![Abelard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Abelard.jpg)
In
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of
particular
In metaphysics, particulars or individuals are usually contrasted with universals. Universals concern features that can be exemplified by various different particulars. Particulars are often seen as concrete, spatiotemporal entities as opposed to a ...
s as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind.
Intermediate between
nominalism
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings t ...
and
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical concept of
universals
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...
from a perspective that denies their presence in particulars outside the mind's perception of them.
Conceptualism is
anti-realist
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...
about
abstract objects
In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, hum ...
, just like
immanent realism
Moderate realism (also called immanent realism) is a position in the debate on the metaphysics of universals associated with the hylomorphic substance theory of Aristotle. There is no separate realm in which universals exist (in opposition to P ...
is (their difference being that immanent realism accepts there are mind-independent facts about whether universals are instantiated).
History
Medieval philosophy
The evolution of late
scholastic terminology has led to the emergence of conceptualism, which stemmed from doctrines that were previously considered to be nominalistic. The terminological distinction was made in order to stress the difference between the claim that universal mental acts correspond with universal intentional objects and the perspective that dismissed the existence of universals outside the mind. The former perspective of rejection of objective
universality was distinctly defined as conceptualism.
Peter Abélard
Peter Abelard (; french: link=no, Pierre Abélard; la, Petrus Abaelardus or ''Abailardus''; 21 April 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, leading logician, theologian, poet, composer and musician. This source has a detailed desc ...
was a medieval thinker whose work is currently classified as having the most potential in representing the roots of conceptualism. Abélard’s view denied the existence of determinate universals within things.
William of Ockham
William of Ockham, OFM (; also Occam, from la, Gulielmus Occamus; 1287 – 10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small vill ...
was another famous late medieval thinker who had a strictly conceptualist solution to the metaphysical problem of universals. He argued that abstract concepts have no ''
fundamentum'' outside the mind.
In the 17th century conceptualism gained favour for some decades especially among the
Jesuit
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, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
s:
Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578, Balmaseda – November 10, 1641, Madrid) was a Basque people, Basque scholastic philosophy, philosopher and theology, theologian.
Philosophical work
He was a teacher of theology and philosophy in Valladolid and he oc ...
,
Rodrigo de Arriaga
Rodrigo de Arriaga (17 January 1592 – 7 June 1667) was a Spanish philosopher, theologian and Jesuit. He is known as one of the foremost Spanish Jesuits of his day and as a leading representative of post- Suárezian baroque Jesuit nominalism.
...
and
Francisco Oviedo are the main figures. Although the order soon returned to the more
realist philosophy of
Francisco Suárez, the ideas of these Jesuits had a great impact on the
early modern philosophy
Early modern philosophy (also classical modern philosophy)Richard Schacht, ''Classical Modern Philosophers: Descartes to Kant'', Routledge, 2013, p. 1: "Seven men have come to stand out from all of their counterparts in what has come to be known ...
.
Modern philosophy
Conceptualism was either explicitly or implicitly embraced by most of the
early modern thinkers, including
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
,
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
,
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
,
George Berkeley, and
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
– often in a quite simplified form if compared with the elaborate scholastic theories.
Sometimes the term is applied even to the radically different philosophy of
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
, who holds that universals have no connection with external things because they are exclusively produced by our ''
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...
'' mental structures and functions.
In
late modern philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word '' ...
, conceptualist views were held by
G. W. F. Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
.
Contemporary philosophy
In
contemporary times,
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
's
philosophy of mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's ...
has been construed as a form of conceptualism.
Conceptualist realism (a view put forward by
David Wiggins
David Wiggins (born 1933) is an English moral philosopher, metaphysician, and philosophical logician working especially on identity and issues in meta-ethics.
Biography
David Wiggins was born on 8 March 1933 in London, the son of Norman ...
in 1980) states that our conceptual framework maps reality.
Though separate from the historical debate regarding the status of universals, there has been significant debate regarding the conceptual character of experience since the release of ''Mind and World'' by
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ...
in 1994. McDowell's touchstone is the famous refutation that
Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Life and career
His father ...
provided for what he called the "
Myth of the Given
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Life and career
His father ...
"—the notion that all empirical knowledge is based on certain assumed or 'given' items, such as sense data. Thus, in rejecting the Myth of the Given, McDowell argues for perceptual conceptualism, according to which perceptual content is conceptual "from the ground up", that is, all perceptual experience is a form of conceptual experience. McDowell's
philosophy of justification is considered a form of
foundationalism
Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises.Simon Blackburn, ''The Oxford Dictio ...
: it is a form of foundationalism because it allows that certain judgements are warranted by experience and it is a coherent form of this view because it maintains that experience can warrant certain judgements because experience is irreducibly conceptual.
[Roger F. Gibson, "McDowell's Direct Realism and Platonic Naturalism", ''Philosophical Issues'' Vol. 7, ''Perception'' (1996), pp. 275–281.]
A clear motivation of contemporary conceptualism is that the kind of perception that rational creatures like humans enjoy is unique in the fact that it has conceptual character. McDowell explains his position:
I have urged that our perceptual relation to the world is conceptual all the way out to the world’s impacts on our receptive capacities. The idea of the conceptual that I mean to be invoking is to be understood in close connection with the idea of rationality, in the sense that is in play in the traditional separation of mature human beings, as rational animals, from the rest of the animal kingdom. Conceptual capacities are capacities that belong to their subject’s rationality. So another way of putting my claim is to say that our perceptual experience is permeated with rationality. I have also suggested, in passing, that something parallel should be said about our agency.
McDowell's conceptualism, though rather distinct (philosophically and historically) from conceptualism's genesis, shares the view that universals are not "given" in perception from outside the sphere of reason. Particular objects are perceived, as it were, already infused with conceptuality stemming from the spontaneity of the rational subject herself.
The retroactive application of the term "perceptual conceptualism" to Kant's
philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world.cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-epi ...
is debatable. Robert Hanna has argued for a rival interpretation of Kant's work termed perceptual non-conceptualism.
[Robert Hanna, "Kantian non-conceptualism", ''Philosophical Studies'' 137(1):41–64 (2008).]
See also
*
Conceptual architecture Conceptual architecture is a form of architecture that utilizes conceptualism, characterized by an introduction of ideas or concepts from outside of architecture often as a means of expanding the discipline of architecture. This produces an essentia ...
*
Conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
*
Lyco art
Paul Hartal (born 1936) is a Canadian painter and poet, born in Szeged, Hungary. He has created the term "Lyrical Conceptualism" to characterize his style in both painting and poetry, attempting to unite the scientific with the creative, or in ...
(lyrical conceptualism), term coined by artist Paul Hartal
Notes
References
*
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