Reddit reviews Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls' Linguistic Analogy And The Cognitive Science Of Moral And Legal Judgment

> He doesn't ask "how should society be founded?" or any kind of abstract ethical question. He simply points out particular examples of ethical inconsistencies.

I'm curious as to how you came to this conclusion. Although Chomsky very clearly prefers to deal with concrete situations, he has recommended the work of John Mikhail, who attempts (correct me if I'm wrong) to draw normative conclusions from empirical work regarding a kind of "moral grammar."

Furthermore, based on a brief email exchange with him some time ago, I asked him if he saw any merit in any particular ethical theories. He said the following:

> There’s very interesting recent work on these topics, particularly John Mikhail’s Elements of Moral Cognition, Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds, and some others. But progress in understanding is far short of dealing with the action problems of real life. That should not surprise us. Even in vastly simpler areas like engineering, it took millennia of very intensive work before theoretical science had a great deal to contribute.

It's clear that he prefers to deal with the immediate, concrete issues of social and political life, but he seems to abstain from ethical theory because the questions are too difficult to answer right now, rather than worthless.