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

It would require a most able metaphysician to explain how many primary qualities of the mind must be changed to cause these diversities of complex dispositions.

From The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 by Darwin, Francis, Sir

These are social or conventional virtues; he represents mainly primary qualities and forces.

From Whitman A Study by Burroughs, John

Of these primary qualities, which are immediately perceived as real and objectively existing, we mention extension in space and resistance to muscular effort, with which is indissolubly associated the idea of externality.

From Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles by Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)

The primary qualities are qualities of body, as perceived in relation to the percipient mind, i.e., of the phenomenal body perceived as in space.

From The Philosophy of the Conditioned by Mansel, Henry Longueville