Conceptual Integrity Without Concepts

This paper attempts to analyze the theoretical consequences for conceptual integrity in software engineering, if concepts do not exist altogether. As weird as it might sound, doubts on the existence of concepts have been recently cast by several distinguished philosophers of mind, with compelling arguments. It is commonly asserted that one of the most crucial factors in software design is the adoption of consistent and appropriate concepts. This widespread assumption, underlying several researches in software engineering, tacitly postulates the very existence of concepts. How the integrity of a software design may survive without concepts, at least in its traditional account, is the matter explored in this paper. We identified several practical cases of software that uses design ideas referred by terms subsuming a heterogeneity of cognitive assets. These design ideas are therefore better qualified - in technical terms - as unicepts. This notwithstanding, in the cases analyzed, all software maintained a design integrity that made them highly successful, once users become acquainted with the unusual semantic sphere of the unicept at play.