moral goods as ecological regularities

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Moral goods as ecological regularities is RB3’s Collier-and-Stingl-derived account of trust, fairness, reciprocity and repair as recurring enabling conditions of viable cooperative life. The proposal distinguishes these real goods from historically enacted values that articulate and sometimes mis-track them. It preserves moral realism as the book’s position without treating every stable regime or evolved disposition as justified.

Explanation

The ecological analogy concerns recurring environmental features to which social beings must respond. It does not identify moral goods with species kinds or literally make them predators. The local quotations remain Collier and Stingl’s antecedents, while the entry relies on the author’s exposition rather than silently adopting an outside quotation as authorial prose.

Violating trust and care can undermine long-horizon coordination; moral error is described as systematic mis-tracking of real constraints. Values are nevertheless enacted patterns of participation and commitment, not transparent mirrors that guarantee correct judgment. The account therefore allows disagreement and learning without making moral progress inevitable.

AB’s treatment example makes concrete judgment necessary: equivalent physiological support may reorganize different patients’ lives differently. It does not establish that home treatment is always better or that employment determines standing. The comparison keeps the real-good claim answerable to particular lives rather than reducing ethics to an undifferentiated survival score.

Scope and attribution

Real enabling goods differ from enacted value articulations, species kinds, inevitable progress or a universal survival metric.

AB — The Actual Book

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 177; Notes: 247, 248.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The developed account belongs to RB3 in the cited local scope, with antecedents and qualifications retained.

Occurrence locators: 209, 216, 231, 232, 233, 314, 316, 321.