“ 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. ”