You reminded me of Stafford Beer by bring this up, and while I understand the point, it's not clear to me how you would even integrate "purpose" defined in this way, into something that lets you intuit where some optimal equilibrium is. That defining "purpose" in a completely descriptive sense, but then you're using it in a normative sense to allude to some optima within the system. Hume demonstrates why you simply can't do this with his explanation of the is-ought problem. You're always going to find you're bringing some subjectivism to the table.

While it may seem when talking about equilibria in systems, you're appealing to something that is a necessary truth or objective about your system, the reality is you're just fooling yourself with your own intuition. Because what you'll find is, if you bring different normative assumptions to the table (as humans inevitably do), those will point to different "ideal" equilibria in those system.

Since I agree with Hume's epistemic conclusions here, I argue this is an unescapable dilemma, and you simply have to accept that objective value just isn't *there*.