It is a condition. It can be, at the same time, an aim, a process, and a precursor to an end-state. It can be both descriptive and quantifiable. It can have both positive and negative values.

Well actually, the narrator denies that he was insane. But what can one say of quality about quality within the confines of a thread? That it is the fundamental particle of relationship, perhaps. Smart dude wrote a long book about it, and that's not enough for you. So my one liner won't satisfy either, but I don't want to explain it until you explain a bit.

My favourite book. *Bows* :pray:

Quality is that which if you don't know what it is tends to make your life worse and if you do tends to make it better, but at the same time is impossible to satisfactorily articulate.

Quality is that which is given to a body by an observer with the capacity to compare.

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Quality is one of the attributes of an object, either concrete or abstract, that is used to judge its worth.

Quality is value.
Value is worth.
Worth is perception.
Perception is fleeting.
Fleeting is temporal.
Temporal is reality.
Reality is metaphysical
Metaphysics Is quality.

Haha well that isn’t epistemologically correct but makes a half decent post

What Pirsig means by Quality is what the classical philosophers meant by "The Good/True/Beautiful." That's probably a good way to triangulate with the more common philosophical discussions. Philosophers sort of got out of the way of thinking about such topics during the modern period for a while, but there's been a recent re-awakening of interest in the classical philosophies (e.g. the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas), particularly with a resurgence of the idea of "virtue ethics," but also wrt the foundations of science and scientific concepts.

Quality is the condition in which a certain object's function and aesthetic features exceed other objects in the same category according to similar features and principles.

The definition of the quality of a chair is ever changing. A "perfect" chair hundred years ago did not incorporate modern ideas of ergonomic design, so the notion of the "perfect" quality of a chair back then is today considered normal or sub quality compared to what we view quality of a chair today. So quality can only be defined by the parameters of the current time and current designs and in comparison with other objects within this timeframe.

If you compare every chair since the dawn of civilisation, you would certainly find the best looking (although subjective interpretation) and best ergonomically designed chair somewhere. That chair would be of the highest quality of every chair ever built, but never future chairs. By definition, the best chair ever built to the end of time, would be the last chair built for a species that could sit down and based on improving previous designs in function and aesthetic form. However, that is just the purest definition through all time, quality should be regarded of a measurement within the current time and not throughout all time. That's also the only rational use of it's purpose as a word.

"I bought a chair of better quality than before", simply means, it functions better for the purpose of sitting comfortably and as part of my home interior design by the aesthetic properties of current trends in design.

It is certainly hard to define what quality is, since it's pretty subjective, but as a measurement of something better than before in function and form, it's as close to the objective definition of what quality is.

You describe here what it does, not what it is.

I want you to derive your own conclusions, hoping to discuss and build off one another, instead of just throwing ideas into a bucket.

Is it descriptive in a subjective or objective manner?

So you are saying quality exists just in the observer?

Does an object have these qualities inherently or subjectively?

"The definition of the quality of a chair is ever changing. A "perfect" chair hundred years ago did not incorporate modern ideas of ergonomic design, so the notion of the "perfect" quality of a chair back then is today considered normal or sub quality compared to what we view quality of a chair today. So quality can only be defined by the parameters of the current time and current designs and in comparison with other objects within this timeframe."


So you are saying that the chair has not changed but the way in which it is viewed? Why is that, because people are different or because "time" or something else is different?

"...Is it descriptive in a subjective or objective manner? "
If I am correct in stating, as I did, that it is both descriptive and quantifiable...………………
;-)

I have allways viewed "quality" as something that has been put alot of time, love and effort into. doesent have to be perfection...what ever that is.

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Quality is what you say before doing something - mapped with the deliverables when you finish...

The difficult part is a non-ambiguous specification of what the deliverables will be so that mapping afterwards is simple...

Hearty, :cool:

In Zen and the art. Quality is a philosophy. An attempt to link the objective and subjective worlds. A truth without category.

"So you are saying quality exists just in the observer?":

No. Quality must exist independently from the observer. However, its "materialization" could not be possible without it. Let me explain myself better. I believe that if everything were the same, not a single thing would really exist. I believe that that-which-causes-every-thing-to-be-unique must exist before anything else can. I will call that-which-causes-every-thing-to-be-unique Difference. Therefore, from my point of view, every thing exists because Difference exists; and as long as Difference exists, quality also exists, even if observers do not. However, quality without observers exists only as a possibility, and it is only through observers that quality becomes a property of bodies. So, since Difference exists, it is possible for quality to be a property of bodies, but it does not become such until observers with the capacity to compare exist.

Quality is the structural configuration of form. I agree with @tim wood, -> "it is that in which quantity inheres." Quality is the structure while quantity is the force within (analogous to having a material being fundamentally composed of quarks -> structural units; which have charge -> force within). Form is a relationship between quality and quantity.
As to the other acceptable definition of quality being 'value' or 'worth', I posit that it's because form is the aspect which we appreciate through perception, and quality being its more objective characteristic, it is imbued with that identity.

The quality of something is how it feels.

EDIT: is the OP asking for a definition or a theory?