On morals and markets

Abstract

I Introduction The spirit of our age, James Q. Wilson asserts in the preface to The Moral Sense, is skepticism.(1) Skepticism dominates those in the natural and social sciences who attempt to establish objective truths about human nature - especially human social nature. And it is a skepticism is not born out of appropriate caution about the power of scientific research methods to reveal those truths. Rather, it is born out of cultural and moral relativism - out of a deep suspicion as to whether there actually are any truths about human nature to be revealed. The relativist argues for the almost complete malleability of human nature - of perception, thinking, emotion, socialization, and social interaction. Culture determines how people see, how they live, how they love, what they are. And it also determines how they judge. With such an enormous range of human social practices, it is hard to know from what perspective judgments about the moral worth of those practices can and should be made. At best, such judgments must be relative to the culture's own conception of moral worth. When moral judgments are made, they must be made with due humility and uncertainty. And perhaps it is best if they are not made at all. Thus speaks the relativist, according to Wilson, and Wilson asks: Are we prepared for the possibility by behaving as if no moral judgments are possible we may create a world more and more resembles our diminished moral expectations? must be careful of what we think we are, because we may become that Ix!. Wilson's aim in this book is to defeat the moral bankruptcy he sees as a self-fulfilling consequence of relativism by defeating relativism itself. And this he tries to do by arguing for the existence in human beings of a moral sense - one is essentially universal, is deeply rooted in biology, and is strengthened by various social practices. He summarizes his argument about the relation between biology and cultural as follows: I have said our moral senses are natural. I mean in two related senses of the word: they are to some important degree innate, and they appear spontaneously amid the routine intimacies of family life. Since these senses, though having a common origin in our natural sociability, are several, gender and culture will profoundly influence which of them ... are most valued. And since these senses are to a degree indeterminate, culture will determine how they are converted into maxims, customs, and rules. [229] Wilson's book is essentially an extended argument in support of this view of the relation between biology and culture. It is an argument people possess a moral sense, composed of a variety of moral sentiments (he focuses on the moral sentiments of sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty). And it is an argument about how these moral sentiments arise from, and are influenced by our natural sociability, as well as by family, gender, and culture. The moral sense is indeed a sense-not reflective, but intuitive: By moral sense I mean an intuitive or directly felt belief about how one ought to act when one is free to act voluntarily [xii]. And it is fragile - very fragile: We have a moral sense, most people instinctively rely on it even if intellectuals deny it, but it is not always and in every aspect of life strong enough to withstand a sustained and pervasive [12]. And it is now under attack and being eroded, principally by relativism, as reflected in the deterioration of families, schools, the arts, and other social institutions. As Wilson summarizes the assault on the moral sense, at the end of the book: have come face to face with a fatally flawed assumption of many Enlightenment thinkers, namely, autonomous individuals can freely choose, or will, their moral life. Believing individuals are everything, rights are trumps, and morality is relative to time and place, such thinkers have been led to design laws, practices, and institutions leave nothing between the state and the individual save choices, contracts, and entitlements. …