[andrewflnr]

Yes, absolutely, people are programmed to survive just like every other life form out there, so why favor humans? Just because we're the smartest? If I destroy humanity to ensure my survival, in what sense is that bad, since after all I'm just following my programming to survive.

When we talk about morality, we're looking for something that should happen, deeper than what does happen or what anything wants to happen.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Yes, absolutely, people are programmed to survive just like every other life form out there, so why favor humans?

Because we happen to be humans. But there's also lots of other creatures out there to favor: monkeys, dogs, that sort of thing.

>When we talk about morality, we're looking for something that should happen, deeper than what does happen or what anything wants to happen.

The word "should" becomes utterly meaningless if it has nothing to do with what we want. What do you think "should" would mean if I proved conclusively to you "should" exterminate all life on Earth? It's an ungrounded symbol if it doesn't take your real desires into account.

>“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” -- Immanuel Kant

[andrewflnr]

My point is that "should" is redundant with "want" in a materialist viewpoint. It only makes sense to talk about "should" separately from desire if they're not necessarily the same. Is this not tautological? You need some other set of axioms describing some goal other than want-satisfaction and an assertion that it's true for everyone before you can meaningfully call it "morality", a system containing "should". Otherwise it is, as you put it, an ungrounded symbol.

In other words, a moral system needs to answer the question "why should I give a #$@*?". Why not let the world burn if i feel like it? Why not just that part over there that's only being used by people I don't like and don't depend on? Your Kant quote is a succinct statement of the commands of most moral systems, but doesn't answer the real question. If there's nothing more to the universe then we can see, only matter in odd configurations, I don't see how it can be answered.

P.S. I'm not sure what you meant by "real desires", but it bears mentioning that there exist people and other beings whose real desires are purely destructive, to others and themselves; self interest in the usual sense (survival and comfort) is not necessarily relevant. Think about people we class as "mentally ill" (which really just means outlier, since our "healthy" baseline is just the average). If you didn't mean to imply that no one has a "real desire" in some sense to do "evil" things like destroy all life on earth, then you can probably ignore this part, but it had to be said