in the majority of contemporary legal systems. Secondly, I present a representative sample of statements about the nature of religion put forward by scholars working within the cognitive tradition, which reveals considerable convergence on what the CSR thinks religion is about and justifies the concept of a "cognitive definition of religion". Thirdly, in a brief historical sketch, I try to identify two opposite tendencies in historical attempts at defining religion and their respective philosophical backgrounds: Essentialist definitions perpetuate the venerable Western tradition harking back to Plato's Euthyphro, while recent non-essentialist definitions draw on the work of late Wittgenstein (in what I term "power-innocent" social constructionism) and Nietzsche, Foucault and Bourdieu (in what I term "power-based" social constructionism), respectively. Lastly, against the background of an essentialist vs. non-essentialist dialectic, I consider the definition of religion provided by the CSR, which, while prima facie almost indistinguishable from Tylor's doctrine of animism, is based philosophically on Kant and Chomsky (and therefore at odds with the prevalent practice of social constructionism) and capable of providing much more cogent justification for a universalistic approach to religion than any of its essentialist predecessors.

Comparison is fundamental to the practice and subject-matter of philosophy, but has received scant attention by philosophers. This is even so in “comparative philosophy,” which literally distinguishes itself from other philosophy by being “comparative.” In this article, the need for a philosophy of comparison is suggested. What we compare with what, and in what respect it is done, poses a series of intriguing and intricate questions. In Part One, I offer a problematization of the tertium comparationis (the third of comparison) by examining conceptualizations of similarity, family resemblance, and analogy, which it is sometimes argued can do without a tertium comparationis. In Part Two, I argue that a third of comparison is already required to determine what is to be compared, and insofar as that determination precedes the comparison that tertium may be called “pre-comparative.” This leads me to argue against incomparability and to show how anything can indeed be compared to anything. In Part Three, I relate my arguments to what is today commonly labelled “comparative philosophy.” Finally, I raise some questions of ontology and politics in order to demonstrate the relevance of a philosophy of comparison.

In the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, the exchange of knowledge and experience  between workers and other social actors involved in this extractive sector has contributed significantly to the hybridisation of mining practices. Thus, the variety and complexity of mining practices and work agreements is astonishing. How does one explain the morphogenesis of the different working practices that coexist in this specific context?
In addressing this question, this chapter focus on two alternative approaches: van der Linden’s global labour history and Ginzburg’s microhistory. It aims to examine the limits of these two approaches and develop an alternative view. To this end, it shows how textile metaphors inspired by Wittgenstein’s later works are useful when considering  the spatio-temporal entanglement of Sierra Leone’ mining labour practices.

When Red Cowboys Fight for New Order: „Eastern“ – Genre as Processual Phenomenon in Cinema seen by Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance Concept

On the one hand film, genres are frequently perceived as clear and firmly determined categories, but on the other hand genres, they are extremely ambiguous and articulating their exact definition is a highly complicated process. Moreover, such definitions become inapplicable when we come across different approaches to genre cinema when exploring cinemas of various cultural environments. This master thesis aims to study ‘Easterns’, a genre which appeared in Soviet cinema in the late 1960s and experienced its boom between the 1970s and 1980s. This case study of adventurous and pathos-driven interpretations of the Russian Civil War will show the ways of perceiving and understanding genre phenomena in the USSR. In my text, I will bring a discrepancy between theoretical and historical approaches to genres into focus as well as highlight their problematical attempt to find a solid foundation for genre definition. I argue that 1) genres cannot be understood as essentiallistically determined concepts, and 2) it is necessary to leave the established genre theory patterns set mainly by the Anglo-American point of view. On a contrary, I believe it is necessary to consider genres as concepts that acquire their meaning by their actual use in language – i. e. in practice. Therefore, it is not possible to determine one particular definition of genres but it is necessary to comprehend them as processual categories with family resemblances among them. My research will study the ways in which Soviet discussion on a film influenced the development of local genre cinema. I will be interested in cultural and historical discourses as well as forms of articulating specific requirements for filmmaking, mass ethos, the relationship between state and cinema and the gradual formation of Eastern narrative. The thesis will work with mutual relationships among theoretical approaches dominant in the Soviet Union; formalism, revolutionary romanticism, Marxist dialectics or aesthetic-ideological requirements of socialist realism.

