system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What does it mean for morality to be objective?

I've done some basic reading on metaethics, and I simply don't understand what moral realists mean when they say morality is objective.

Here's what objective and subjective mean to me:

* A statement is objective if it is capable of being determined without the mind of a human. The statement "this glass of water has a temperature of x" is objective because temperature is simply a function of the activity of the water molecules, which would be the case even if no humans existed.  No two humans could possibly disagree about the temperature of a glass of water (assuming they are both happy that the thermometer they are using is working properly).
* A statement is subjective if it is the product of human thought.  The statement "vanilla ice cream is good" is something that a human might say, but there's no truth value to it because it's simply the product of a human mind.  There's nothing analogous to the glass of water or the thermometer.

Now, take the statement "it is moral to do X."  This statement seems to me to be more like "vanilla ice cream is good" and not at all like "the glass of water has a temperature of x."  

* There's no thermometer we can use to determine if it is moral or immoral to do x.  
* Two reasonable people can disagree on whether it is moral/immoral to do x, and there's no way to say that one is right and the other is wrong.

So, what do moral realists mean when they say that morality is objective?  Are they using "objective" differently than I'm using it?

Thanks.
gpt
All statements are the products of human thought. Even the statement “This glass of water has a temperature of x” was produced by a human brain.

The words “subjective” and “objective” can mean different things in different contexts. The claim that moral assertions are objective is basically a combination of two claims:
1. Moral claims are not assertions about the speaker. (Example: “Kicking puppies is good” does not mean “I like kicking puppies” or “I like when others kick puppies” or something like that. It’s a statement about puppies, and not about the speaker.)
2. The correctness of a moral claim does not depend on what anyone in particular happens to think.