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

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 Harold Arthur Prichard

Berkeley was the first thinker clearly to perceive the unsubstantial nature of a world made up solely of primary qualities.

From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various

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 Henry Longueville Mansel

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 Victor Cousin