The Employee of Emotion

Megan,

You nerd-sniped me at the sentence: “…ideally, we pick the most direct path to the truth but also the path that makes us the most happy.”  Judging by your context, the “truth” is the best possible end, and “happiness” is the best possible means.

By asserting logic as the overriding structure determining the end (truth), and emotion as the subjective experience filling in the “travel space,” aren’t we reinforcing logic as supra-human and superior?  Are we forgetting that the basis of rational thinking was founded by men (i.e. flesh and blood) with emotions?  That logic (like the common form of geometry) came from the minds of men, and therefore is subordinate to humanity?  There is something comforting about establishing logic as the optimal mindset in which to act, as if we created a god to protect us from bad decisions and thought processes, and then conveniently forgot that we created it, so it could be forever esteemed as infallible.  If you don’t agree with this line of argument, then perhaps you think logic was hanging out in the ether waiting to be found, and lucky us!  We stumbled upon rational thinking.  Agreeing to that is essentially admitting there is a spiritual realm where forms hang out undiscovered, which according to logic, is entirely illogical.

Sorry, ranting (and quite sarcastic I will add, must be the NyQuil).  I have yet to make my actual point.  Missing from this logical/emotional equation, I believe, are exigency and the role of action upon a situation.  Logic conveniently omits humanity’s desire to make the “right” or most “truthful” decision.  The precursor to implementing logical thinking is an emotional desire (Emotion: 1, Logic: 0).  Second, logic operates within a set of measureable occurrences and probabilities (rational=ratio).  Granted, these are based on thousands of years of observances, but this measurement of humanity’s actions against the ones most likely to lead to positive outcomes has created a system in which anything that is a threat to this nicely ordered taxonomy is outcast as an illogical threat.  So, (In Mr. Spock’s voice) “I

I find this quite apropo.

see that you are on the verge of intoxication, because of the number of whiskey-gingers you have ingested.  Seeing that you have a tendency for bad hangovers, it is a highly illogical decision to have another.”  To which you respond, “Yes, Spock. But what you don’t understand is that my brother just passed, and I’m going through the natural stages of reaction and grieving, that are part of the human healing process.”  Well, you think that.  But what you actually say is, “Get lost, asshole. Bartender? Hit me with another…make it a double.”  Here’s my point: logic is based on observable conscious choices leading to positive outcomes (less drinks=less hangovers).  It’s based on the majorities, and the most-common. This is a dangerous game to play, because much of our reasoning is subconscious.  We know not what we do, but we do it anyway.  We push those who stray from the most-common ways of acting/thinking/working to the margins, and often label them with unfortunate titles that disqualify the unique perspectives they offer to the equation.

I read an article on Sociopaths once, and how their unique mindsets are excellent for seeing things (like potentially dangerous individuals walking through an airport) that the “normal rational mind” cannot.  Say what?  Yes, these non-rational beings have unique minds that, when applied properly, are more perceptive than our own in certain situations.  Essentially, I see logic as the cumulative collection of human behavior and emotion.  It is the equations for most-common emotions and decisions equal best possible outcomes.  It is the entire history of emotion, condensed down into a how-to book.  I see logic as nothing other than the entire history of humans being and acting, recorded and translated into “what predicted the best possible outcomes.”  So, it’s actually quite useful!  BUT if we allow it to marginalize the uncommon and outsiders that act differently than the mainstream, we risk losing a unique perspective. The sociopathic perspective is likely not the best for deciding how to

raise children, but it just may be best for spotting the next airline threat.

I don’t see a need to reconcile emotion and logic, if we see logic as working for emotion. It is emotion’s scribe, keeping track of the choices that led to good outcomes, and prescribing them according to situations in the future. Keep it working for you, and when you encounter a new emotion you can add it to your store of knowledge, experience, and logic. Each emotion therefore enhances your ability to make decisions and think best. Not think rationally or logically, but best. 

Let's get logical, logical!

The Question: What does logic lack, leave out, or preclude?

The Answer (in Megan's terms): A lot. I wish I could just leave it there, but alas that is not enough words. Let me begin with the statement that logic is great. Thinking about things and solutions, absent of the feelings that I have in regards to those things is sometimes quite a wonderful way to approach a situation. Emotions are also great; in my opinion they are really what makes us human--although they can be a pain in the ass half of the time. Approaching a situation with emotions in mind, and the ways in which the situation affects people emotionally is also a good approach.

