Editing Concept (section)

=== Prototype theory ===
{{Main article|Prototype theory}}

Prototype theory came out of problems with the classical view of conceptual structure.<ref name="Stanford Encycl"/> Prototype theory says that concepts specify properties that members of a class tend to possess, rather than must possess.<ref name="concepts core readings"/> [[Ludwig Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]], [[Eleanor Rosch|Rosch]], Mervis, [[Brent Berlin]], Anglin, and [[Michael Posner (psychologist)|Posner]] are a few of the key proponents and creators of this theory.<ref name="concepts core readings"/><ref name="new paradigm">{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Roger|title=A New Paradigm of Reference|year=1978|publisher=Academic Press Inc|isbn=978-0-12-497750-1|pages=159–166}}</ref> Wittgenstein describes the relationship between members of a class as ''family resemblances''. There are not necessarily any necessary conditions for membership; a dog can still be a dog with only three legs.<ref name="Big Book"/> This view is particularly supported by psychological experimental evidence for prototypicality effects.<ref name="Big Book"/> Participants willingly and consistently rate objects in categories like 'vegetable' or 'furniture' as more or less typical of that class.<ref name="Big Book"/><ref name="new paradigm"/> It seems that our categories are fuzzy psychologically, and so this structure has explanatory power.<ref name="Big Book"/> We can judge an item's membership of the referent class of a concept by comparing it to the typical member—the most central member of the concept. If it is similar enough in the relevant ways, it will be cognitively admitted as a member of the relevant class of entities.<ref name="Big Book"/> Rosch suggests that every category is represented by a central exemplar which embodies all or the maximum possible number of features of a given category.<ref name="Big Book"/> Lech, Gunturkun, and Suchan explain that categorization involves many areas of the brain. Some of these are: visual association areas, prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and temporal lobe.

The Prototype perspective is proposed as an alternative view to the Classical approach. While the Classical theory requires an all-or-nothing membership in a group, prototypes allow for more fuzzy boundaries and are characterized by attributes.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory">{{Cite book|url=https://philpapers.org/rec/TAYLCP-3|title=Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes In Linguistic Theory|last=TAYLOR|first=John R.|date=1989}}</ref> Lakoff stresses that experience and cognition are critical to the function of language, and Labov's experiment found that the function that an artifact contributed to what people categorized it as.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory"/> For example, a container holding mashed potatoes versus tea swayed people toward classifying them as a bowl and a cup, respectively. This experiment also illuminated the optimal dimensions of what the prototype for "cup" is.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory"/>

Prototypes also deal with the essence of things and to what extent they belong to a category. There have been a number of experiments dealing with questionnaires asking participants to rate something according to the extent to which it belongs to a category.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory"/> This question is contradictory to the Classical Theory because something is either a member of a category or is not.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory"/> This type of problem is paralleled in other areas of linguistics such as phonology, with an illogical question such as "is /i/ or /o/ a better vowel?" The Classical approach and Aristotelian categories may be a better descriptor in some cases.<ref name="prototype in linguistic theory"/>