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representations underlying moral judgment which do not take this form. Perhaps, as noted in the
previous paragraph, these principles constrain possible concatenations of models, or perhaps they
exist independently and alongside of relational models, e.g. the principle that whatever rule you
apply to others you should also apply to yourself. If Fiske’s view is only part of the truth about
moral cognition, then we may have only a weak pluralism, i.e. a pluralism compatible with the
view that there are some moral absolutes. One’s moral intuitions in any given situation could be
the result of a combination of parametric and non-parametric factors.
Chomsky himself gives little indication of being a pluralist. He is definitely not a strong
pluralist. To the contrary, he emphasizes that people tend to converge in their moral judgments
in the process of debate (1978: 240-41; 1988a: 152-53). One might infer from this that he
expects there to be at least some crucially important universals of social intelligence which will
turn out not to be absolute.
Even so, Kropotkin’s view of cognitive moral progress differs from Chomsky’s
conception of the same. One of Chomsky’s illustrations of such progress is the 19th-century
debate over slavery. That debate was not simply an expression of differing points of view, but
was a rational exchange of ideas presupposing many shared assumptions. Each side could admit
that the other made good points, e.g. even the pro-slavery side made the valid point that one is
usually more concerned for the well being of one’s property than for the well being of something
one rents (wage slavery, in the case of human beings). In the resolution of that debate, “you see a
consciousness emerging of what really is right, which must mean it reflects our built-in
conception of what’s right” (1998: 1). For Chomsky, dialogue between those who make
conflicting moral judgments leads to an appreciation of the moral views they share. It is to gain a
conscious awareness of what was hitherto an unconscious moral competence: “It’s better to have
a conscious understanding of what’s guiding you, to the extent you can, than just to react