Moral standards

[Esquilax]

The question isn't why life is preferable to death, but why the value on conscious entities, as you put it. Where does that value come from, because you seem to throw it in without much basis.

I would have thought this obvious: without conscious entities there are no moral actors, and hence no moral actions. A world without conscious entities has nobody to consider morality at all, making the entire exercise moot.

Meanwhile, consciousness, sentience and intelligence allow us to consider and construct moral frameworks, and to foster those things we would consider moral goods. Along with... well, everything else that we as sentient entities have managed to build. I submit to you that these are things worth preserving, and that complex life has inherent worth based on its abilities to accomplish all this.

Is this the standard you present? To begin by maintaining life and then go from there down a hierarchy of values?

It's a general rule, based on the observation that the sentient entities that construct moral frames and act in moral ways generally like being alive. It doesn't preclude, say, euthanasia in situations where your life becomes so painful that its continuance causes you more harm than good, for example. But it's a good start in keeping with our status as biological organisms.