I want to point out regarding first paragraph that ‘yourself > others’ and ‘others > yourself’ are not the only options—I think it is generally possible to ascribe approximately equal moral value to yourself and to all other morally-relevant organisms. This is obviously difficult to do in practice (as is much of morality), but tenable as an ideal.
Furthermore, even if you do value yourself more than others, I don’t think it necessarily follows that you’ll rank other morally-relevant organisms based on their similarity to yourself. E.g. I don’t ascribe different moral value to an educated European adult than to a San child, even though I’m far more similar to the European person in terms of cognitive development and genetics.
I want to point out regarding first paragraph that ‘yourself > others’ and ‘others > yourself’ are not the only options—I think it is generally possible to ascribe approximately equal moral value to yourself and to all other morally-relevant organisms. This is obviously difficult to do in practice (as is much of morality), but tenable as an ideal.
Furthermore, even if you do value yourself more than others, I don’t think it necessarily follows that you’ll rank other morally-relevant organisms based on their similarity to yourself. E.g. I don’t ascribe different moral value to an educated European adult than to a San child, even though I’m far more similar to the European person in terms of cognitive development and genetics.