"Who is to say what metric you should use for "correct", in issues like ethical ones, that are not clear cut and measurable as things are in the hard sciences a

"Who is to say what metric you should use for "correct", in issues like ethical ones, that are not clear cut and measurable as things are in the hard sciences and mathematics?" See this talk[1] by Sam Harris for an argument as to why that is an illusion. In essence he argues that we make axiomatic claims all the time in areas for which there aren't specifically quantifiable goals. In terms of morality the metric is the well-being of conscious creatures. If you argue that there's something else that's more important than the well being of conscious creatures then you probably don't know what you mean. Likewise with the idea of 'health'. 'Health' is a squishy idea. But if you were to argue that "My idea of health is involuntarily vomiting 6 times a day" we'd have nothing to discuss. [1]http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_...