14
Internal Representations
It is reasonable to expect that we will only understand moral judgment scientifically to the
extent that it depends upon structures wholly internal to the organism. The same is true of
language, which is why Chomsky speaks of the individual’s “internal language” (2002; or “I-
language,” 2000). The internal language corresponds to a natural language, which, for Chomsky,
embodies knowledge of sound, meaning, and how meanings and sounds are paired. More
specifically, the internal language is the knowledge of a natural language corresponding to the
individual’s language faculty at some stage of maturation (2000).
Why should we narrow our focus to structures internal to the organism? Let us first
briefly consider our goal, which is to devise theory. By “theory” Chomsky means an explanation
with depth, e.g., Newtonian mechanics in which a small number of principles entails a wide range
of phenomena with a high degree of exactitude, at least under controlled conditions. Theorizing
in this sense requires much idealization (1980: 9-10). Idealization normally includes narrowing
one’s focus to the most immediate causes as a means of screening out interfering factors: “[T]he
growth of a cell to a finger or a bone of the forearm depends on elapsed time, but the study of the
process keeps to such indicators as current gradients of chemical concentration that inform the
cell of such facts” (2000: 196). Barring action at a distance, the most direct causes are internal to
the organism. This means that our best hope of arriving at a theoretical understanding of
language or moral judgment very likely requires us to focus on internal structures.
We can make reasonable inferences as to the form these internal structures take. The
mind exhibits an in-principle unbounded capacity to form moral judgments in response to novel
situations, as noted by David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature (Book III, Part I, Section
II):