Sensory quality and dimension

First a small paper disc is shown on a white background. We notice that it appears red. Another disc is shown which looks blue and so on. A certain experienced quality. The tone we hear, the smell of a rose, a taste, a pain, an experience of pressure, warmth or cold are other familiar examples. We also observe that the quality has associated with it certain quantities or dimension. In vision, at lease the quality is spread out or extended, it seems to occupy space. Related to quality we have also the experience of intensity or of strength.

One gray disc looks brighter or darker then another, one red is stronger than another. Qualitative experiences also endure through time. Sensory qualities and dimension, therefore, constitute one general aspect of the way things appear to us. It is true that these qualities and dimension are often modified by the conditions or surroundings under which they are observed, such for example, as background and illumination. They may interact with one another in many ways, but the existence of qualities can never be fully accounted for by this interaction.

There has been some difficulty with classification and terminology in this field. Looking at the matter from the standpoint of pure conscious awareness Titchener regarded sensation as elements of consciousness and quality, intensity, extensity, duration and clearness as attributes of sensation. It seems better, perhaps, to-regard not sensation but the experience of quality as a basic fact in our awareness of our world, a fact contributed by the process of the organism itself to the energies received from the stimulus.