Happiness Revisited: Ontological Well-Being as a Theory-Based Construct of Subjective Well-Being

The current model of subjective well-being (SWB) has been operationalized as the unity of affective and cognitive dimensions concerning the evaluation of one’s life, called emotional well-being and life satisfaction, respectively. There has been no theoretical framework, however, by which the unity is explained. The present paper offers a new construct of subjective well-being in an attempt to show that the cognitive and affective dimensions of SWB can be unified using the concept of goal. The concept of goal refers to the life as a project when the concern is the evaluation of life as a whole. The evaluation of the whole life, moreover, should take a whole-time perspective into account if it is supposed to be ‘whole’. Ontological well-being (OWB) construct is structured in a theoretical framework by which the cognitive and affective components of the current conceptualization of SWB are reframed and interpreted in a whole time perspective. By taking as base the historical and philosophical resources of the affective and cognitive dimensions of subjective well-being, this new construct defines subjective well-being as one’s evaluation of life in both past and future time perspectives in addition to the present.     

The Tense Logic for Master Argument in Prior’s Reconstruction

In this paper we examine Prior’s reconstruction of Master Argument [4] in some modal-tense logic. This logic consists of a purely tense part and Diodorean definitions of modal alethic operators. Next we study this tense logic in the pure tense language. It is the logic K _t 4 plus a new axiom (P): ‘p Λ G p ⊃ P G p’. This formula was used by Prior in his original analysis of Master Argument. (P) is usually added as an extra axiom to an axiomatization of the logic of linear time. In that case the set of moments is a total order and must be left-discrete without the least moment. However, the logic of Master Argument does not require linear time. We show what properties of the set of moments are exactly forced by (P) in the reconstruction of Prior. We make also some philosophical remarks on the analyzed reconstruction. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Infants’ responsiveness to pictorial depth cues in preferential-reaching studies: A meta-analysis

The findings of numerous preferential-reaching studies suggest that infants first respond to pictorial depth cues between 5 and 7 months of age. However, three recent preferential-reaching studies have found evidence of responsiveness to pictorial depth cues in 5-month-olds. We investigated these apparently contradictory results by conducting meta-analyses of the data from 5-month-olds who participated in preferential-reaching studies. The data from 16 samples, comprising 475 infants 5–5.5 months of age, were integrated. The results showed that the infants responded more consistently to depth relationships specified by pictorial cues under monocular than under binocular viewing conditions (p < .001), indicating that 5-month-old infants respond to pictorial depth cues. This effect remained significant (p < .001) when the individual experiments that had found significant results were omitted from the analysis. Although the majority of experiments were unable to find evidence of pictorial depth perception individually, this ability was clearly revealed when their results were combined.     

Trolley Dilemma in Papua. Yali horticulturalists refuse to pull the lever

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Although many studies show cultural or ecological variability in moral judgments, cross-cultural responses to the trolley problem (kill one person to save five...     

The environmental malleability of base-rate neglect

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Across two experiments (N=799) we demonstrate that people’s use of quantitative information (e.g., base-rates) when making a judgment varies as the causal...