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Comment by Swenrekcah | Hacker News Reader

There is actually no completely objective way in which it’s possible to determine the relative importance or sacredness of an individual’s life between one species and another.

There is no particularly good objective reason for me to value my neighbours life more than a fish.

However I choose to be an unabashed specieist and value any individual human life above any individual other life.

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Well the inconvenient thing is that objectively we aren't more important than other species. What you're actually doing is just overriding that objective fact with a subjective one.

Important for what?

Exactly.

Well so objectively no life is worth protecting or what do you want to say?

Edit: or do you see cross-species minimization of pain as an objective objective (ha)? Or maximization of pleasure?

There is no "objective" answer to ethics.

But yes, if we want to base it on empathy, it would mean XY... so many philosophical arguments have been made about this. But it stands there is no "objective" ethics, at least to my knowledge.

Without even involving animals, there's not even a definite way how to answer the trolley problem without violating my subjective ethical values.

Human life as an ulterior value seems to be the best bet for explaining rational ethics.

Go ahead and objectively prove humans are less important than other species.

That's not what I said.

Surely you should have no trouble proving a "objective fact"

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