By the readings, it seems that Logic and Emotion sit on two different sides of a binary. In this world, logic disregards emotion, and emotion disregards logic. It seems to me, that the problem with logic is that it entirely disregards emotion and when it does regard emotion, it looks at emotion as if that is the downfall of logic. To be logical is to be entirely apathetic, to be emotional is to be entirely irrational. Herein lies the problem. I think that in making almost any decision we cannot do so without considering how it will effect us emotionally.

Let's take something relationships for example. Given the binary of logic and emotion, there are two paths to take. The first is that you take the path of least resistance. This path is direct, clear cut, there is an end in sight (as in the example Kaylee gave us of her friend Jake). This is the path of logic. The second is the path directed by the heart's whims. This path has hills and depressions, it has twists and turns and surprises around every corner, the end is a mystery. In a world where logic and emotion must be exclusive of each other, we must only pick one path--and in a world where Logic is King, the first path is always the one we choose.

Although, ideally, we pick the most direct path to the truth but also the path that makes us the most happy. In the real world, I think we are incapable of choosing one of these two paths without the other path affecting that choice. We choose the path that may be more emotionally driven, more windy and twisty and complicated, but also the one that we hope leads to our ideal endpoint. We can't necessarily see the end, but we foresee and ideal end. Just like Kim pointed out, logic gets us from Point A to Point B, but I think emotion makes the trip worth while. There's got to be a balance of each to make reaching Point B worth the trip it took to get there.

I think this brings me around to saying that the rhetorical experience is what makes logic and emotion worth reconciling. I think that rhetorical experience is the one that regards both logic and emotion as necessary equals. Maybe this makes sense in only my own brain, honestly that's probably been the case all semester so far. But hey, my brain works in strange ways when it comes to rhetorical thingy-ma-bobs.

On-Sale Milk

This week’s prompt immediately brings to mind an eccentric friend of mind named Jake, who is the definition of a classical thinker to a tee. Educated in Germany, and a former mechanical/chemical engineering dual-major, Jake does everything in a very logical and efficient manor—or so he thinks.

For example: Jake is obsessed with health and fitness, and has dialed in the amount of protein, carbs and fat he should be consuming on a given day to reach “optimal performance.” He strictly follows a regimen called carb cycling, frequently utilized by fitness professionals. One day, he consumed an entire angel food cake to reach the amount of carbs he had “logically” deemed optimal. His way of thinking often leads him to deduce that more of a good thing is always a good thing—which is certainly not the case.

The next day, Jake purchased five gallons of milk on sale from Town and Country that expired in the next two days; he had calculated the grams of protein he could get for a dollar between fish, chicken and milk, and had “logically” deduced that buying the sale milk would give him the most bang for his buck. He proceeded to drink the milk during and after playing a game of soccer in the 90 degree August heat. I’m not sure where his logic went with that one.

Although Jake’s logic has made for some strange dietary habits, it really causes problems when it comes to dating…

Recently, another friend of ours set Jake up on a date with a nice, intelligent girl who we all thought would be a great match. They went to a movie and everything went well; they both seemed eager to see each other again. The next date, he told her that unless she saw a serious future between them, a relationship that could potentially end in marriage, he didn’t want to continue seeing her.

“Logically, it doesn’t make sense for me to waste my time on someone with whom I don’t see a potential future,” Jake rationalized.

He’s as purely logical as they come, thinking only in black and white, in binaries and calculated steps, working always toward the optimal solution. He lives primarily in his head, and although logic works perfectly in hypothetical situations, it doesn’t always come to fruition in real life. Logic leaves out the reactions of others, the elements of life that are out of our control. Jake assumes that there’s a formula for everything, a single Truth that one must always strive for in every situation. He also often disregards his feelings and emotions in favor of what he perceives this Truth to be.

Logic, I would say, aims to leave out rhetoric; it attempts to forgo the consideration of all the options for that which is perceived as the best. But as Nye mentions, as one looks at the history of logic, it is easy to see that it is as susceptible to change as any other sector of human thought; it evolves as shifts over time.

Kim mentioned that she thinks that logic cannot possibly eschew all human feeling, visceral reactions and emotion. After a semester in France, I can certainly attest to the differences in logic and heuristics, and the rifts in perception created by distinctive cultures and worldviews.

I certainly agree when Nye says that even logic is not above human motivation, and must, to some degree, fall under rhetoric.

Logicians, Nye points out, “have the nagging suspicion that they must stop thinking and feeling to succeed.” But logic devoid of emotion brings us to dangerous places; it gives rise to social travesties like slavery and genocide and compels a “purely rational” thinker to buy five gallons of marked-down milk.

