3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Is-Ought Problem responses
It's a minority view, but some people have been arguing that you can ground normative questions in the organization of living things. The basic thought is that something is good for an organism if it supports it in its efforts to maintain its internal unity against the background of the abiotic world. Evan Thompson looks at this in depth in his book Mind in Life, and you can read a paper length version by Weber and Varela here[1] (pdf).
1: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.342.9756&rep=rep1&type=pdf
I came across this Wikipedia page with some response, but all of them seem to have flaws.
Well yes. But the flaws also probably have flaws, which may be addressed if you looked deeper than a wikipedia article, say by reading one of the cited articles or books.
Comment by Quidfacis_ at 24/07/2016 at 12:08 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
The basic thought is that something is good for an organism if it supports it in its efforts to maintain its internal unity
The problem with this argument is that the word "good", in the sense OP means it, is not meant as "behooves", which would be a shorter version of "supports its efforts to maintain internal unity". Example: "Antibiotics are good for me" means "Antibiotics behoove me" means "Antibiotics support my efforts to maintain internal unity." The goodness of a movie, in an aesthetic sense, is not a goodness of behooving.
OP means "good" in the sense of aesthetic preference. Aesthetic preference has nothing to do with the biological / natural sense of "good" as "behooves". In fact, most aesthetic preferences actually conflict with the sense of "behooves".
For example, "this beer is good" does not mean "this beer supports one's efforts to maintain internal unity". In fact, the goodness of a beer often results from its ability to actively diminish internal unity.
Most uses of good are unrelated to the biological welfare of an organism.