Wilson's Moral Sense

As I mentioned that I would in a prior post, I have picked up the late James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense and have begun to make my way through it.  Some excerpts from and reflections on the book might appear in this blog in the process.

Professor Wilson's thesis is this:  "that most of us have moral sense, but that some of us have tried to talk ourselves out it.  It is as if a person born to appreciate a golden sunset or a lovely song had persuaded himself and others that a greasy smear or a clanging gong ought to be enjoyed as much as true beauty" (ix).  This thesis and the analogy attached to it are interesting for any number of reasons. 

Inconsistency, Fallacy, & OWS

Last fall I was a bit confused by the entire Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon.  So I asked two friends with polar perspectives to help me understand what was going on, what was at stake, how they assessed matters, and how the debate was taking shape.  Having had now six months to reflect on things, here is some of what I gleaned.

Charity v. Generosity

How do we explain the difference between a person who demonstrates charity and a person who demonstrates generosity?

This is a question that I have had occasion to ponder recently and, almost certainly, will continue to ponder for some time to come.  The reason is that it is hard to reconcile the presence of a positive trait in a person but to recognize that there is still something missing -- as in having generosity without charity.

Deterioration of Discourse

Peggy Noonan has a thought-provoking column in today's Wall Street Journal:  "America's Real War on Women" (login may be required).  Her material subject is the discriminatory language used in public life about women.  Her formal subject is the devolution of discourse in American public life.


Whether one agrees with her on the material issue and her suggestion about the role of relatively new media like the internet, she seems dead-on with respect to the formal issue:  public discourse on many fronts has deteriorated and is deteriorating in the United States.  It is difficult to cultivate virtue individually and in society when reasonable discourse with others is a handicap.

Affirming affirmative action?

If one endorses affirmative action, should it be employed in all circumstances in which disproportional representation exists?  


That is the question raised by this March 14 Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial.  The occasion is the disproportionate -- perhaps discriminatory? -- (nearly 3 to 2) ratio of female college graduates to male graduates by age 24.  Males are underrepresented.


I have previously posted on the complicated question of diversity and justice in another connection.  What is the just response to this Bureau of Labor Statistics report about the underrepresentation of an historically dominant and educated segment of society?

An Atheist Objects

This column by Aengus Woods on NPR's website engages the newest book by Alain de Botton, which I took up in a previous post.  It is helpful as an atheist's critique of an atheist's project.

Mankiw on Rogoff on Lin

Okay, Greg Mankiw doesn't actually comment; he just excerpts a passage by fellow economist Ken Rogoff on NBA salaries and that of New York Knickerbocker and Harvard alumnus Jeremy Lin:

What amazes me is the public’s blasé acceptance of the salaries of sports stars, compared to its low regard for superstars in business and finance. ... Half of all NBA players’ annual salaries exceed $2 million, more than five times the threshold for the top 1% of household incomes in the United States. ... Lin’s salary, at $800,000, is the NBA’s “minimum wage” for a second-season player ...

I did a little math.  Lin's "minimum wage," given an 82 game season, is $9,756 per game, which itself is 48 minutes.  So that is equivalent to $12,195.12/hour for game time (assuming Lin plays the entire game, which he doesn't).  By contrast, the current regular minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25/hour.


One can account for and perhaps justify these differences in various ways.  But I've also often wondered about the same phenomenon:  society seems to approve of extremely high compensation for celebrities and sports figures but to disapprove of the same for people in other professions.


Discrepancies in pay are often framed today in terms of justice, with the implication that disparities themselves (i.e., [widely] unequal portions) are not right.  That is definitely one way to think about it, but I'm not sure that is the only or the best way to think about differences in compensation.

God without God?

The publication of a new book titled Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton has been virally publicized on the web within the last couple of weeks.  Synoptic essays of the book's content have appeared in as wide-ranging places as the Wall Street Journal's Saturday essay on February 18 and a blog entry on the Huffington Post on March 2.  Given the buzz, it seems there is a real interest, which is worth considering.

Tale of Two Conservatives

Two conservative writers died last week, James Q. Wilson and Andrew Breitbart.  To my knowledge, I never read a word of Mr. Breitbart's, which seems to have been extremely provocative.  (In fact, Mr. Breitbart's writings, by most third-party accounts, seem consistent with what I had expressed in my About page about many blogs:  they are "vapid billboards of arrogance; a number are myopic delivery systems of cookie-cutter ideology.")  I can probably count on one hand the number of articles by Mr. Wilson that I read, which, because of their depth of thought, always seemed to require more than one reading.  From what I can gather from media reports, the two men both had, in their own ways, sharp minds and were able to communicate clearly to others their views.  These are admirable traits, whatever one's views happen to be.  But Professor Wilson intrigues me.  He seems distinct, or, better, distinguished.