[From Latin conceptum: something conceived, an idea.]
(epistemology) The view that conceptual knowledge consists of non-arbitrary abstractions from perceptual knowledge, but that concepts do not have an independent existence. Conceptualism thus opposes both nominalism and realism. Although the main conceptualist in philosophical history was Peter Abailard (1079-1142), Aristotelianism is also sometimes considered to be a form of conceptualism.