Family resemblance concepts replace necessary conditions with substitutable sufficient ones

Evidence

The challenge to the logical AND came from the philosopher Wittgenstein who proposed the family resemblance approach to conceptualization and definitions. The key feature of this was that it denied the necessary condition aspect of the structure. It still maintains typically some kind of sufficiency criteria, discussed at some length in chapter 9. For the purposes of this section, one can replace the logical AND with the logical OR. Once one moves to social science, it is not hard to find examples of this structure. Typically the OR connects various different manifestations of the basic-level concept. This often occurs when there are substitutes: as long as one of the substitutes is present then that is sufficient. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 216

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies family resemblance precisely: not ‘no structure’ but logical OR in place of AND — necessity dropped, sufficiency kept.
• XREF: Connects to any prior reading on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations or prototypes; also to typology/classification work where OR-structures dominate measurement.