Contrastive Logic

As we saw with one of the over-arching projects of Zen, to focus on a single word’s meaning, like Logic, can be polyvalently-problematic. To ask us to determine what is or is not logical, is to rely on a consensus of assumptions about what logic is in the first place. If we ask Locke, I don’t think he would agree embodied knowledge that is contingent on felt sensations of the body is an appropriate heuristic system, let alone a logical means to arrive at information. I, on the other hand, would say it is completely logical to listen to your body and the data that comes in via your heartrate, muscle tension, and sweating palms as you read the work of, ohh, I don’t know…how about Sir Locke, himself. I know I disagree with his hyper-rationalist ideas not just because I can controvert them in my abstract thought process, but because I feel it in my skin crawling and eyes dilating as I try to make it through another paragraph of his self-contradicting work. I pay attention to an ecology of heuristic systems when I am reading and writing rhetorically, and I think, for the most part, that is not what is expected when we say: “oh, be logical, why don’t you!”

I think my main problem with the prompting in our culture to deal logically is that as of right now logic is not seen as inclusive enough to be comprised of an ecology of heuristic systems; Sponsors of logic want to claim that it is a, if not the, superior means of contriving epistemology. Wrong. Unless Logic’s definition is expanded.

If logic gets me from point A to point B, why does that necessarily mean there can’t be 5 ways to get from A to B? Ways that might even seem circular, zig-zagged, or anti-chronological, which I can just see Locke absolutely shivering in his little booties to try. Let me be specific:

Contrastive Rhetoric

There is this thing called Contrastive Rhetoric, and this system gives us symbolic representations for the ways people in different cultures write; systems that are rational, reasonable, even logical in their culture because it has the greatest rhetorical effect on their respective audiences. To be crystal clear: in some European and Asian cultures it is extremely rude to jump straight to an intended point or thesis both in conversation and in academic work. In the US, however, we like to spell out in the most efficient way possible what we will argue, followed by our argument, and then why it mattered that we argued that particular point. No fluffy stories in between, please. But all of these composition strategies  are logical for their respective culture because they get the writer from point A (composition) to point B (hopefully the happy-effect on audience). The way I see people like Locke describe logic is that only one system is superior, and if I had to put that system in an image it would be the first line with the arrow straight down south (kind of like his logic). My own definition (at this point in my life) of logic would look like all of these crazy lines combined, plus an extra spot for “new” logics we haven’t discovered or described yet. 

So what is a logical question? A question coming from a person that perceives their question as logical. What is an a-logical question? A question that the asker perceives as stupid but asks anyway, or a question that seemed logical to the asker and stupid to the receiver. Totally contingent on context. Whoa. Is logical a rhetorical reality, too?!

(I really am sorry for my sassy tone in these posts--these are actually quite enjoyable for me to think through!) :)

The Mythos of Zen

I think the clearest example, for me, of Pirsig doing something that is reasonable but not good is the entire project of this book: tell a story about an awkward man and his son to show how insane it is to live hyper-intellectually without the “human element of life,” as Kaylee calls it. I am reminded of advice one of my professors in my undergrad once gave me. He said: not all our problems can be solved through intellect. And that was relevant because we had been reading a polemic on love, which just showed that you can analyze love intellectually until the cows comes home (did we figure out when that was?), and it won’t get you anywhere because it doesn’t predict the emotional reactions that would incur from cheating, disloyalty, or despondency.

I, like Kaylee, was struck by how little mention there is of the notion of love in the first place in this text. I find it fascinating that Pirsig goes all the way back to mythos of the ancient Greeks and never stops to weave in mythos about emotional encounters that have carried on wayward through history. But, again, I think that is one of the goals of this text. If, by the end of the story, we are still sitting there scratching our heads about: was that love? Was there any of that in there AT ALL? Perhaps the point of the text was to show how, in a way, life can be utterly meaningless when its entire project comes down to dividing, slicing, and pigeon-holing existence into false categories. Categories which offer no consistent fulfilment—a fulfilment that we cannot explain because it is not tangible to us, only observable, like love.

I say Pirsig is doing something reasonable and not necessarily good with Zen because he is not totally naïve as to how he is portraying his narrator. I thought it was quite deliberate that he wrote this story with a detached main character—all the wisdom of Buddhist monk who has no earthly desires—showing the potential emptiness that derives therefrom when paired with Western hyper-rationalism. The story isn’t “good,” as in: it doesn’t make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside; it’s quite the opposite actually. Do I have to see love as an arbitrary pattern now?
But Zen is reasonable because it has the self-consciousness of its frigid nature, which teaches us the futility of a life like that of Pirsig N.

