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Full Idea
Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common.
Gist of Idea
Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties
Source
Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1)
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.3
A Reaction
..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it.
| 19382 | Abstracta are abbreviated ways of talking; there are just substances, and truths about them [Leibniz] |
| 4429 | If we consider whiteness to be merely a mental 'idea', we rob it of its universality [Russell] |
| 11099 | Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine] |
| 4432 | 'Concept Nominalism' says a 'universal' property is just a mental concept applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| 4433 | Concept and predicate nominalism miss out some predicates, and may be viciously regressive [Armstrong] |
| 10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |