Primary and Secondary Qualities

Primary Qualities: "extension, figure, solidity, gravity [i.e. weight], motion ..." (P 168a)

Secondary Qualities: "colors, sounds, tastes, ..." (P 168a)

According to Hylas (at this point), primary qualities "exist really in bodies" while secondary qualities "are only so many sensations or ideas existing nowhere but in the mind." (P 168a)


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Richard Lee, rlee@uark.edu, last modified: 21 February 2003