Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and Geoffrey Brennan: On Cooperation

Lecture by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and Geoffrey Brennan (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), organized by the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Adam Smith rightly emphasized – repeatedly – the importance of cooperation in making people better off. He was not the first nor, by any means, the last. Indeed, “cooperation” is a term that is widely deployed in contemporary scholarship – not just in the social sciences (economics and political science most notably) and in the humanities (moral philosophy and political theory most notably) but also in evolutionary biology. In addition to being deployed in a variety of contexts and fields, “cooperation” has taken on a variety of meanings and often takes on a serious normative valence. This talk (which reflects a co-authored paper in draft) has the modest aim of sorting through some of these meanings and exploring, against that background, when and why cooperation itself might be of value, or be required, or constitute a virtue.

When & where?

Wednesday, 7 February, 2018, 3.15-5pm
Faculty of Philosophy, room Omega