Assume there is a universal goal that is better sought than any known to human. The duty to this universal good would be more important than a person's duty to himself or his species or his planet. By what means should a human try to learn what this universal good is? edit: just hashing things out here: By the laws of nature one should take whatever action gives the highest chance to pass on one's genes. This leads to a direct ethical duty to one's species. So to take that one step further one has a duty to uphold the stability of the universe, right? But that's shortsighted too: it assumes that replicating one's genes actually is the ethically correct thing to do. So a search for transcendent ethics may start at a higher* level than life. It may involve duties beyond one's own universe. But how can an entity have a duty beyond what that entity is able to influence? That's a red herring. Whatever my actual ethical duty it's best to understand that duty from the highest* possible perspective. Even if I have no higher duty than is in regard to those things I can influence, knowing what that duty is requires a higher* level of understanding. *as in high level vs low level programming, where assembly is low level code and java is high level code