The name is absent

33

to represent it mentally. The human ability to maintain indefinitely many such compound
structures shows that recursive embedding plays a role in human social cognition.

We have already noted how humans’ expanded recursive ability may be linked to the
potential to progress beyond the innate primitives of the number sense to grasp the notion of an
unbounded number series and to construct sophisticated mathematical systems. In other words,
we have seen how this improved recursive ability may be what makes mathematical progress
possible. It may also make moral progress possible by supporting the ability to create social
structures and to judge the resulting moral issues. A chimpanzee, for example, may lack the
ability to reflect on the sort of multiply embedded social structures described in the two previous
paragraphs due to limitations on its ability to embed. This is compatible with Kropotkin’s sketch
of moral absolutism.

Fiske’s account of social cognition is pluralist in that he recognizes how different and
even conflicting values may be generated from a finite set of innate models. The plausibility of
Fiske’s approach, and bear in mind that there is empirical support for his view, helps clear up a
misconception about pluralism found in Berlin:

I do believe that there is a plurality of values which men can and do seek, and that these
values differ. There is not an infinity of them: the number of human values, of values
which I can pursue while maintaining my human semblance, my human character, is
finite - let us say 74, or perhaps 122, or 27, but finite, whatever it may be. And the
difference this makes is that if a man pursues one of these values, I, who do not, am able
to understand why he pursues it or what it would be like, in his circumstances, for me to
be induced to pursue it. Hence the possibility of human understanding. (1998: 11)

I do not wish to dispute the remark about human understanding. It is a corollary of relational
models theory which, as noted above, enjoys some empirical support. But the remark that human

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