The last chapter of the master's thesis remains unfinished due to the impossibility to travel to Russia (from 2020 until today) and completing research in the archives.

Although pain is one of the most fundamental and unique experiences we undergo in everyday life, it also constitutes one of the most enigmatic and frustrating subjects for many scientists. This book provides a detailed analysis of why this issue is grounded in the nature of pain itself. It also offers a philosophically driven solution of how we may still approach pain in a theoretically compelling and practically useful manner. Two main theses are defended: (i) Pain seems inscrutable because there exists no property that is commonly shared by all types of pain and that is at the same time particular to pain, setting it apart from other bodily sensations. This applies irrespective of whether we consider the psychological dimensions, neural networks, causal relations, or biological functions of pain. Consequently, it is impossible to refer to ideal far-reaching and ideal distinct generalizations on the matter of pain. (ii) Despite this challenge, by focusing on the resemblance relations that hold across pains, we can generate scientific progress in explaining, predicting, and treating pain. In doing so, the book aims to provide a clear conceptual basis for interdisciplinary communication and a useful heuristic for future research.

Publication: https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/573395

In the following paper, published in 1995 by the Journal of value Inquiry (and following from my doctoral dissertation), I argue for an ecofeminist standpoint that avoids "eliminativist" objections and is modeled after a later Wittgensteinian variety of naturalism. My alternative avoids both Cartesian dualism and that variety of eliminativism that antiquates the use of psychological terms to ends explanatory of the psychological and epistemic effects of oppression. I utilize the work of feminist philosopher Donna Haraway, especially "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" to this end.

The scope of CSCW, its focus on work, has been a topic of sporadic debate for many years — indeed, from the very beginning in the late 1980s. But in recent years the issue has become one of general concern. Most of this debate has been taking place in closed fora such as program committees, editorial boards, and email discussion groups, but over the last few years the debate has been brought out in the open in a few of publications, in particular in a programmatic article from 2005 by three esteemed CSCW researchers: Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, and Steve Benford. They argue that CSCW should ‘move its focus away from work’. Other researchers argue along the same lines. Taking this open challenge as a welcome cue, the present article focuses on CSCW’s scope: the rationale for its focus on ordinary work. After an initial discussion of the arguments put forward by Crabtree et al. and by others, the article offers an analysis of the concept of ‘work’ (based on Ryle and Urmson), a critique of prevailing illusions about the realities of work in the contemporary world, and an attempt to position CSCW in the context of technological development more broadly. It is time to reconsider CSCW, to rethink what it is and why it might be important.

