Talk:Conceptualism

Can someone who knows a little more about kant fix this?

I don't really know that much about the Kantian position. However, I don't think Kant's position represents "modern conceptualism". I may be wrong, but many modern conceptualists are physicalists, who emphasize the concepts of universals being stored with the neural circuitry of the brain. Canadianism 03:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

FYI, here's the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy's entry (citation on main page now): conceptualism The theory of universals that sees them as shadows of our grasp of concepts. Conceptualism lies midway between out-and-out nominalism, holding that nothing is common to objects except our applying the same words to them, and any realism which sees universals as existing independently of us and our abilities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfhyde (talk • contribs) 06:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Conceptualism in analytic philosophy

Reading this article, I am rather put off by the fact that it does not mention the conceptualism developed by John McDowell at all. His "conceptualism" is what most (analytic) philosophers think of when the word "conceptualism" is employed nowadays. At any rate, I will begin a new section that addresses this fact. R. Brian Tracz (talk) 12:30, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Medieval philosophy

Text says, "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." But the "rejection of objective universality" must correspond to "the perspective that dismissed the existence of universals outside the mind", which is the latter clause, not the former clause. So this paragraph can't be interepreted. Philgoetz (talk) 00:24, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I came to the same conclusion. Whoever attends to this site, please fix it.

I came to this word from Alfred North Whitehead who wrote, "[the ontological principle, which is a key element of his metaphysical schema and originating in Aristotle and Descartes,] is the principle that everything is positively somewhere in ac­tuality, and in potency everywhere. In one of its applications this principle issues in the doctrine of 'conceptualism.'

He does not elaborate beyond that in his magnum opus, Process and Reality. Perhaps in his Science and the Modern World, which is af utility history of the philosophical development of science.

Perhaps he means that for universals to have any sort of value they must derive from real things.

Kant also seems to have something to say about conceptualism. SLMikesell (talk) 11:41, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

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