A Topometric Approach to Life Quality across Comparted Time and Projected Societies. Cognitive Science Research No. 65.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the Swedish citizen has developed his (or her) judgment concerning quality of life, attributable to real and simulated civilizations. It builds on a previous research report (B. Bierschenk, 1997) about three model societies that have been studied with the assumptions that: (1) competition implies selection; (2) selection implies independence; and (3) independence implies success. In this article it is shown that "certainty in preferential judgment" (judgment of life quality) constitutes a behavioral expression of survival competence. With a focus on the demonstrative definition of competence as development at the edge of competition and success, the study has generated two topographically derived scales. One is a time scale (T1) that is local and measures ecological variation. The other is a time scale (T2) that is global and measures evolution. (Contains 2 tables, 12 figures, and 8 references.) (Author/SLD)