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in different contexts even relative to the same moral questions. If this internal multi-morality
involves irresolvable value conflicts, then it would be a kind of pluralism.
Psychological studies show that anticipating interaction with one conversational partner
can bias one’s normative judgments in the direction of what one takes the other’s values to be,
while anticipating an interaction with another conversational partner at some other point in time
could bias one’s judgments in some very different direction (Chen, Shechter and Chaiken, 1996;
Lundgren and Prislin, 1998). This is roughly similar to the linguistic contextual adaptability
discussed earlier. Can one speak of the person as being multi-moral in analogy to how each of us
is multilingual? Isn’t it more accurate to say that people can sometimes be persuaded, in non-
rational ways, to change their minds? The question is whether finding oneself pulled in one
direction in anticipation of a conversation with one person, on the assumption that one is
motivated to get along in a friendly way, and then finding oneself pulled in another direction in
anticipation of an interaction with someone else could lead to ambivalence. Commonsensically,
the answer would seem to be that it can. If the individual is not aware of any method which
strikes him or her as reasonable for resolving this ambivalence, then one has a kind of pluralism
even within a single individual. Hence, there may be some grounds in support of Gilbert
Harman’s speculation that “As with [internal languages], individuals often have available several
[internal moralities], sometimes one applying at home, another at work; one with old school
mates, another with new friends. There may even be moral ‘bimorals’ who possess two different
[internal moralities] - the moral version of bilinguals” (2000: 222-23).
It may be worthwhile to recall the point of this lengthy comparison of linguistic diversity
and moral diversity. The point was to show that moral nativism, the view that there are
biologically innate universals underlying moral cognition, does not automatically refute the
pluralist claim that moral diversity sometimes cannot be resolved in a rationally satisfying way.