Recently I ready the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. The book was very interesting, and one of the main questions that it poses is “What is Quality.” Pirsig is not attempting to find a literal meaning of the word. Rather, he is looking for an answer to the question of what the actual concept is. What makes something high quality, and what makes something low quality?
I have struggled with this question for some time since finishing the book. I am wondering…what are the thoughts of others?
I have thought about answering this question a few times and realised every time that I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. But I think that if you take a look at some of the other posts in the philosophy section then you may find some answers. Especially look at threads like “trance music is excrement” and any thread with “art” in the title.
If quality is to be an entirely objective term then it must reflect the degree of craftmanship that went into the creation of whatever object you are considering. The technical ability and skill of the creator is crucial. Anything that is created by someone who is objectively and technically talentd, will be something of high quality.
However this objective treatment of things seems to me to be insufficient. To take the example of music. One may have a greater response to a piece of music that is less technical but which has far more emotion in it for you. Therefore something of high quality (when treated subjectively) need not be something which has a high level of technical construction but may instead be something which communicates effectively and has a degree of passion which is felt by others. This can then only be treated subjectively. This would then suggest that quality can be affected by taste. The intent in the creator is also of importance.
This response is based on applying the term ‘quality’ to art or some other creation. What else were you referring to, if anything? What are your opinions on this debate??
What makes a person feel or have the opinion that something is “good.”
What makes a television show a “quality” show. What makes the distinction between good and bad? Obviously it is a matter of personal taste. That is not in dispute. The real question is, where does that taste come from?
In art, music, or anything else, everyone has their opinions. Why though? How can something be “good” or “bad.” What makes it that way? Is it something we are inherently born with? Is it something we are taught (meaning that if we were taught that crappy music is “good,” would we enjoy it?)
It’s something that I don’t know the answer to. In Pirsig’s book, he goes into this elaborate explanation about how quality is what everything in the universe is based on. It’s rather complex, and often not an easy read (in my opinion). I do however, believe that it was a “good” book. How do I know it’s good? I have no clue. That is the question I pose to you.
I have read ZMM as well and most of its subject matter is outside of my “intellectual grasp” but I think Quality is culturaly defined… all of the way down to the bottem the hiearchy of culture, that being the indvidual… if that makes any sence
yeah i agree with mr niceguy if im following him correctly. the way i see quality is just something that is of good or has a good characteristic. i belive that the definition lets it sway from being a characterisitc and a good characteristic. so if were going with the first view quality is just as simple as saying that anything that has a caracteristic has a quality. for example: when someone refers to someone as having good qualities you would assume that the quality is just the characterisitc of that person and it is a good one. but if adopting the second meaning, then it would be in everyones opinion. example: that is quality television, which would leave me to assume that quality is a characteristic of goodness. we dont all have the same standard on good/bad. so it would be in the eye of the beholder of what quality is. i suppose if your talking to a person and they use the word, then youll just have to ask them their personal defenition on the word and all will be well. so i pretty much just translated into my own words what everyone else said so if you didnt understand how they put it, heres your second opinion.
“Quality” - in the first instance - is simply representative of a given enitity’s characteristics. So a ball has the “quality” of being round for instance. In the second instance, quality seems to be an evaluative judgement: that ball may be round, but not round enough to play cricket with. It is of a poor quality - that is, its qualities are such that it does not comply properly with its material facticity (that’s one for you thales ) or its given utility. A TV show can be said to be of a “poor quality” if its faciticity or utility doesn’t amount to its purpose: a comedy can be said to be of a poor quality if its actual purpose (to make people laugh) is not realised in its facticity or utility (if it doesn’t make people laugh).
If you want a more ontological explanation, you can go with the notions proposed by Kant and his predecessor Hume about how an object’s qualities (colour, form etc.) are actually entirely seperate from the object-in-itself. What we understand about an object’s qualities, then, simply amounts to what kind of a priori knowledge about “qualities” we can have (the notions of spatiality and temporality specifically in Kant’s case) given our human ways of processing sensual information. Thus, the quality a ball has of being “round” is a quality imposed on it during the human conceptualisation of that object and there is not necessarily such a thing as “roundness” objectively. If this notion of seperating objects from their qualities is to be adhered to, then it means any notion of “quality” - in either of the senses it was used above - becomes entirely subjective.
If the notion of quality is entirely subjective, as this stance states, then we would expect it to be be difficult to make an objective judgement of quality, which, given what has been said above, seems to be the case. Or in other words, a given object’s quality comes down entirely to the perceiver. The concepts of “high” and “low” quality thus become entirely subjective and perhaps can never be properly measured (unless we measure the object’s purpose against its facticity, but even that is fairly subjective in a sense).
BKman if you are interested in the first type of ‘quality’ that JP was writing about (Quality" - in the first instance - is simply representative of a given enitity’s characteristics. So a ball has the “quality” of being round for instance) then you should take a look at the first few chapters of Bertrand Russell’s “Problems of Philosophy.”
He describes these qualities as sense-data. Our senses only tell us the truth about certain sense-data which depend upon the relations between us and the object in question. We might say that a table is brown therefore brown is a quality of the table but the colour of the table is not constant and depends upon where the observer is standing because of the way light reflects on the table etc. A coin may be circular but from most angles it will appear oval. Science concerns itself with the public domain: the coin has a real shape and exists in a real space. In the private domain (what we sense via sense-data) it has an apparent shape and exists in an apparent space. There is though a connection between the two domains. Therefore what we know of the physical world must be limited to relations required to preserve correspondence with sense-data.
In brief therefore objective qualities differ from subjective ones. Size would be an example of an objective quality but as optical illusions show, the object-observer relationship again distorts ‘reality.’ BKman I’m not sure whether this was the sort of “quality” you were interested in, but that might help.
Indeed I have read the beginning of that book Alex. If memory serves correctly, it was all about what “is” and what “is not.” I’m hoping to get a copy of it and read it cover to cover at some point.
“The Problems of Philosophy” is a good book and I would recommend it but it starts off better than it ends up, in other words, the first half is good but it does deteriorate a bit in my opinion. On second reading though it is definitely an interesting book. Russell sums up the idealiast argument (which is relevant here) as follows: Whatever can be thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking of it ; therefore nothing can be thought of except ideas in minds ; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot exist.
However this seems to confuse the act of apprehension and the object being apprehended. Whilst the former is clearly mental, the latter need not be…I just thought that this was relevant to a discussion on quality because quality means on, the one hand, an attribute of an object. If the object is nothing more than an idea then the quality must be an idea too. But as I was saying in my previous post, the attribute of the object is an interpretation of the sense-data by a viewer and so again it is differentiated from the object. Object → sense-data → viewer → mental idea. So they all exist but in different domains as it were.
Yes, good book. It is on tape and CD as well. Little long, but highly recommend. Quality? this is the subject of ‘fact versus values’ and is subjective for the most part, but also does contain objective natures blended into it. Tough to pinpoint just as one cannot pinpoint where gravity or the wind comes from.
Will write a paper on it when I get some time.
From "Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance author Robert Pirsig discusses compares an ego based climber to a selfless climber that is not driven by pride and ego.
"To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one front in front of the other both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when they need a rest. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times.
He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant."
V (Male)
For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.
But I think that if you take a look at some of the other posts in the philosophy section then you may find some answers. Especially look at threads like “trance music is excrement” and any thread with “art” in the title.
) or its given utility. A TV show can be said to be of a “poor quality” if its faciticity or utility doesn’t amount to its purpose: a comedy can be said to be of a poor quality if its actual purpose (to make people laugh) is not realised in its facticity or utility (if it