Quality of Life and the Experience of Context
arXiv Preprint Archive September 21, 2022 via arXiv
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractQuality of life can be compared across cultures when assessed at the sensory and perceptual level, rather than through metrics focused solely on material means or freedom. The author argues that a more meaningful approach evaluates an individual's ability to organize their context by perceiving positive constellations of environmental factors and achieving valuable acts and states of being. Because felt quality of life derives from an indivisible structure of a milieu, it cannot be regarded as merely subjective. Using the example of how different frequencies of light are perceived as color, the author demonstrates that the human cognitive apparatus apprehends different scales of quantity as degrees of quality.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Q-bio.nc Econ.gn |
| Key finding | Proposes that quality of life can be meaningfully compared across cultures by focusing on sensory and perceptual experience and the individual's ability to organize context, rather than solely on material means or freedom. |
Abstract
I propose that quality of life can be compared despite the difference in values across cultures when it is experienced at the sensory and perceptual level. I argue that an approach to assessing quality of life which focuses on an individual's ability to organize his or her context by perceiving positive constellations of factors in the environment and his or her ability to achieve valuable acts and realize valuable states of being is more meaningful than the approaches of metrics which focus directly, and often solely, on the means of living and the means of freedom. Because the felt experience of quality of life is derived from a constellation of factors which make up the indivisible structure of a milieu, the experience of quality of life cannot be regarded as a subjective experience. Through the example of how different frequencies, and mixtures of frequencies, of light are perceived as colour by the eye, I demonstrate that the human cognitive apparatus, because of its relation to the object that is measured, apprehends different scales of quantity as degrees of quality. I show that lived experience is the result of a selective relationality with one's environment and that the experience of quality has something to do with the perception of entities in their interrelated and networked nature as wholes.