Alex Archer
Biographic Data
| ID | 648898 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Archer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Archer |
| SIGNATURE | ARCHER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tilburg University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9398-6427 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Fans and fanaticism: The vulnerability of devotion and sportswashing as exploitation
Devoted sports fandom has been defended as a worthwhile undertaking that lends meaning to people’s lives and shapes their very identities; on the other hand, fanaticism is widely decried as morally troubling. We sketch the similarities between fandom and fanaticism and argue that sports fandom is often a form of fanaticism. We use the fact that fandom is often regarded as a valuable thing to suggest a value-neutral account of fanaticism and argue…
Shame in Response to Institutional Failure
When an institution morally fails, what is the appropriate emotional reaction for those institution members who are causally uninvolved in bringing about this failure? Our aim in this article is to explain why it may be fitting for such people to feel ashamed about the wrongs perpetrated by the institution. We begin by explaining the main case that we focus on – the Toeslagenaffaire or Dutch Child Benefit Scandal. We then show how standard accoun…
A Defense of the Cautionary Approach to Supererogation
How can moral theory make room for the existence of acts that are beyond the call of duty? This issue has become known as the problem of supererogation, and philosophers have provided various accounts of how to solve it. We have provided a recent answer to this question that draws on the work of the eleventh-century Persian philosopher Abū Alī Miskawayh and holds that we can make sense of supererogatory actions by appealing to a form of moral cau…
The Ethics of Cancelling
In recent years, there has been a great deal of public debate about cancelling and cancel culture. So far though, this phenomenon has received little attention from moral philosophers. This paper addresses issue by investigating the nature of cancelling and the conditions under which it is appropriate. We begin by examining the origins of the term before investigating Linda Radzik’s account of cancelling as a form of social punishment which is mo…
We’re a Tourist Club Now: The Ethics of Sports Fan Tourism
Sports fan tourism is a booming industry that is actively cultivated both by sports clubs and by national governments. However, sports fan tourism has recently been subject to significant criticism, particularly by fans of English Premier League football clubs. In this article, we will examine the ethical basis of these criticisms. We will argue that the criticisms of tourist fans can be developed into a well-grounded ethical critique of the prac…
Don’t go reading my emotions: Affective harm, affective injustice and affective artificial intelligence
Some AI applications are programmed to recognize people’s emotions. These can be used to help or teach people to recognize and interpret the emotions of others, as well as to monitor the performance of customer service workers. Some commentators have identified several risks with these technologies, while others highlight the positive effects of affective AI. It can, for instance, serve as a form of affective and cognitive scaffolding that helps …
Consigning Injustice to History with Political Apologies
Failures to remember the past properly can constitute a range of different wrongs. In this article, we identify a novel kind of wrong that often occurs through political apologies: consigning an injustice to history. Consigning acknowledges that a historical injustice took place but denies that it has any ongoing relevance for the present. This is sometimes justified, but it is not justified when a past injustice's moral residue has not been wash…
No One Mourns the Wicked: The Ethics of Mourning Morally Flawed Celebrities
The Broadway musical “Wicked” opens with an apotheotic song announcing the death of the Wicked Witch of the West (Schwartz 2003). The characters passionately sing, “No one mourns the wicked, no one cries ‘they won't return!’. No one lays a lily on their grave.” They claim that when morally flawed people die, people do not and should not mourn their death. Indeed, the song continues, “The good man scorns the wicked! Through their lives, our childr…
Using Celebrity to Advance Equality
Should celebrities act as political representatives and activists? This issue has become increasingly prominent in public consciousness in recent years due to the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States of America. For my purposes in here, though, I am less interested in Trump than in an idea that was floated in 2018, when Democrats were thinking about how they could defeat Trump in the next election. After she had an inspiring speech at …
Moral Exemplars and the Moral Community
Linda Zagzebski’s groundbreaking book Exemplarist Moral Theory has inspired new attention to the use of moral exemplars in moral education. Zagzebski argues that admiration for moral exemplars has a crucial role to play in the development of moral virtue. It is through admiration that we come to identify moral exemplars. Moreover, it is through our admiration for exemplars that we come to identify what moral virtue consists of and also to develop…
Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life
It was a Different Time: Judging Historical Figures by Today's Moral Standards
How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country's history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it may be wrong to celebrate such figures. However, a common response that is made in popular discussions around these issues is that we should not judge historical figures by today's standards. Our goal in this ar…
On the Uses and Abuses of Celebrity Epistemic Power
The testimonies of celebrities affect the lives of their many followers who pay attention to what they say. This gives celebrities a high degree of epistemic power, which has come under scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper investigates the duties that arise from this power. We argue that celebrities have a negative duty of testimonial justice not to undermine trust in authoritative sources by spreading misinformation or directing att…
