As Jeff continues with the stunning conclusion to this series of blogs, what have we learned so far?

   1. I can't hold a metaphysical candle to Jeff when it comes to arguing philosophy.
   2. The philosophy of Quality can be summarized as "Quality is in the eye of the beholder".

There has to be a way of measuring or defining "quality" (lowercase q) even if we can't measure or define "Quality" (uppercase q). Take two characteristics that are similar to quality: beauty and taste. Beauty is the quintessential characteristic of personal preference. We know that we all see different things as being beautiful. Yet, industry makes billions and billions of dollars selling and capitalizing on beauty. If beauty is truly in the eye of a beholder, how do magazine editors know who to put on the cover of a magazine? They know as we do, that while beauty is a personal judgment, if enough people think the same thing is beautiful, then it is beautiful. The same can be said of taste. We all have different food tastes, yet the "best" restaurants are always full. I know that these restaurants are best because they are full. I may not like everything on the menu at a restaurant, but enough people do so that I can extrapolate that the food tastes good. I can recognize that something has beauty even if I don't find it personally appealing. Surely we can say the same thing about quality, can't we? While I will grant that personal preference and style enter into the decision of what has quality when we are talking about quality in the sense of the industry, we really aren't talking about personal choice (Quality), but the accepted consensus of the group or authority figure (quality). And, this type of quality can be specified and measured. We can use empirical observation to determine what has the best quality and we can create Editor's Choices in our magazines to show readers what is best. In the final article of his series, Jeff makes the point that individuals can raise the quality of their environment. That is a hard point to argue against since I agree with this. A person can make the conscious choice to raise the quality of their environment. But sometimes, quality doesn't mean enhancing output or an environment, but merely adhering to an established standard. For example, there are Generally Accepted Accounting Practices in use by companies to report financial information. I will be the first to say that some of the accounting practices are just bad - especially the way that the accounting practices value (or don't) people. But the quality that the generally accepted practices offer is that everyone does it the same way. When someone deviates (see Enron scandal), we can say that there was a distinct lack of quality in the accounting output, no matter how creative and brilliant it was. So, perhaps this is a semantic issue. Perhaps when I hear the word "quality", I think about the whole and when Jeff hears the word "quality", he thinks about the individual. Maybe that is the only difference between our concepts. I think both have merit.