According to this 'object view', perception is an acquaintance with mind-independent empirical things whose basic natures and perceptible qualities constitute what it is like to be presented with them in this way.
It is a model of analytic thinking, breaking down perceptible qualities like syllables into more basic constituents.
Nothing does not mean "Nothingness" but rather indeterminacy, the absence of perceptible qualities; in Laozi's view it is superior to Something.
To the question "What would be left over if all of the perceptible qualities were stripped (in thought) away from an observable object?" Mach and Avenarius answered, "Precisely nothing".
In fact, (1) figures and shapes are those perceptible qualities which inhere in substances because of the mutual position of its quantitative parts, while affective qualities and affections inhere in substances because of the form itself of the substantial composite.
For Porta, the visible and perceptible qualities of certain material dispositions become embodied signs of a larger and ultimately divine cosmic order to which all natural bodies, including human beings, are subject.
Sellars then argues that the language of perceptible qualities and relations cannot be reduced to or replaced by any vocabulary we currently project to be adequate to the behavior of mere physical objects.
He famously denies that perceptible qualities other than shape and size (and, perhaps, weight) really exist in the atoms themselves: one direct quotation surviving from Democritus claims that 'by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void' (DK 68B9, trans. Taylor 1999a).
(2) Natural capacities and incapacities are inborn non-perceptible qualities, while habits and dispositions are due to the activity, both physical and, if it is the case, intellectual, of the substance in which they inhere (In Cat., cap. de qualitate, fol. 130r).
