42
intuitively, without understanding” (1998: 2). He uses this as grounds for advocating free speech
as a means to achieving greater progress.
I think one should be struck by how closely Chomsky’s notion of cognitive moral
progress resembles his own work in linguistics. In linguistics in the last forty-five years or so,
most of the progress has been made by discovering facts about unconscious syntactic
competence, a progress for which Chomsky deserves great credit. But this was progress in
linguistics, not progress in language. Assuming that it makes sense to speak of progress in
language at all, then Shakespeare has done far more to enrich language than has Chomsky. It
seems clear that Chomsky has not advanced language but the study of language. Likewise,
progress in mathematics does not consist in our discovering the unconscious universals of
mathematical competence, but of applying recursion to our innate mathematical knowledge in
new and more ingenious ways. The former would be progress in the science of mathematical
cognition, not progress in mathematics. It is unclear why greater conscious awareness of hitherto
unconscious moral universals would constitute progress in moral knowledge as opposed to
progress in our understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of moral judgment. I submit that
the view that I have, albeit with mild anachronism, been attributing to Kropotkin is a better
conception of cognitive moral progress than the view Chomsky proposes: An essential element of
cognitive moral progress is the derivation or construction of principles from our innate moral
competence through hitherto undreamt of uses of recursion. In other words, it is analogous to
progress in mathematics.
The questions raised here about unconscious moral competence are empirical, and there
are empirical approaches to them. This shows that empirical work in cognitive science is
relevant to deciding whether or not pluralism is true. Specifically, it is relevant to understanding
whether or not moral intuitions result from the sorts of unconscious mental representations which