Pirsig shows us in Zen that the moment when his narrator actually loses his mind is when he comes to self-realization that his own intellectual project of defining quality has been futile all along, and a meta-level, the project of the book. But this mental breakdown of the narrator can be read as symbolism for the reader that the project of definition is literally crazy. Furthermore, this is the moment in which rhetoric really “wins” the rhetoric-dialectic battle (according to Pirsig) because the project of defining is never perfect in rhetoric; it is wholly contingent. This entire novel shows us a rhetorical quest—in the guise of a dialectic—because it never culminates with a perfect definition, and thereby the word Quality becomes irrelevant. Our author simply models how rhetoric’s project is to get into the cracks and crevices of language and how it can constitute meaning, eventually all the way to the level of mythos where we generate cultural reproduction through unassuming narratives that do more to speak us than we can ever do to speak well about them.

 And then Zen itself becomes a part of our mythos—open for objectification, subjective opinions, measurements of good, bad, and especially, Quality.

Experiences

Something we talked about quite a bit in class was the brilliantly posed question of how Quality can be both before the moment and in the moment. During class this really go me thinking. My mind was buzzing about trying to soak in everyone's thought and comments, but also to formulate my own sort of understanding. So, I think I want to attempt to expound on the idea that Quality exists both far before an experience, and in the moment of each, singular experience.

Especially when we began to tie in mythos, things sort of began to take shape for me--at least for now. What I'm gathering is that Quality has to exist before it can be in a moment. Which makes sense to me. You can't have something pop into existence at the very moment it is needed, it has to already be there, ready to be called upon. Take electricity, for example, it was never utilized until given the correct circumstances to aid it's usage, but that doesn't mean its potential energy wasn't there to begin with. The same can be said of Quality. Quality predates any moment in which it also exists. And if Quality is the momentary interaction between a subject and object, then of course is has to exist before the interaction takes place in order for it to be present at the interaction. That got my cogs turning even more, though.

Because does that mean that for every unique interaction, Quality is remade or redefined? Since we are consistantly stuck on attempting to come up with a solidified definition of things, this could complicate that even further (I didn't think one word could be such a mess to understand!) The way I see it, Quality is something that we all can understand, and know a lot about, without having a solid definition of it. In fact, I love the way that Doug said that definitions will never be the thing, they will get at the thing, but they won't quite get there. That was perfect for me, especially when it comes to Quality in the terms of this reading.

As we talked about in class, quality, rhetoric, values, experiences they all play off of each other and they are all situational and dependent upon each person. The same can be said of mythos. Mythos seems to be the retelling of stories, and if those originated from oral traditions, something we know about that is no two stories are passed down exactly the same way. Two different cultures, families, or even generations of a family can know the same story but have an entirely different variation of it. The story gets told and retold with differing variations, but it is the same story nonetheless. Now translate this into Quality. A subject can interact with an object and that interaction can be the exact same as the last time to the two things met, but neither of the interactions will ever be the exact same one, and every separate variation of the interaction therefore changes Quality because Quality lives in the middle of those sorts of interactions.

SO if mythos seems to be the re-telling of a story of some sort of interconnectedness (that has existed for God know's how long), and if each interaction is Quality (which has also existed for God knows how long), and each interaction re-defines and remakes Quality, then mythos and Quality seem, to me, to be quite the same thing. Or, as Pirsig puts it, "Substance doesn't change Method contains no permanence. Substance relates to the form of the atom. Method refers to what the atom does" (337). The mythos is always the mythos, the tellings of the story may be a little different from each other, but that doesn't change the fact that the base story is the same. Quality is always Quality, even if it plays and novel role in every interaction, it is still the same Quality that existed before the interaction. . . Or is it? Because it could be an entirely new and redefined Quality, one that has been altered by the newest interaction between a subject and object, but then again that would still mean that it is a variant of the same base Quality, in which case it is still the same no matter the differences. (Wow, I am terribly sorry that that got so messy and confusing!)

I'm not sure any of that will make any sort of sense to anyone else, and for that I am sorry but it's just the way my brain is playing with the idea right now. And now I basically feel like this . . .



Or this . . .

