Goodness as a Comparative Term

I have reached the point at which looking further into the issue of moral boundaries will not progress without a better understanding of normative terms. One of these terms is goodness. Sometimes we use this term in a comparative sense. This may be done without verbally indicating that a comparison is being performed, or with such a comparison. In all cases of comparison, an ideal is being compared with the object.

Some examples are in order. Consider the statement "this is a good piece of meat". What is meant is not that a piece of meat is morally good, but that the piece of meat is reasonably similar to the ideal piece of meat. In context, we may be speaking in terms of health, taste or some combination of those. If we are speaking of taste, then we are simply claiming that the meat tastes the way that we like meat to taste. If we are speaking of health, then we are claiming that the meat is good for our health. Consider a second example: "this construction company is better than the one that built my house". In this case the product or skills of the construction company is being compared with a second company. One is more similar to the ideal construction company than the other, and their products are more similar to the ideal than the other.

In these examples one can understand what is going on. A comparative use of the normative term good takes some act, process or object and claims that it is similar to the ideal act, process of object. This has a few interesting results. The first one is that the concept of goodness is not actually being used in some kind of moral sense. All that it means is similarity. The second one is that much of the work is being done by the ideal object, act or process. This means that every comparative use of goodness only requires the use of similarity and an ideal. What has been applied to goodness can also be applied to badness with the same result. The next step is to investigate the nature of the ideal.