CONCEPT AND CONCEPTION, in philosophy, a term applied to a general idea derived from and considered apart from the particulars observed by the senses. The mental process by which this idea is obtained is called abstraction (q.v.). By the comparison, for instance, of a number of boats, the mind ab stracts a certain common quality or qualities in virtue of which the mind forms the general idea of "boat." Thus the connota tion of the term "boat," being the sum of essential qualities in respect of which all boats are regarded as alike, whatever their individual peculiarities may be, is described as a "concept." The mental process by which a concept is affirmed is called "concep tion," a term which is often loosely used in a concrete sense for "concept" itself. It is also used even more loosely as synonymous in the widest sense with "idea," "notion." Strictly, however, it is contrasted with "perception," and implies the mental reconstruc tion and combination of sense-given data. Thus when one carries one's thoughts back to a series of events, one constructs mentally a whole made up of parts which take definite shape and character by their mutual inter-relations. This process is called conceptual synthesis, the possibility of which is a sine qua non for the ex change of information by speech and writing. It should be noticed that this (very common) psychological interpretation of "con ception" differs from the metaphysical or general philosophical definition given above, in so far as it includes mental presenta tions in which the universal is not specifically distinguished from the particulars. Some psychologists prefer to restrict the term to the narrower use which excludes all mental states in which particulars are cognized, even though the universal be present also.
In biology conception is the coalescence of the male and female generative elements, producing pregnancy. CONCEPTUALISM (from "Concept"), in philosophy, a term applied by modern writers to a scholastic theory of the nature of universals, to distinguish it from the two extremes of nominalism and realism. The scholastic philosophers took up the old Greek problem as to the nature of true reality, whether the general idea or the particular object is more truly real. Between realism which asserts that the genus is more real than the species, and that particulars have no reality, and nominalism according to which genus and species are merely names (nomina, flatus vocis), conceptualism takes a mean position. The conceptualist holds that universals have a real existence, but only in the mind, as the concepts which unite the individual things; e.g., there is in the mind a general notion or idea of boats, by reference to which the mind can decide whether a given object is, or is not, a boat. On the one hand "boat" is something more than a mere sound with a purely arbitrary conventional significance; on the other it has, apart from particular things to which it applies, no reality ; its reality is purely abstract or conceptual. This was enunciated by Abelard in opposition to Roscellinus (nominal ist) and William of Champeaux (realist). Abelard held that it is only by becoming a predicate that the class-notion or general term acquires reality. Thus similarity (conformitas) is observed to exist between a number of objects in respect of a particular quality or qualities. This quality becomes real as a mental con cept when it is predicated of all the objects possessing it ("quod de pluribus natum est praedicari"). Hence Abelard's theory is alternatively known as sermonism (sermo, "predicate"). His statement of this position oscillates markedly, inclining sometimes towards the nominalist, sometimes towards the realist statement, using the arguments of the one against the other. Hence he is described by some as a realist, by others as a nominalist. When he comes to explain that objective similarity in things which is represented by the class-concept or general term, he adopts the theological Platonic view that the ideas which are the archetypes of the qualities exist in the mind of God. They are, therefore, ante rem, in re and post rem, or, as Avicenna stated it, universalia ante multiplicitatem, in multiplicitate, post multiplicitatem (universals exist before, in, and after the multiplicity of their particulars). The whole controversy suffers from a tendency to confuse "idea" in the sense of a concept or notion in the mind with "idea" in the Platonic sense of an ultimate archetype of phenomenal objects.
(A. Wo.)