Reconciliation and the Art of Knowing from Within

I have been hit by a train of mind-blowing reformations to knowledge and understanding, and must shape my thoughts into coherent speech? Well, we will see how this goes.

Using Phaedrus and Pirsig as a reference of understanding, our mission is to reconcile the reasonable and the good. No easy feat, to attempt what philosophers have struggled around for thousands of years, but perhaps I can come a few steps closer. After all, “You can sort of tell these things.” (p. 418) That is, we can perceive the unifying answers deep within ourselves, but replicating them in language? That is the real struggle.

These golden sentences put us on track:

“The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things” (p. 374.) And,

“Aretê implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency – or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself” (p. 377.)

What should appear bold in these statements is the role of experience in determining quality. Reason and logic has demoted experience to subjective emotion, and labeled it as invalidating the higher search for answers and knowledge. Guards are put in place to resist “bias” (i.e., seeing an invisible conclusion and searching for it) so that research can be published respectively. “Quality had been forced under and reason made supreme” (p. 358.) The problem with making quality subservient to reason lies in the nature of reason itself, which is determined by experience.  Once cannot say that reason simply existed, hanging out in a coffee shop waiting to be found like a prodigious musical star. We have fashioned reason as a way of knowing, but the full sum of our interactions with reason are bound by experience.  Reason is a tool growing out of organic Quality.  Experience is how we know—it is the perspective to which we are bound, and the way in which we interact with what "is."

This photo lies on the back flap of the book;
faces to humanize the conversations.

 Asking an individual to reason with the subtraction of subjective experience is akin to asking them to describe the flavor of a dish without tasting it.

Unity then, may be found not by placing the “Good” and the “Truth” on a level playing field, but by reversing the structure of supremacy. What if we place reason beneath quality? It would stop the parsing and slicing and terming that squelches creativity, and enable a perspective of oneness that looks at the world not to decide a single truth, but to find knowledge in interactions. Although Chris’s death (spoiler if you skipped the afterword) occurred after Pirsig wrote his story, the author demonstrates through death, how ubiquitous this Quality is. He explains Chris’s soul, if you choose to see it that way, as a “pattern” that resurfaces— starting in Nell.  This pattern is a fragment of the larger cohesive Quality, a single manifestation of experiences and interactions that enabled understanding.

The reconciliation between the reasonable and the good may be here—in perspective.  If each individual carries an element, an imperfect reproduction, a fragmented version of the omnipotent Quality, then do we not all add an irreplaceable piece to the process of understanding? Some of our patterns may be more “rational” and bound to observation, and some may be more “romantic” and bound to emotional experience.  Neither can be qualitatively defined as better, but each can be used to see.  We cannot fundamentally oppose to this world in which we live, as if its sole purpose was to deceive and confuse us, but through our experiences, our “response to Quality” come to know what we are and how we are “a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.” (pages 351, 378.)  Reason becomes a method at which to arrive at Quality, and rhetoric becomes not a means to persuade, but a means to consider different patterns of Quality, and arrive at a bettered understanding of our relation to the world and place within it.

Often it seems we perceive on the right, but can only express
with the left.  I believe spatial reasoning occurs in the right
 hemisphere and language on the left, so that makes sense.
There's a mind-bender, right there.

A final note on creativity. Pirsig makes the point that, “Dualistic excellence is achieved by objectivity, but creative excellence is not” (p. 345.)  That the Aristotelian perspectives “killed the creative spirit of their students with this dumb ritual of analysis, this blind, rote, eternal naming of things” (p. 360.) Terms can work well; I am quite glad I have a name.  It makes getting my attention much easier.  But it is when we allow our definitions to constitute the entirely of a subject we encounter trouble. To recognize that our understandings and the names by which we know objects are limited and based on a particular perspective opens the door for multiple understandings. When we see things in multiple dimensions, we shake off the dualistic subject-object mindset, and recognize that we play a role in creating meaning.  And if we can recognize that, we can blaze new trails of creativity, each one of us approaching elements with our specific quality pattern. Each an active member in creating and recreating knowledge, revealing not only our universe but ourselves.

Zen and the Art of Recognizing Life's Continuum

Phaedrus and Pirsig-N. exhibit very strongly something that I despise about philosophers: they think of themselves as being above, outside of the human condition.

Pirsig-N., blinded by arrogance, intelligence or insanity (or perhaps all three) often neglects the human element in life. I’m assuming that this is a problem that extends to the real Pirsig, as he notes several times that the narrative story, the story of the people, is fairly arbitrary and far less important than the Chautauqua itself.