Anakronismi on historiantutkimuksen keskeisiä metodologisia ongelmia. Anakronistisessa historian tulkinnassa historioitsija sijoittaa tutkimaansa aikakauteen käsitteitä tai ajattelutapoja, jotka kuuluvat johonkin toiseen aikakauteen. Tutkimus laajentaa teoreettista ymmärrystä anakronismeista sekä luo tulkintakehikon, jonka avulla anakronismeja on mahdollista välttää erityisesti intellektuaalihistoriassa. Intellektuaalihistoriassa anakronismeihin päädytään mm. silloin kun ei huomata eroja omien ja menneisyyden henkilön ajattelutavoissa tai tavoissa käyttää käsitteitä. Tutkimuksen keskeinen strategia on tuoda esiin mahdollisia historiallisten katkosten paikkoja ja siten mahdollistaa anakronismien monipuolinen tunnistaminen. Työssä nostetaan esiin se seikka, että vaikka historioitsijan ei olekaan mahdollista varmistua tulkintansa anakronismittomuudesta, niin siitä ei seuraa etteikö historiallinen kuvaus voi periaatteessa välttää anakronistiset kuvaukset. Tutkimus rakentuu pitkälti Quentin Skinnerin, W. B. Gallien ja Ludwig Wittgensteinin ajatusten päälle.Anachronism is one of the central themes of the discipline of history. This study discusses the problem anachronism from various perspectives. The main aim of the work is to develop ways of identifying anachronisms. In the firs part I discuss Quentin Skinner's methodological writings' relevance to the problem of anachronism. Skinner's methodological ideas offer both important views and a ground for further research on the topic. In this work I highlight some, partly unnoticed, original insights of Skinner and partly develop his ideas further by pointing out problems and offering a solution to them. The most important section is a re-reading of Skinner's article (1969) "Meaning and Understanding In the History of Ideas" in which Skinner presents a typology of anachronisms which is much richer than has so far been noticed. I demarcate thirteen types of anachronisms instead of the four that commentators usually notice and add four more form Skinner's other works. I also highlight the fact that Skinner already in this article maintains that it is impossible to get totally rid of one's contemporary perspective when studying the past. I conclude that even though we are tied to the contemporary view it does not follow that it is impossible to avoid all kinds of anachronism. In the second part this is done by marking potential points of discontinuity in history of concepts. For this I develop a framework which I call conceptual prism. Its backbone is Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance of concepts and I use W. B. Gallie's and Quentin Skinner's ideas to fill in the details. Conceptual prism offers a way to analyse concepts both on semantic and pragmatic levels which enables the historian to notice conceptual changes on different levels. The advantages of the conceptual prism are demonstrated by a case study on the concept of liberty. In general I regard that such questions sometimes addressed by historians and philosophers as how much changes a concept can go through and still remain the same concept and how this can be determined are not informative. The main point is to describe similarities and differences, and concluding whether the concept remains the same or not, does not add any information. However, I consider that the main tool for a historian who wishes to avoid anachronisms is his or her imagination and that there is no universal method to avoid anachronisms. Every model has to be reconsidered and challenged

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of brutely and imperfectly similar determinates. Such brute similarities have been thought to clash with realism about universals. I argue that this worry stems from the mistaken assumption that perfect and imperfect similarities are relations of a same kind. If exact and inexact resemblances are distinct and heterogeneous explananda, the realist about universals might explain the first thanks to property-sharing, while happily leaving imperfect similarities between properties unexplained.

I argue for a novel answer to the question "What is hope?". On my view, rather than aiming for a compound account, i.e. analysing hope in terms of desire and belief, we should understand hope as an irreducible concept. After criticizing influential compound accounts of hope, I discuss Segal and Textor's alternative of describing hope as a primitive mental state. While Segal and Textor argue that available developments of the standard definition do not offer sufficient conditions for hope, I question the deep-­-seated idea that desire and belief are even necessary conditions for hope. My suggestion is that we should take seriously the fact that we hope in a great variety of ways and should question the search for elements that are common to all cases. A promising alternative follows the Wittgensteinian idea that cases of hope are related in terms of family resemblance, i.e. are multiply realizable on the ontological level while falling under the non-­-definable concept of hope.

Why is consensus and clarity about the definition of entrepreneurship so elusive? The central premise of this paper is that we can gain a better understanding of the problem of defining entrepreneurship, of what it means to us as a field of research, and what we can hope to achieve by grappling with it, by substituting one question for another. The question we must start with to get a clear view is not “What is entrepreneurship?”, but rather “What sort of concept is entrepreneurship?” This reframing enables us to see that entrepreneurship is a family resemblance concept. It follows from this metacognitive insight, if it is correct, that all attempts to define entrepreneurship will be subject to counterexamples. This perspective is used to therapeutically alleviate emotional and behavioral problems in the field of entrepreneurship, and to offer practical suggestions for how to deal productively with paradigmatic diversity in the field.

This paper addresses the question of whether the fetus is human and its effect on the abortion debate. It investigates the concept of " human " and asks whether the concept of human has an essence or is best understood by the idea of family resemblance. It asks whether DNA is the essence of humanity and concludes that it is not and that humanity is best understood using family resemblance involving a range of attributes common to humans. It concludes the fetus does not have the range of attributes that would make it human.

