Oslo Mind, Language and Epistemology Network Seminar: Nicholas Allot, Moral ‘grammar’, the Linguistic Analogy and the competence/performance distinction

Is moral ability similar to knowing a language? The notion of moral ‘grammar’ has a long history. (Adherents include Adam Smith and Pope Benedict XVI). With the emergence of generative linguistics a more precise comparison became possible, and the ‘Linguistic Analogy’ has received sustained attention in recent decades (from Nozick 1968; Rawls 1971; Dwyer 1999 and Mikhail 2011, inter alia). On this view, we have an innate domain-specific moral faculty, Universal Moral Grammar, which both enables and constrains the acquisition of adult moral competence, I-morality, which in its turn underpins our moral abilities including judgments of (im)permissibility. The theory has a number of attractions and, arguably, some empirical support but faces a number of serious objections (from Nagel 1971; Dupoux & Jacob 2007 and Johnson 2012, inter alia). John Mikhail has claimed that Nagel’s criticisms neglect the competence/performance distinction (Chomsky 1965), while Enoch (2013) suggests that Mikhail fails to grasp the cogency of some of the criticisms. Both are right, I argue. I show that a number of distinctions have been confused, including two possible referents of ‘moral judgment’, normative and descriptive questions, and Chomsky’s early and mature notions of competence/I-language. I do what I can to sort out the mess and evaluate where that leaves the Linguistic Analogy.