Is Morality Objective?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Morality fails this test. Why is this even in a discussion about morality?

Some disagree that 'species' have an objective reality. If we can agree on that, we can move on and talk about these species, including humans, having objective goals, namely survival, which can provide a basis for morality.

I don't care to debate the vagueness of species; it's an uncertainty I made my peace with thirty years ago, in college. But you're ascribing a goal to a group that is after all composed of individuals. Even the use of the word "goals" implies intention, which requires a mind, which a species does not of itself possess. It's a loaded argument right there.

And even on the individual level, survival is not taken as a moral thing, but as an existential thing, because dead folks don't gripe about the immorality of others. (Come to think of it, that's a pretty strong bias built into your point, seems to me).

One cannot point to anything not arising from humans (with their perspectives and foibles) and say "this is why my act was moral." 

Let us consider a simple moral case, if I save starving children from death, I can refer to biological facts about human species having a goal for survival, and argue that my action is in line with this objective goal, therefore it is moral.

And human survival is moral because ... why? There's nothing objective about it; we want to live because we're living and that is, after all, what living folk want: to keep living. That right there is bias. How objective is that morality? I'm not saying it's bad -- I've grown fond of breathing over the years, myself -- but I'm not going to kid myself. When -- not if, when the human species goes extinct, Nature will not give a single shit about whether we think Her whim was right or wrong.

And -- no species has any goal. Natural selection winnows fatal behavior very effectively, but that doesn't mean that the resultant species wanted to become what it became. Evolution is not teleological.