Without INDIVIDUAL members, there is no "group" -- so any benefit to the "group" is a total of all the benefits to all the individual members, and this total has to be maximized. So there is no "good" other than to individuals.
Without INDIVIDUAL cells, there is no "human" -- so any benefit to the "human" is a total of all the benefits to the individual cells, and this total has to be maximised. So there is no "good" other than to cells.
You're right -- I said it wrong.
I should have said:
Without good to the INDIVIDUAL members, there is no good to the "group".
or better: Without good to INDIVIDUAL humans who are members of the society, there is no good to the society.
There is no social good, no collective good, other than the good to the individual (human) members. And these individual goods all added up constitute the collective good.
The "good" means nothing outside of the consciousness or the experiences of the individuals who make up the society or collective.
On the other hand, the "good" of a human individual is not dependent on the "good" experienced by the individual cells in one's body, or by the atoms or molecules, or subatomic particles, etc. -- or the heart, stomach, and other organs. These parts have no "good" or interests or experiences or consciousness which add up to something which the individual "good" is based upon. These parts are unimportant in themselves and have no value other than to serve the body, and nothing is lost when they individually die off, except in the case where the body suffers from it, because it's only the conscious entity that matters, not something with no consciousness like body tissue or cells or organs.
The individual human good was understood by humans, far back in history, even before there was knowledge of the particular body parts or organs or cells. The latter were discovered by science, but the human good became known as the consciousness developed even before there was science.
So the value of a conscious individual human in society is an inherent good independent of the collective which has no value independent of the individual conscious members.
Suppose there is a "society" of some kind, or collection of humans, but none of these humans has any consciousness, because they are all brain-dead (or whatever -- all those humans are without any consciousness). But they're alive, and maybe there are some movements or activity, the functioning of their organs, maybe some spasms, some vocalizations, maybe even something causing some hand motions, sitting up, kicking, etc. But all with no consciousness of it.
In that case there is no "good" for that society of humans. The only "good" that is possible would be for others somewhere who are conscious, maybe outside humans who know of these unconscious ones and have some interest in them, or even some animals who might care about them (maybe wanting to eat them). But for this collection of unconscious humans themselves there is no "good" or "evil" or anything that matters. Just the collection of humans per se has no "good" or "evil" without any "good" or "evil" for the individual humans in the group who experience something they care about.
We can therefore conclude that the pinnacle of human achievement is that of Henrietta Lacks, and that the best thing that could happen to anyone is to get cancer.
How does this case show that there is any social good outside the good for the individual members of the group? The good of a medical benefit is a good for individuals who are cured. Outside the individuals who are treated and made healthier, what good is there in any medical benefit? How can "society" or the "collective" benefit from something medical unless it's the individual members of that society who are benefiting?
The cells per se are not benefiting because they are not conscious entities capable of experiencing good or evil. But individuals in the society are each capable of experiencing good or evil, being conscious and having experiences, and this good or evil to individuals is the only good or evil the society can experience. Outside these conscious experiences of the individual members, there is no social good or social evil. The case of Henrietta Lacks doesn't change this.
Either that, or this form of argument is utter nonsense.
Not if the wording is corrected thus: Without good to the INDIVIDUAL members there is no good to the "group" -- which is correct and applies to all examples of medical benefit and of illness vs. health and well-being, also to infrastructure, the commons, -- any examples of good produced by government, or good for the public, the nation, etc.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's true of people, and of societies.
That might mean something legitimate, but it does not change the fact that the only good for society is the good of all the individual members of the society. Yes there is some "collective good" which can't be performed by only one individual alone but requires "collective action" or cooperation from many individuals. But the good they produce doesn't mean anything other than good for the individual members, each one, added up, to produce the net sum total of good.
Libertarian denial of this demonstrable and unequivocal fact is a major reason why serious thinkers laugh at libertarian "philosophy".
"the sum of its parts"?
What are the "parts"? If the "parts" are the individual members of the society and the society is the "sum" of those parts, then the good for the society is nothing more than the good (or goods) of all those individual members.
Or if you mean there is someone OUTSIDE the "society" who benefits also, then maybe the total "good" is greater than the "good" to only those members. But actually in such a case the real "society" or "collective" is expanded to include those outsiders also. So there is still no "good" other than the good which benefits all individuals, or all conscious entities who experience whatever good is being produced.
iidb.org