The other aspect of Zen that I found profoundly irritating was Phaedrus’ knife; I don’t believe that life can be split into binaries, that our world is rather painted with many shades of grey. And yet every time Phaedrus came to the culmination of thought, every time he arrived at a revelatory idea, he immediately took out his damn knife and chopped it to pieces. Phaedrus and Pirsig-N seem somewhat convinced that for the most part, a rift exists between classic and romantic, hip and square, technologic and humanistic; but while reading, I could think of countless examples of aspects of life that do not fall on one side or the other. Even the comparison of Reason and Quality irked me; can there not be Quality reason? Isn’t reason essential when determining the Quality of an object or idea?

I wish that Pirsig would have addressed the concept of empathy more; I feel as if many of these concepts—especially the reconciliation of good versus reasonable—hinge on empathy. Empathy also, in my opinion, plays a monumental role in rhetoric; it helps us to resolve our different worldviews, effectively communicate our perspectives and portray to others how the world looks through our lens.

Essentially, rhetoric, this multifarious communication between all members of the human race, helps determine good and evil.

Life is a continuum, not two parts of a whole. There is not a giant rift in the plane of existence. Ways of thinking may fall on a spectrum, but I resist creating a binary for everything.

Pirsig also fails to notice that some aspects of life are catalyzed by neither Reason nor Quality: emotions. Love, sadness, anger, jealousy, nostalgia, ect. cannot be carved up by Phaedrus’s knife.

Pirsig seems to contradict himself often. I was never quite sure if he was creating these binaries, or simply stating that humans create them. He seems to think that these binaries have some sort of utility, but he also at times rejects them for not acknowledging the other.

What Pirsig does do very well at, however, is get me thinking. He definitely set the stage for these coming philosophical readings, which I will be diving headlong into today.

A web of Quality confusion

Of all of Phaedrus/Pirsig N.’s philosophical meanderings, the discussion of Quality frustrated me the most.

Although I feel as if I somewhat understand the idea he’s trying to explain, I admittedly don’t find it to be as earth shifting or revelatory as Pirsig does. I was actually quite frustrated with the Quality section of the book (although a lot of Pirsig’s points are rooted in the concepts described therein) and was excited when it was over. Although the notion of indefinable quality is quite profound, I’m not sure it can be placed on a holy trinity pedestal of concepts that define existence. He really lost my romantic/groovy brain when he began to take out the knife and chop an already ambiguous concept into smaller pieces and organize it into a flow chart.

Complaints aside, I found myself wandering what I would write if I had to sit and describe how I would define quality; what would I write if I had been a frightened and confused freshman student in Phaedrus’ philosophy class?

First, I thought that perhaps Quality could be defined by its widely accepted dictionary definition, as how close an object comes to the ideal version of that particular object; how close something comes to perfection. But then, how do we define perfection, or excellence? How do we all simply know this ideal that an object is striving towards?

I then wondered: How would we know if a completely new invention, an innovation was Quality, if it deviated from the original, if no standard of excellence existed to measure it against?

I get caught up in Pirsig’s attempt to make generalities out of concepts that aren’t necessarily universal. I’m not sure if the blanket term Quality can be prescribed to all things; it can have a wide variety of meanings and connotations in different contexts. For example: The Quality of a romantic relationship differs from than the Quality of a cup of coffee; the Quality of a sandwich differs from the Quality of a sports car. The qualities that determine *Quality* in each object and idea are unique to that particular object.

But, thinking about it—I  immediately digress. My idea folds back on itself; we actually do perceive it and recognize it in all things and ideas, so although Quality in different objects has to meet a different criteria, there still is a criteria of Quality that we all recognize. I know, you know, what constitutes a successful romantic relationship: trust, communication, physical connection, closeness, love, etc. We can a relationship with these attributes is Quality.

Well, shit, I’m stuck again.

(I’m just thinking aloud here, bear with me. I was also surprised that Phaedrus doesn’t speculate whether or not a priori objects have Quality; it would have been interesting to here how he tangoed with that one…)

How strange, that Quality isn’t exactly subjective. It isn’t at all, “just what you like,” unless that “you” is exchanged for a collective “we.” We all perceive it in some way. Perhaps quality is rooted in empathy…and although I could try, I can’t even begin to speculate where this shared sense “comes from.”

I agree with Angeli, in that one person cannot possibly determine Quality. But if not, who creates it? I think she’s really getting at something when she says that Quality fulfills some sort of an intrinsic human need.