primary qualities

British  

plural noun

1. (in empiricist philosophy) those properties of objects that are directly known by experience, such as size, shape, and number

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Example Sentences

This bus has primary qualities of solidity and space occupancy that exist independently of our perceptual machinery and that can do us injury.

From Scientific American • Aug. 27, 2019

These few primary qualities, like extension which we persist in treating as independently real and as the quality of a substance, are those which suffice to explain the order of our experiences.

From The Sense of Beauty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory by Santayana, George

These I call original or primary qualities, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz., solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.

From The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics by Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir

Strictly speaking, however, Hamilton held that the primary qualities are immediately perceived only in our organism as extended, and inferred to exist in extra-organic bodies.

From The Philosophy of the Conditioned by Mansel, Henry Longueville

In the first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form, etc.

From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Cousin, Victor