Judgments often smuggle in implicit standards

Richard -- interesting post; thanks for sharing.

This issue of 'what's good enough ... for what purpose, according to what standard?' reminds me of a couple of concepts from evolutionary biology and ecological psychology.

In biology, the concept of 'adaptation' is much more 'standard-specific' than many bio-newbies realize. Undergrads learning about evolution often assume that natural selection always favors animals being bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, more fertile, more dominant, etc. It takes a while to teach them that all traits have costs and trade-offs (such that maximizing any given trait is usually a bad idea), and that all adaptations are 'ad-apted' ('to-this') to particular environmental challenges and selection pressures. Often, parasites do better if they're smaller, weaker, slower, and dumber. Often, primates do better if they're better parents rather than just fast breeders. Et cetera.

In ecological psychology, the concept of 'affordance' (from J. J. GIbson) has a similar kind of 'standard-specificity'. Food 'affords' eating, paths afford walking, mates afford reproduction, predators 'afford' death, etc. Asking whether a path is 'good enough' implicitly refers to its walkability, whereas a good being 'good enough' implicitly refers to edibility.

These are just two more examples of how we tend to smuggle in implicit standards into our judgments.