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To be or not to be; it is good for me to be

The following two statements:
     "It is good that I exist."
      "It is better that I exist than not exist."
...are "obvious" to me.  It also seems to me that my reasoning about how I am going to act presupposes  at least one of these or a synonymous statement.  That is, my practical reasoning presupposes that it is objectively true that it is good that I exist.

But can a positivist, i.e, someone who thinks all genuine knowledge is to be found only in science, take this claim to objectivity seriously?  Wouldn't the positivist think it more accurate to recast statements like the two above in emotive terms  (i.e., as meaning something like, "Leo feels really good when he thinks about the fact that he's alive")?  Wouldn't the positivist regard the claim to objectivity as non-sensical, for one cannot (speaking here from a positivistic perspective) have genuine knowledge about the goodness of things?

And since ethics presupposes beliefs like those found in the two above statements, then isn't it the case that (for a positivist) ethics' claims to objectivity are both non-sensical and should be recast as reports of how certain thoughts make many or most of us feel?

Perhaps one response might be that we say actions are good or bad but not existence.  That is because "good" is normally and primarily used to describe actions rather than bare existence.  With the exception of Hamlet ("to be or not to be") and a few unhappy souls,  we use the term good when deliberating, and we deliberate about how to act rather than whether or not we shall continue to be.

I don't think that response changes the point I'm trying to make, for concomitant with the goodness of this or that action is how it is good for the one who acts.  That is, some analogous meaning of "good" is being ascribed to the doer every time we ascribe goodness to the deed done.    Maybe I can deflect this objection by placing the words "flourish as a human being" in place of "exist."  No problem.  In any case, it seems that a full-throttle positivist would have the same objection to statements about the objective goodness of flourishing, so the main point I'm trying to make would still stand.  And the fact that a positivist would object to claims about objective goodness is, in my opinion, an embarrassment to positivism itself.

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