Post-Wittgensteinian "family resemblance" theories of art fail to capture its elusive essence because they fail to factor in what I call the "legitimate recalcitrance" inherent in art as a practice: the fact that while creating, an artist is not in principle determined by the rules governing the arts the way, say, a chef's cooking is determined by the rules of culinary arts. What then, I suggest, would distinguish art as a conscious human activity from other human activities is the nature of the rules constituting it. Given above, I'll be arguing for a Wittgensteinian theory of art as a language game wherein one cannot possibly make a "wrong move" i.e. make a mistake!

This small-scale study explores the extent to which Arabic employs or rather applies polysemy, i.e. diversity of meanings as well as family-resemblance words to advance new senses. First, the paper quantifies the words that sound polysemous. Then, it qualifies the meaning values such words utilize. The paper classifies the polysemous words according to the values they benefit from into shape-oriented, source-based, locomotion-adjusted, knot-tailored and cavity-accommodated morphemes. The paper also advances to check family-resemblance phrases from a sociolinguistic as well as a socio-pragmatic perspective. It subcategorizes these phrases into functional and dysfunctional familial lexemes. The study approaches lexical meaning from a systemic functional language (SFL) as well as a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective. The paper benefits from both discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. Accordingly, the study explores the corpus of the Noble Quran for key word in context (KWIK). The paper exclusively quotes from the holy Script of Islam for its linguistic conciseness.

My interpretation of Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances is unusual in that, unlike most other interpretations,  it does not presume that Wittgenstein misuses the notion of family resemblance.  In its home, talk of family resemblances is talk of resemblances between members of a human family;  the Smiths, for instance.  But resemblance between Smiths is not a criterion for membership in their family.  So we should not expect Wittgenstein to be holding that family resemblances, as he uses the term, serve as criteria for kind membership.

It has been widely recognized that Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblance solved the problem of universals. This theory may be considered in two ways, however. (1) Family resemblance may be understood in a manner of abstract universals theory. Most commentators accept this interpretation. Though in this case, I would argue, Wittgenstein's contribution to the problem of universals seems to be overestimated. (2) Wittgenstein's theory may also be considered, following one of contemporary Polish philosophers J. Szymura, as a view connected with the Hegelian theory of concrete universals. The article is devoted to put forward some arguments for this interpretation. Firstly, it is coherent with all Wittgenstein's theses on family resemblance and states that there is literally nothing common in things. Secondly, it fits to Wittgenstein's language (terms such as "family", "Ähnlichkeit" and so on). Thirdly, there are some biographical pieces of evidence that Wittgenstein was inspired by Goethe's concept of "Urpflanze", which is very close to concrete universal.

Associative adjectives such as in 'electrical engineer' differ from ascriptive adjectives like in 'red house': They are syntactically similar, yet they do not denote an intersective sense like ascriptive adjectives do. However, associative adjectives may (irregularly) denote ascriptive traits connected to the associated entity: The more semantically-similar two entities are, the more regular the traits are which are ascribed to them through association by a given adjective. This model of entities associated through family membership is analogous to a semantic network based on relative word similarities, in which families appear as clusters of relatively-similar entities.

Love is a phenomenon we are involved with in our life. The concept of love has been immensely discussed and challenged by philosophers and psychologists all throughout the history because of its salient and effective role in our individual and social lives. Self-love and altruistic love, two main types of love, have been repeatedly reflected in psychologists ' works; self-love refers to a kind of love which is based on psychological egoism; on the other hand, altruistic love is conceived of as a sort of love which is principally based on selflessness, caring, respect, and sacrifice. “White Nights ” is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky which seemingly has an altruistic view toward love; it sounds that Dostoyevsky has made a purposeful attempt to praise such altruistic love in the story. Thus, it has been tried to delve into the concept of love manifested in White Nights. This paper is divided into two parts; in the first part, a theoretical framework entailing definitions of l...

The topic of this chapter is the problem of the unity of moral good, concerning the kind of unity that moral good or the concept thereof constitutes, and in particular, how Wittgenstein’s identification of various complex modes of conceptual unity, and his introduction of a method of clarification for the purpose of dealing with such complex cases, can help with the problem of unity. Relating to this I also discuss the question, whether Wittgenstein regards good as a family-resemblance concept, and make an attempt to characterize family-resemblance concepts by way of their similarities and differences from certain other complex modes of conceptual unity.