Taking the public seriously: The role of respect in interactions between scientific experts and lay publics
The Cautionary Account of Supererogation
The problem of supererogation has attracted significant attention from contemporary moral philosophers. In this paper, we show that this problem was outlined in different terms in the work of the 11th century Persian philosopher Abū Alī Miskawayh. As well as identifying this problem, Miskawayh also developed a unique solution cashed out in terms of virtue ethics that has not yet been considered in the contemporary literature. We will argue that t…
Rejecting Identities: Stigma and Hermeneutical Injustice
Hermeneutical injustice means being unjustly prevented from making sense of one's experiences, identity or circumstances and/or communicating about them. The literature focusses almost exclusively on whether people have access to adequate conceptual resources. In this paper, we discuss a different kind of hermeneutical struggle caused by stigma. We argue that in some cases of hermeneutic injustice people have access to hermeneutical resources apt…
Influencers as role models
The claim that celebrities have special duties to be good role models is prominent in the philosophical literature on fame. We investigate whether these arguments can be extended to social media influencers. According to the role model argument, the fact that celebrities are widely known and admired gives them a high degree of influence over others’ behaviours. This gives them strong moral reasons to act as a good example to others. While celebri…
Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address
In this paper, we introduce a distinctive kind of psychological abuse we call Tightlacing. We begin by presenting four examples and argue that there is a distinctive form of abuse in these examples that cannot be captured by our existing moral categories. We then outline our diagnosis of this distinctive form of abuse. Tightlacing consists in inducing a mistaken self-conception in others that licenses overburdening demands on them such that victi…
Being a Celebrity: Alienation, Integrity, and the Uncanny
A central feature of being a celebrity is experiencing a divide between one's public image and private life. By appealing to the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, we analyze this experience as paradoxically involving both a disconnection and alienation from one's public persona and a sense of close connection with it. This ‘uncanny’ experience presents a psychological conflict for celebrities: they may have a public persona they feel ali…
Emotional Imperialism
How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice. In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism. This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account of the forms that emotional …
Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity
What role do celebrities play in our moral lives? Philosophers have explored the potential for celebrities to function as moral exemplars and role models. We argue that there are more ways in which celebrities play a role in helping us navigate our moral lives. First, gossiping about celebrities helps us negotiate our moral norms and identify competing styles of life. Second, fandom for celebrities serves as the basis for the development of disti…
Exemplars and expertise: What we cannot learn from saints and heroes
According to a popular line of thought, moral exemplars have a key role to play in moral development and moral education and by paying attention to moral exemplars we can learn about what morality requires of us. However, when we pay attention to what many moral exemplars say about their actions, it seems that our moral obligations are much more demanding than we typically think they are. Some philosophers have argued that this exemplar testimony…
There Goes My Hero: The Role of Exemplars in Identity Formation
In this paper, we argue that who one is and wants to become is closely related to whom one admires. Although the links between identity formation and exemplars have been largely neglected, we claim that integrating both literature studies provides interesting new insights. First, exemplars can play an important role in and constitute a powerful tool for people’s identity construction. Second, insights into identity formation processes can help be…
Commemoration and Emotional Imperialism
The Northern Irish footballer James McClean chooses not to take part in the practice of wearing a plastic red poppy to commemorate those who have died fighting for the British Armed Forces. Each year he faces abuse, including occasional death threats, for his choice. This forms part of a wider trend towards ‘poppy enforcement’, the pressuring of people, particularly public figures, to wear the poppy. This enforcement seems wrong in part because, …
The Ethics of Love
Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power
What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics, none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices, and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. We will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in …
Moral Obligation, Self-Interest and the Transitivity Problem
Is the relation ‘is a morally permissible alternative to’ transitive? The answer seems to be a straightforward yes. If Act B is a morally permissible alternative to Act A and Act C is a morally permissible alternative to B then how could C fail to be a morally permissible alternative to A? However, there are cases where this transitivity appears problematic. My aim in this article is to provide a solution to this problem. I will then investigate …
Supererogation
It is a recognizable feature of commonsense morality that some actions are beyond the call of duty or supererogatory. Acts of supererogation raise a number of interesting philosophical questions and debates. This article will provide an overview of three of these debates. First, I will provide an overview of the debate about whether or not acts of supererogation exist. Next, I will investigate the issue of how to define the supererogatory. I will…
