> OTOH, regardless of how to best understand the relation
> of his linguistic and activist work, do you buy his line
> that "the reason people differ is because they assess
> circumstances differently?" Seems equivalent to saying
> there's no disagreement over principles, only controversy
> over their applications. It's of a piece with his
> "Just the facts, ma'am" position and, to me, as dubious.
Yes, whatever his brilliance in other fields, he doesn't seem, from this citation, to be a great moral philosopher. To say that people never disagree over moral principles would be quite wide of the mark, obviously (though I'm not sure that Chomsky would necessarily want what he said in that quote elevated to the exalted level of a general meta-ethical position.)
I'm not abreast of the latest work in the meta-ethical field, but when I was keeping up there was a lot of discussion of "moral reasoning," trying to elucidate the ways in which people in real life argue about moral issues. This reasoning is actually quite complex, and not at all just a matter of either "emotivism" or simple rationalism. Anyone interested in this subject might want to browse in Peter Singer's _A Companion to Ethics_ (Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1993), for example. Although it is 10 years old, progress in philosophy doesn't proceed very rapidly, so it is still worth a look.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)