Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (né McCord, born December 10, 1956) is an American philosopher who works in moral theory, ethics, meta-ethics, the history of ethics and epistemology. He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society.

Education and career

Sayre-McCord received his BA from Oberlin College and his PhD (working with David Gauthier, Wilfrid Sellars, Nicholas Rescher, Clark Glamour, and Kurt Baier) from the University of Pittsburgh. Sayre-McCord is the Morehead-Cain Alumni Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at the University of North Carolina, where he has taught since 1985. He was a Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2013-2016, and a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor at Princeton University in 2015-2016. He is a frequent visitor at the Australian National University and has been a visiting professor at the University of Auckland and the University of California/Irvine. Sayre-McCord has written widely on metaethics, David Hume, contractualism and on issues at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics. He is author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on moral realism and metaethics. For five years, Sayre-McCord was a co-editor of the journal Noûs. In 2019, Sayre-McCord received the Philip L. Quinn Prize from the American Philosophical Association, for "service to philosophy and philosophers, broadly construed."

Family

Sayre-McCord's parents were William Maxwell McCord and Joan McCord, both of whom were college professors. His brother is Rob McCord, a former Pennsylvania Treasurer. He is married to Harriet Sayre, the daughter of Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. and great-granddaughter of President Woodrow Wilson.

Publications

Selected articles

Edited volumes