Director, UNC Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program
Sayre-McCord is the Director of UNC’s Philosophy, Politics, & Economics Program. He is also the Founding Director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society, an international scholarly society for those interested in the issues that arise at the intersection of the three disciplines in the Society’s name.
Sayre-McCord was a Professorial Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 2013 until 2016 and is now a Regular Distinguished Visiting Professor there. He was on leave for the 2015-16 academic year at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching.
Research
Geoff Sayre-McCord has published extensively on moral theory, epistemology, and modern philosophy, and has edited Essays on Moral Realism, Hume: Moral Philosophy. and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (with Jonathan Anomaly, Geoff Brennan, and Michael Munger).
Recently, Sayre-McCord’s research has focused on the nature of normative concepts. His work in progress on this topic are available in draft:
- “On a Better Moral Theory and a Theory of a Better Morality“
- “A Moral Argument Against Moral Dilemmas“
- “Rational Agency and the Nature of Normative Concepts“
Pre-publication versions of the following recent papers are also ar available:
- “Regulation, Ethics, and ‘Policy Technology’” (with Geoffrey Brennan)
- “Real World Theory, Complacency, and Aspiration, Final” (with Geoffrey Brennan)
- “Hume’s Robust Theory of Practical Reason“
- “Hume’s Theory of Public Reason“
Teaching
Sayre-McCord teaches Virtue, Value, and Happiness almost every year. He also teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in moral theory, metaethics, and the history of moral philosophy, along with the PPE Gateway course and the PPE Capstone course. With Patrick Conway (from the Economics Department) and Kristin Wilson (from the Kenan Flagler School of Business) he has developed a new course on the differences between, and connections among, the value of something and its price: Prices and Values.
Awards
Sayre-McCord received the 2019 Philip L. Quinn Prize from the American Philosophical Association, for “service to philosophy and philosophers, broadly construed.” He has won several Tanner awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at UNC. He won the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2022. In 2023 he was presented with UNC’s Thomas Jefferson Award for “that member of the academic community who through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing, and scholarship has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson,”
A list of publications (with some e-versions)
Some on-line lectures and interviews:
- Bloggingheads.tv discussion of Metaethics (video)
- Bloggingheads.tv discussion of Evolution and Moral Theory (video)
- Lecture on Evolution and Rational Agency (video)
- Lecture on Adam Smith’s Moral Theory (video)
- Lecture on The Nature of Normative Concepts (video)
- The Philosopher’s Zone interview on Moral Dilemmas (audio)
- Wi Phi talk on The Prisoners’ Dilemma (video)
- Interview on Reflective Equilibrium with Michael Ridge and Matthew Chrisman (video)
- Wi Phi talk on Reasons to Vote (video)
- Freakanomics on “When Helping Hurts“ concerning his mother, Joan McCord’s, research concerning mentoring programs.
- An interview on Romanian TV (in English) about Philosophy and PPE: Garantat 100%@TVR1
- Commencement Address for students graduating in December 2010 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.