[repolfx]

Yes, it can be done, but lots of people don't like that because it invariably concludes that some societies are better than others and the best ones are the western capitalist democracies.

The most obvious first principle is that a better value system should keep you alive. Being alive is foundational.

From that you can derive other principles, like value systems should result in the production of food, clean water, protection against wild animals and invaders, disease, etc.

From that you can derive yet more principles, like the value of efficient resource allocation, stable governance and so on.

And judged by basic things like "is this set of cultural values good at keeping people alive and healthy" you can quickly conclude that some are better than others, objectively so.

To deny this is to argue that wishing to be alive rather than dead is merely an aesthetic preference - an absurd starting point, lacking any intellectual merit.

[AlphaGeekZulu]

[...]The most obvious first principle is that a better value system should keep you alive. Being alive is foundational.[...]

Is it?

There are plenty of people that sacrify their lives for all sorts of principles. There exist quite some value systems that explicitely do not hold "being alive" for their foundational first principle!

What about immortality, if it becomes a medical reality one day? A better value system by definition, just because we are staying alive for longer?

I won't go into your derived principles, because it is not even possible to reach mutual consent about your axiomatic first principle.

[repolfx]

Very very few people sacrifice their own life for any kind of principle unless forced to. That's why those who do are often lionised!

But anyway, do you have a better first principle? If you don't care about staying alive why get out of bed at all, why not just starve to death? It's more work for sure.

[majewsky]

Your fallacy is assuming that if the first principle is not protection of life, it must be its opposite, extreme disregard of life. There are potentially infinite choices of first principles.

Furthermore, you present no argument for your particular first principle beyond aesthetics (aka "I prefer this one"). You build on the implicit assumption that human life is valuable (and apparently more so than other forms of life) for which you don't provide justification. Well, you do argue that it keeps people alive. But again, that's a circular argument. "My value system is the best one because it fulfills the goals of my value system."

[repolfx]

It's a first principle - by definition it's unjustified logically. If it were to be justified, it wouldn't be a first principle, something else would!

I'd think the merits of being alive would be unarguable but this is HN after all :)