Quality (philosophy)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For Robert M. Pirsig's unrelated concept, see Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality.

A quality is an attribute or a

object in philosophy.[1] In contemporary philosophy the idea of qualities, and especially how to distinguish certain kinds of qualities from one another, remains controversial.[1]

Background

Further information: Property (philosophy)

katà symbebekós).[2] Aristotle observed: "one and the selfsame substance, while retaining its identity, is yet capable of admitting contrary qualities. The same individual person is at one time white, at another black, at one time warm, at another cold, at one time good, at another bad. This capacity is found nowhere else... it is the peculiar mark of substance that it should be capable of admitting contrary qualities; for it is by itself changing that it does so".[3] Aristotle described four types of qualitative opposites: correlatives, contraries, privatives and positives.[4]

relativistic mass varies for variously traveling observers; then there is the idea of rest mass or invariant mass (the magnitude of the energy-momentum 4-vector[5]), basically a system's relativistic mass in its own rest frame of reference. (Note, however, that Aristotle drew a distinction between qualification and quantification; a thing's quality can vary in degree).[6]

Conceptions of quality as metaphysical and ontological

Main article: Qualia

non-dualistic holism
.

Quality (Latin: quality, characteristic, property, condition) has three meanings:

a) neutral: the sum of all properties of an object, system or process b) evaluates: the quality of all properties of an object, system or process c) evaluates: the individual values preceding the action and its results With regard to points a) and b), quality is the designation of a perceptible state of systems and their characteristics, which is defined in this state in a certain period of time based on certain properties of the system. Quality could describe a product such as wine and its chemical components and the resulting subjectively assessable taste, as well as the processes of ripening the grape, the production and distribution of the wine, or the process of managing the winery. In the meaning b) one speaks of quality wine or wine with predicate or of excellent management.

With reference to c), quality is the sum of the individual (value) attitudes (properties) of a target-oriented individual. Quality is differentiated by "having" or "being". The aim to which qualitative action is directed towards goals or effects also has fundamental effects on the creation of long-term growing cultural capital and thus on the existence of trust values in a cooperating, stable, and in particular democratic society.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Cargile, J. (1995). qualities. in Honderich, T. (Ed.) (2005). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2nd ed.). Oxford
  2. ^ Edghill, E.M. trans. (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive – Aristotle Categories". MIT. line 70.
  3. ^ Edghill, E.M. trans. (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive – Aristotle Categories". MIT. line 254.
  4. ^ Edghill, E.M. trans. (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive – Aristotle Categories". MIT. line 28.
  5. ^ Taylor, Edwin F. and Wheeler, John Archibald, Spacetime Physics, 2nd edition, 1991, p. 195.
  6. ^ Studtmann, P. (2007). Zalta, E.N. (ed.). "Aristotle's Categories". Stanford: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Regarding] Habits and Dispositions; Natural Capabilities and Incapabilities; Affective Qualities and Affections; and Shapes; [...] Ackrill finds Aristotle's division of quality at best unmotivated.
  7. ISBN 978-1-57392-621-8
    .
  8. ISBN 978-3-86624-637-9
    .

External links
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