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

See Examples For:

primary qualities

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

In examining the phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities.

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

It is to man what impenetrability, with the other primary qualities, is to matter.

From Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3) by Parker, Theodore

But if this be true, the use of the term 'look' or 'appear' in connexion with colour involves a difficulty which does not arise when it is used in connexion with the primary qualities.

From Kant's Theory of Knowledge by Prichard, Harold Arthur

The primary qualities, being the general laws or forms of organic Energy-transmutation, are in a higher sense ideal, for they are the necessary conditions under which both sense-presentation and ideative representation proceed.

From Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge by Philip, Alexander