Moral standards

[Esquilax]

Maximum benefit?

Morality is based on the largest amount of gain? Such as killing one man to save a thousand?

What about killing one baby to save two elderly yet healthy people?

I think I am a bit leery of the the idea of "benefit" in morality.

The largest amount of gain, within a set of general parameters. Life being preferable to death being the first among these, and please don't insult both our intelligence by asking me why life would be preferable to death in a system that values conscious entities.

In your examples, if one was forced to kill, then yes, one man dies to save a thousand and so on, but I don't think that's what you were talking about. I think you were asking within a context in which nobody had to die, in which case the life principle would prevent you from killing anyone. Please note that it's a blind principle that applies to everyone, to be suspended only if one can offer a well justified argument for why it should be so, based upon good evidence, that doesn't fall victim to logical fallacies.

You may be tempted to try and offer such an argument to show a weakness in the system. I think you'll find that harder than you'd expect.