/sɛnsɪˈbɪlɪə/, U.S. /sɛnsiˈbɪliə/.sensibilen.
/sɛnˈsɪbᵻleɪ/, U.S. /sɛnˈsɪbəˌleɪ//sɛnsɪˈbɪlɪə/, U.S. /sɛnsiˈbɪliə/. Philosophy (rare before 19th cent.).
Chiefly in plural. Anything that can be perceived by the senses. Also spec. (in later use): anything which, if sensed, would be a sense-datum; a potential sense-datum.In spec. use in and after a usage of Bertrand Russell (see quot. 1914).
ΚΠ
a1678 A. Woodhead Compend. Disc. Eucharist (1688) 16 Taken only for all the sensibilia of Bread..or also for the substance of Bread.
1871 J. Hinton Select. from MSS II. 159 The matter of the schools, the substratum that underlies and is to be distinguished from the ‘properties’ or ‘sensibilia’, must be the ‘actualistic’, eternal [or spiritual]. That is, it is the eternal not seen..i.e. it is the hypothesis.
1892 B. C. Burt Hist. Mod. Philos. I. ii. §73. 216 According to subject-matter, knowledge is knowledge either of sensibilia.., rationalia, or realia.
1914 B. Russell in Scientia 16 4 I shall give the name sensibilia to those objects which have the same metaphysical and physical status as sense-data, without necessarily being data to any mind. Thus the relation of a sensibile to a sense-datum is like that of a man to a husband: a man becomes a husband by entering into the relation of marriage, and..a sensibile becomes a sense-datum by entering into the relation of acquaintance.
1940 A. J. Ayer Found. Empirical Knowl. ii. 71 We shall have to take as a criterion for the existence of a sensibile the truth of a single hypothetical proposition.
1976 M. Lazerowitz & A. Ambrose Philos. Theories iii. 55 The objection to the view that sensibilia could exist apart from being sensed is that any sensibile could be duplicated by a precisely similar mental image.
2004 J. McCourt Queer Street xii. 190 It is natural for man to reach the intelligibilia through the sensibilia.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2016; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.a1678