Konkvistador comments on The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals - Less Wrong

9 Post author: syllogism 09 January 2012 12:07PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 January 2012 03:38:06PM *  2 points [-]

Right, we have to draw a distinction here. I'm talking about how we define what's more ethical. That doesn't mean you're going to live up to that perfect ethical standard. You can say, in general, people's lives are equally valuable, and that knowing nothing about the two groups, you'd prefer two people died instead of three. Of course, in reality, we're not perfectly ethical, so we're always going to be choosing the set of three if we're in it. That doesn't change our definition, though.

So if this "ethics" thing dosen't describe our preference properly... uh, what's it for then?