Is it true that there is no absolute morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, there is intent and outcome.  I'd say that a subjective moral truth, if you can call it that, is about intent; an objective moral truth would have to be about the outcome-- basically, whatever you think is right, there is an ACTUAL best act you could take at a given moment.

Please note that I'm not really sold on this idea-- I'm just looking for a kind of morality that could sensibly be called "objective," apart from the super-obvious "morality is the human capacity for acting on a sense of social balance," which is more true by definition than by proof.

Now I understand, lol.  Well, I think the criticism you'll receive, constantly, from a selective advantage morality, is that it's not morality at all.  It's just a search for selective advantage.  The moralities we currently possess may sensibly be called objective moralities, though such classification may be partly or wholly inaccurate.  An objective morality is one in which moral opinions correlate to moral facts.  Do any of our moral opinions correlate to moral facts?  

Is it subjectively or objectively wrong to kill an infant?
Did you make it wrong to kill an infant? (subjective)
Is it only your opinion that it is wrong to kill an infant? (subjective)
Could it be right, if you decided that it was so? (subjective)
Is it wrong based upon something independent of any given observers perspective? (objective)

Now, in defense of selective opportunism....I'd say that it's at least objective...even if it isn't a morality, lol. There is a fact of "optimally advantageous" to refer to. Objective morality looks for these as well, moral facts. For example..is it true that hurting someone is harmful, or that morality is a means to avoid being either the agent or victim of harm? If it is..then harming someone is immoral, this would be a moral fact of the matter just as "optimally advantageous" is a selective fact of the matter.

My point is that on different scales, killing a kid is clearly immoral, killing a kid if it will save millions might be moral, but saving millions if they start an intergalactic war of carnage and planetary destruction would, if you knew the outcome, be immoral.

On different scales, an apple weighs a third of a pound.  Now, does it weigh a third of a pound on different scales because there is such a things as a pound and it possesses a third of one as an attribute.....or for some other reason(or non-reason)...like, say, different scales just so happen to yield "a third of a pound" in the case of an apple due to it's method of manufacture?  The former would be an objective morality analog.  The latter would be an evolutionary or selective advantage analog.  

Now, in your example, the dependent immediacy of moral dilemma is brought to bare by knowledge of a negatively valued consequence...but why is killing the kid wrong, by those metrics?  It's not a dilemma at all unless killing a kid is a selective problem for evolved moralities.  It doesn't seem to be...that's a strategy employed both within and between species.  It certainly worked out to our advantage.  In your example..it's difficult to see the dilemma at all....but yet you perceive one.  Figuring out -why- killing a kid would be immoral (or moral) in your proposed scale would go further toward discussing objective moralities than wondering about the consequences beyond the subject of the moral dillemma itself.....which is killing a baby named hitler.  

I might even go so far as to say that intent must be completely divorced from objective morality.

Why?  If our intent was to adhere to an objective morality, but for whatever reason we failed at that, there are likely moral provisions for the resultant scenario.  Unintended consequences that we consider to be beyond the moral culpability of the agent.  Would a moral act become immoral if it yielded, through some strange and unforseeable future gyrations, a terrible unintended outcome?  I don't see why.  A moral act may have terrible consequences...but that's exactly why I asked the question..."can a moral behavior also be selectively deleterious".  Can doing the right thing yield undesired outcomes.  I'd say that much is trivially easy to answer.  Yes.  Sometimes, doing the right thing is disadvantageous..and not just by selective standards.  

Well, this is the problem with my theory, isn't it?  To have a maximally best behavior, there still has to be some goal by which the behavior's goodness is measured, either immediately or at different time scales.  And unless there is a non-arbitrary time scale to choose from, at least that part of the equation must be subjective: "I think we should look at moral consequences as they affect a single lifetime" or whatever.

Well, the problem with your theory is probably more to do with it not being a moral theory, but a biological persistence theory.  You've misused subjectivity.  Our possession of subjective moral opinions based upon timescales..arbitrary or well defined does not tell us whether or not there is a moral fact of the matter, or whether or not our moral opinions correlate to them....and it certainly has no ability to make a moral fact (again, if there are any) a moral opinion..or vv.  The only question relevant to subjectivity and objectivity in the context of morality is whether or not our moral opinions, at any point between the immediate and the infinite, correlate to moral facts.  

Another possibility would be to have a kind of conditional subjective/objective pairing.  So you could say, "Given goal X, there should be a hypothetical maximally perfect behavior Y at any given moment in time."  So the goals of the morality are then subjective, and the (objective) moral facts would be those actions which, almost certainly unknowingly, would have the best chance of leading to that goal.

You're misusing subjectivity again.  Goal x may -be- morality.  That a person views goal x through their subjective agency would not and does not make the goal, itself..subjective..it merely restates that we view it through subjective filters.  That we possess moral opinions.  The reason that this is uninformative is that while I may subjectively value goal x, and I definitely view goal x subjectively...goal x might -also- objectively -be- true.  The reverse is not the case, which is why it makes sense to separate them.  Just because goal x is true, doesn't mean that my subjective moral opinion will align with it, or that my subjective filters will detect or appreciate it.  Hence, moral disagreement and error theory.