Concept
Conceptualism
Overview
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical concept of universals from a perspective that denies their presence in particulars outside the mind's perception of them. Conceptualism is anti-realist about abstract objects, just like immanent realism is (their difference being that immanent realism accepts there are mind-independent facts about whether universals are instantiated).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Conceptualism
- Willard Van Orman Quine
- Peter Abelard
- Edmund Husserl
- Petrus Aureoli
- Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza
- Michael R. Ayers
Related ideas
- Category (Kant)
- Francisco Suárez
- Foundationalism
- George Berkeley
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Philosophical realism
- Western philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
- Jesuits
- John Locke
- Metaphysics
- Nominalism
- John McDowell
- Anti-realism
- Particular
- Philosophy of perception
- René Descartes
- Universalism
- Universal (metaphysics)
- William of Ockham
- Baruch Spinoza
- Wilfrid Sellars
- Scholasticism
Place in the tradition
Part of Anti-realism.