Featuring guest blogger Osman Mir.
Phillip: Today I received a text message from my friend Osman. It contained three simple, yet thought-provoking words: "What is Quality?" I thought it would make for a good blog post, so please welcome guest blogger Osman Mir.
To answer the question from a statistical point of view: in stats, there are two types of data: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data deals with numbers (i.e. height, weight, etc.), whereas qualitative data deals with data that can be categorized. When one talks about quality, they are talking about how well something is done. The categories, in this case, would be measures of wellness. However, it is completely relative, based upon the person doing the work and based on the person receiving the work.
Osman: You defined quality as a measure of "wellness". But what exactly does this mean? You can break down what people describe as "well" or "good" into "good" and "not good", but such a definition is anything but absolute, something that a definition must be in empiricism. There is an entire field of philosophy associated with measuring "quality" called "esthetics". Estheticians ask such questions in the form of "What is goodness/wellness/beauty?", seeking a single, rational definition.
However any sensible or well-educated person, when confronted with such a question, would feel as though the question is "stupid" because things like beauty are measured subjectively. Since there is no single answer, quality cannot be objectively defined, that brings its existence into question, being something that cannot be seen, weighed, or measured, into account.
Phillip: In other words, quality can't be measured scientifically. It's not apparent to the senses. When you have a phenomena that can be studied by the senses, it's possible to measure it and to test it in various ways consistent with scientific methods.
So for example, if I have a lump of gold, I can look at it and I can tell by the color that it looks like it's gold. I can even look at the spectrum of the light bouncing off of it with a spectrometer and see that it has the lines missing that indicate that this is gold. I could weigh it and find out how much it weighs and I could dunk it in water and figure out its volume. I can test it in various ways using our ordinary physical senses and various laboratory equipment and observational techniques and learn a lot of things about this piece of gold. All of those are the piece of gold's empirical properties - they're things that are subject to the senses and to scientific testing.
But quality is not like that. I can't - unlike the color of gold, which I can observe with my eyes - see the property of goodness. Or the property of badness. Or the property of wellness. Those are things that I may react to a certain action. Like if I see a piece of homework that looks like it was done in five minutes, I may say "That's low quality!" but it's by intuition and biases that tells me that's low quality. It's not anything I can measure scientifically.
Osman: Precisely. It seems not to exist.
However, one way to prove the existence of something, according to the rationals, is to remove it from the world and see if the world still functions without it. If nothing changes, it doesn't exist, but if the state of the world changes, it does.
Now say we remove "quality" from our world.
Well, first off, the fine arts would all but vanish. There would be no difference between an empty canvas or patch of wall and a painting, no difference between a block of stone and a statue, between random scratching noises and music.
Secondly, our economy would collapse. With no difference between various products with similar functions. There would be no desire to buy or do anything apart from which is necessary - which also means an end to (as previously stated) music, movies, parties, as there is no difference between those entities and staring at a blank wall all day.
Thus, pleasure, goals, and with them, all motivation for human betterment and existence, the forces which drive everything from a local market to societal structure itself, collapse. In fact, the only thing which fails to change is pure logic. Thus, seeing the impact of it's removal, we can assume that quality exists, but we also fail to define it.
Thus we can postulate that Quality exists, but that it is undefined, at least by any means we know of now.
Phillip: Can you clarify that statement? Because by the sheer existence of the word, there is a definition. The dictionary includes about seven of them, one being "a degree of grade of excellence or worth." So when you say it is undefined, what do you mean?
Osman: Perhaps our definitions of definition are different. Let's take that statement - that quality is "a degree of worth." Is worth not just a subset of quality? You cannot define something with a subset of itself - that essentially puts you further from the truth. The dictionary gives no non-self reflexive definitions for "Quality." Not the mechanics of it - "this essay is better than another because it has a more complex structure" or "this ring is shinier than another." But its existence, is undefined.
Phillip: You said you sent out a mass text message posing this question. What were some of the responses you received?
Osman: "The opposing force to quantity." and "An individual's perception of worth." and "How good something is at what it does." Now, I'd guessed who each response belonged to before I read each name, since, as another put it - "Define quality? Lol, in terms of what, exactly?"
Quality is an abstract, but unlike other abstracts, such as the number zero, it has no formal definition. Indeed, one can view many abstracts- such as goodness, justice, love, as subordinate to Quality.
I stated before that the only thing that would remain unchanged in a Qualityless world is basic reason, logic, rationality. Empiricism, if you will. Then, quality is the essential thing that separates Empiricism or Classicism from Romanticism - it is the divide between the "surface" of a subject and its "deeper" mechanics.
If you choose to keep Quality undefined, then you preserve romanticism, but you also leave classicism with no way to analyze or categorize it. But this redefinition doesn't solve the divide between romanticism and rationalism that has characterized the history of thought in humanity. However, it is possible that quality, as the only thing separating these two schools of thought, as a definition that would unite them. I encourage anyone reading this to seek it.
