Take states of affairs to be sets of concrete particulars, necessary abstracta, or whatever you'd like. It seems to be that with respect to certain states of affairs, humans share the following basic intuition: That there are some states of affairs which are themselves morally valuable. An aristotelian, or neo-aristotelian, metaethic tends to define good as "the end for which something exists". That is, some entity x's good is the end for which x exists (think of this as "the Good" being equivalent to the proper functioning of a thing). If this is true, then what are we to make of the aforementioned intuition? Take the following state of affairs as paradigmatic:
S1: A child and his parents enjoying time together on Christmas Eve.
On the aristotelian metaethic, what sort of moral properties, if any, are we to assign to S1? The aristotelian might say something like the following: S1 is a morally valuable state of affairs in virtue of its constituent parts exemplifying proper function (their good). But the leap seems unwarranted. Just because the parts are morally valuable doesn't mean the state of affairs of which they are part is (just because 2 is an even number doesn't necessarily mean that the set it belongs to is the set of even numbers. It could be the set of, say, all Natural numbers). The state of affairs itself has no good, it's just a state of affairs (and, again, this seems to remain the same regardless of your view of states of affairs, whether nominalistic or whatever). Yet, it does seem intuitively obvious in this case, and in many others, there is such a thing as states of affairs, such as S1, exemplifying the property of moral goodness (or being an instance of that trope). Afterall, wouldn't the average neo-aristotelian want to claim something like the following (taking possible worlds to be collections of states of affairs)...
P1. Given two possible worlds, w¹ and w², w¹ is more morally great than w² if and only if w¹ contains more creatures fulfilling their end, and therefore their good.
But, this is inconsistent if the aristotelian wants to continue defining good in such a minimalistic way. That is, the conjunction of an aristotelian metaethic, a belief in S1, and the assertion of P1 is inconsistent. So then, is there a way out? I think only if the aristotelian will accept that goodness is a property which extends beyond the realm of proper function (e.g. to individual states of affairs, or possible worlds). But in this case, they must change one of the main assertions, of not the main one, of their metaethic.
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One may try to avoid my conclusion by saying that the state of affairs is good in virtue of it itself performing it's proper function. The state of affairs is good by virtue of it's doing what it does, i.e. obtaining (if you're an actualist). But this is no way out. This is because it was just be the state of affairs simpliciter which exemplified goodness, not it's collective information content, which must be the referent in this scenario.
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