Influencers as role models
The claim that celebrities have special duties to be good role models is prominent in the philosophical literature on fame. We investigate whether these arguments can be extended to social media influencers. According to the role model argument, the fact that celebrities are widely known and admired gives them a high degree of influence over others’ behaviours. This gives them strong moral reasons to act as a good example to others. While celebri…
It was a Different Time: Judging Historical Figures by Today's Moral Standards
How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country's history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it may be wrong to celebrate such figures. However, a common response that is made in popular discussions around these issues is that we should not judge historical figures by today's standards. Our goal in this ar…
Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality
Journal Article Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality Get access Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality.ByTessman Lisa. (Oxford: OUP, 2015. Pp. x + 279. Price £42.00.) Alfred Archer Alfred Archer University of Bristol, UK E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 66, Issue 263, April 2016, Pages 400–402, https://doi.org/10…
New anthropological and historical insights into human-animal relations: Insights into Human-Animal Relations
The Supererogatory and How Not To Accommodate It: A Reply to Dorsey
It is plausible to think that there exist acts of supererogation (acts that are morally optional and morally better than the minimum that morality demands). It also seems plausible that there is a close connection between what we are morally required to do and what it would be morally good to do. Despite being independently plausible these two claims are hard to reconcile. My aim in this article will be to respond to a recent solution to this puz…
Against Vote Markets: A Reply to Freiman
No Abstract
Forcing Cohen to Abandon Forced Supererogation
No abstract
Do We Need to Make Room for Quasi-Supererogation
Offence. 3 This category is for acts that are bad to perform but are morally optional. Julia Driver has also argued that we need to make room for a category of this sort, though, she terms this category The Suberogatory. 4 Gregory Mellema has argued that making room for this additional category does not go far enough either. 5 According to Mellema we must also make room for both Quasi-Supererogation and Quasi-Offence. Finally, Shlomo Cohen endors…
The Supererogatory and How Not To Accommodate It: A Reply to Dorsey
It is plausible to think that there exist acts of supererogation (acts that are morally optional and morally better than the minimum that morality demands). It also seems plausible that there is a close connection between what we are morally required to do and what it would be morally good to do. Despite being independently plausible these two claims are hard to reconcile. My aim in this article will be to respond to a recent solution to this puz…
Community, Pluralism, and Individualistic Pursuits: A Defense of Why Not Socialism
Is socialism morally preferable to free market capitalism?G. A. Cohen (2009) has argued that even when the economic inequalities produced by free markets are not the result of injustice, they nevertheless ought to be avoided because they are community undermining.As free markets inevitably lead to economic inequalities and Socialism does not, Socialism is morally preferable.This argument has been the subject of recent criticism.Chad Van Schoeland…
Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy
It is commonly assumed that praiseworthiness should form part of the analysis of supererogation. I will argue that this view should be rejected. I will start by arguing that, at least on some views of the connection between moral value and praiseworthiness, it does not follow from the fact that acts of supererogation go beyond what is required by duty that they will always be praiseworthy to perform. I will then consider and dismiss what I will c…
Moral Obligation, Self-Interest and the Transitivity Problem
Is the relation ‘is a morally permissible alternative to’ transitive? The answer seems to be a straightforward yes. If Act B is a morally permissible alternative to Act A and Act C is a morally permissible alternative to B then how could C fail to be a morally permissible alternative to A? However, there are cases where this transitivity appears problematic. My aim in this article is to provide a solution to this problem. I will then investigate …
Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality
Journal Article Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality Get access Moral Failure: On The Impossible Demands of Morality.ByTessman Lisa. (Oxford: OUP, 2015. Pp. x + 279. Price £42.00.) Alfred Archer Alfred Archer University of Bristol, UK E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 66, Issue 263, April 2016, Pages 400–402, https://doi.org/10…
New anthropological and historical insights into human-animal relations: Insights into Human-Animal Relations
Integrity and the Value of an Integrated Self
What is integrity and why is it valuable? One account of the nature of integrity, proposed by John Cottingham amongst others, is The Integrated Self View. On this account integrity is a formal relation of coherence between various aspects of a person. One problem that has been raised against this account is that it isn’t obvious that it can account for the value of integrity. In this paper I will respond to this problem by providing an account of…
Effective Vote Markets and the Tyranny of Wealth
What limits should there be on the areas of life that are governed by market forces? For many years, no one seriously defended the buying and selling votes for political elections. In recent years, however, this situation has changed, with a number of authors defending the permissibility of vote markets (e.g. Freiman 2014). One popular objection to such markets is that they would lead to a tyranny of wealth, where the poor are politically dominat…
Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt
Contempt appears to be making something of a comeback in public discourse. The 2016 US Presidential Elections saw both mainstream candidates accused of contempt. Hillary Clinton and her supporters were claimed by Republicans to be contemptuous of ‘ordinary Americans’. Donald Trump, on the other hand, was seen by many to be treating the entire political process and state apparatus with contempt. Is it good to feel contempt towards others? Not acco…
Supererogation
It is a recognizable feature of commonsense morality that some actions are beyond the call of duty or supererogatory. Acts of supererogation raise a number of interesting philosophical questions and debates. This article will provide an overview of three of these debates. First, I will provide an overview of the debate about whether or not acts of supererogation exist. Next, I will investigate the issue of how to define the supererogatory. I will…
Supererogation and Consequentialism
The thought that acts of supererogation exist presents a challenge to all normative ethical theories. This chapter will provide an overview of the consequentialist responses to this challenge. I will begin by explaining the problem that supererogation presents for consequentialism. I will then explore consequentialist attempts to deny the existence of acts of supererogation. Next, I will examine a range of act consequentialist attempts to accommo…
Epistemic Injustice and the Attention Economy
In recent years, a significant body of literature has emerged on the subject of epistemic injustice: wrongful harms done to people in their capacities as knowers (Fricker 2007). Up to now this literature has ignored the role that attention has to play in epistemic injustice. This paper makes a first step towards addressing this gap. We argue that giving someone less attention than they are due, which we call an epistemic attention deficit, is a d…
Lost without you: The Value of Falling out of Love
In this paper we develop a view about the disorientation attached to the process of falling out of love and explain its prudential and moral value. We start with a brief background on theories of love and situate our argument within the views concerned with the lovers’ identities. Namely, love changes who we are. In the context of our paper, we explain this common tenet in the philosophy of love as a change in the lovers’ self-concepts through a …
Admiration Over Time
In this paper, we investigate the diachronic fittingness conditions of admiration – that is, what it takes for a person to continue or cease to be admirable over time. We present a series of cases that elicit judgements that suggest different understandings of admiration over time. In some cases, admirability seems to last forever. In other cases, it seems that it can cease within a person's lifetime if she changes sufficiently. Taken together, t…
Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power
What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics, none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices, and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. We will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in …
The Ethics of Love
Fans, Crimes and Misdemeanors: Fandom and the Ethics of Love
Is it permissible to be a fan of an artist or a sports team that has behaved immorally? While this issue has recently been the subject of widespread public debate, it has received little attention in the philosophical literature. This paper will investigate this issue by examining the nature and ethics of fandom. I will argue that the crimes and misdemeanors of the object of fandom provide three kinds of moral reasons for fans to abandon their fa…
Commemoration and Emotional Imperialism
The Northern Irish footballer James McClean chooses not to take part in the practice of wearing a plastic red poppy to commemorate those who have died fighting for the British Armed Forces. Each year he faces abuse, including occasional death threats, for his choice. This forms part of a wider trend towards ‘poppy enforcement’, the pressuring of people, particularly public figures, to wear the poppy. This enforcement seems wrong in part because, …
Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address
In this paper, we introduce a distinctive kind of psychological abuse we call Tightlacing. We begin by presenting four examples and argue that there is a distinctive form of abuse in these examples that cannot be captured by our existing moral categories. We then outline our diagnosis of this distinctive form of abuse. Tightlacing consists in inducing a mistaken self-conception in others that licenses overburdening demands on them such that victi…
Being a Celebrity: Alienation, Integrity, and the Uncanny
A central feature of being a celebrity is experiencing a divide between one's public image and private life. By appealing to the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, we analyze this experience as paradoxically involving both a disconnection and alienation from one's public persona and a sense of close connection with it. This ‘uncanny’ experience presents a psychological conflict for celebrities: they may have a public persona they feel ali…
Emotional Imperialism
How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice. In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism. This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account of the forms that emotional …
Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity
What role do celebrities play in our moral lives? Philosophers have explored the potential for celebrities to function as moral exemplars and role models. We argue that there are more ways in which celebrities play a role in helping us navigate our moral lives. First, gossiping about celebrities helps us negotiate our moral norms and identify competing styles of life. Second, fandom for celebrities serves as the basis for the development of disti…
Philosophy (32 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Political science (19 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works)