Leonard Katz

What is my good? The good of something, it seems—and, in particular, the well-being of whatever thing I am. But what can the good of things such as we are be? Some things—for example, automobiles and government agencies—appear to have fixed essential functions or goals, and a good deriving from these. But when something is truly said to be ‘for the good of’ such things, this seems to be said differently than it would be about ourselves. Such things are essentially purposive because they are artifacts or institutions, and as such have essentially just whatever functions they are essentially conceived (or constitutively intended) to have. Whatever maintains or furthers the automobile’s or government agency’s capacity to perform its essential function well is for its good. Replacing the Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator was for its good; and lubrication was for the automobile’s. But such a thing’s good seems not to be a good for the thing itself in the way that ours seems to be. The meaning of life seems to be unlike the essential purpose of a government agency or of a machine. And this is because our capacity for faring well or ill seems to be unlike any capacity we believe artifacts or institutions to have.

Leonard Katz, Hedonism as Metaphysics of Mind and Value, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1986, pp. 7-8