Abstract: Philippa Foot once said, "When anthropologists or sociologists look at contemporary moral philosophy they must be struck by a fact about it which is indeed remarkable: that morality is not treated as an essentially social phenomenon." What would it be like to treat morality as an essentially social phenomenon? Consider how plausible it would be, if utility were all that mattered, to think consequentialist morality is about maximizing utility. Schmidtz will focus on how much less plausible that reduction becomes if, as a matter of empirical fact, affecting people's payoffs is only one of several ways affecting people. What if you also affect how other people act? What if you affect their reasons for action?
David Schmidtz is Professor at the University of Arizona.
