Alfred Archer

Do sports fans really care about their team winning? According to several philosophers, the answer is no. Sports fans engage in fictional caring during the match, which involves a game of make-believe that the result is important. We will argue that this account does not provide a full account of the way in which fans relate to the teams they support. For many fans, the team they support forms a core part of their identity. The success or failure of their team impacts the community they are a part of and around which they build a central part of their identity. For these fans, it really does matter whether their team wins or loses. We will finish by articulating a more limited role that fictional caring may play in sports fandom.

Suppose, we could take a pill that would turn us into morally better people. Would we have a duty to take such a pill? In recent years, a number of philosophers have discussed this issue. Most prominently, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have argued that we would have a duty to take such a pill. In this article, I wish to investigate the possible limits of a duty to take moral enhancement drugs through investigating the related question of whether it would be desirable to create a world populated entirely with morally perfect people. I argue, drawing on the work of Bernard Williams, Susan Wolf, and Michael Slote, that we have reason to be grateful that we do not live a world in which everyone is morally perfect, as this would prevent people from dedicating their lives to valuable nonmoral projects. I then argue that this thought should serve as a limitation on attempts to morally improve people through the use of technology. Finally, I explore the implications of this discussion for some of the less ambitious forms of moral enhancement currently being explored in the literature. I argue that these forms of enhancement give us no reason to worry about preventing valuable, morally imperfect ways of life. In fact, by acting as a shortcut to moral development, they might serve as an aid to help people fulfill valuable nonmoral goals in a way that is morally permissible.

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. One popular objection to such markets is that they would lead to a tyranny of wealth, where the poor are politically dominated by the rich. In a recent paper, Taylor :313–328, 2017. doi: 10.1007/s11158-016-9327-0) has argued that this objection can be avoided if certain restrictions are placed on vote markets. In this paper we will argue that this attempt to rebut an argument against vote markets is unsuccessful. Either vote markets secure their purported benefits but then they inevitably lead to a tyranny of wealth, or they are restricted so heavily that they lack the features that have been claimed to make vote markets attractive in the first place. Using Taylor’s proposal as a test case, we make the more general claim that vote markets cannot avoid the tyranny of wealth objection and bring about their supposed benefits at the same time.

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 fandom. First, being a fan of the immoral may provide support for their immoral behavior. Second, fandom alters our perception in ways that will often lead us to be fail to perceive our idol’s faults and even to adopting immoral points of view in order to be able to maintain the positive view we have of them. Third, fandom, like friendship, may lead us to engage in acts of loyalty to protect the interests of our idols. This gives fans of the immoral good reason to abandon their fandom. However, these reasons will not always be conclusive and, in some cases, it may be possible to instead adopt a critical form of fandom.

Is there good reason to worry about celebrity involvement in democratic politics? The rise of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky has led political theorists and commentators to worry that the role of expertise in democratic politics has been undermined. According to one recent critique, celebrities possess a significant degree of epistemic power that is unconnected to appropriate expertise. This presents a problem both for deliberative and epistemic theories of democratic legitimacy, which ignore this form of power, and for real existing democracies attempting to meet the standards of legitimacy set out by these theories. But do these critiques apply to democratic elitism? In this paper, we argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power in fact represents a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits do come with certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable.

The aim of this book is to foster a more explicit and direct discussion of the concept of sacrifice and its importance in moral philosophy. Acts of self-sacrifice have a special place in our moral lives. We admire and celebrate those who give up their lives so that others may live. Despite this important role that sacrifice plays in our moral thinking, moral philosophers have had surprisingly little to say about the nature of sacrifice. This lack of attention to the nature of sacrifice is particularly important given that sacrifice also has an important role to play in several key debates in moral philosophy. The chapters in this volume make an important contribution to our understanding of sacrifice in three areas. The first part of the book investigates the nature of sacrifice. The next group of chapters investigates the role of sacrifice in moral philosophy. Three of these pieces investigate the role of sacrifice in our moral lives generally, while two investigate the role of sacrifice in relation to particular moral theories. The final two chapters investigate the value of sacrifice in relation to political and theological issues. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.

What role should a motivation to do the right thing, read de dicto, play in the life of a virtuous agent? According to a prominent argument from Michael Smith, those who are only motivated by such a desire are moral fetishists. Since Smith’s argument, a number of philosophers have examined what role this desire would play in the life of the morally virtuous agent. My primary aim in this paper is an historical one. I will show that much of this discussion can be found in Adam Smith’s The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1764), published over two hundred years before Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem. I will then argue that there is an important insight to be found in Adam Smith’s book that is missing from the contemporary discussion. According to Adam Smith, while a de dicto desire to do the right thing can play an important role in the life of a virtuous agent, the person who is only ever motivated by this desire will often be epistemically disadvantaged compared to the person who possesses the appropriate sentiments. I will argue that Adam Smith’s claim is plausible given his own view of the moral sentiments as providing the foundation of morality. In addition, there is good reason to accept Smith’s claim even for those who do not accept his view of the foundational role of the moral sentiments.

The aim of this chapter is broadly exploratory: we want to better understand online affective manipulation and what, if anything, is morally problematic about it. To do so, we begin by pulling apart various forms of online affective manipulation. We then proceed to discuss why online affective manipulation is properly categorized as manipulative, as well as what is wrong with (online) manipulation more generally. Building on this, we next argue that, at its most extreme, online affective manipulation constitutes a novel form of affective injustice that we call affective powerlessness. To demonstrate this, we introduce the notions of affective injustice and affective powerlessness and show how several forms of online affective manipulation leave users in this state. The upshot is that this chapter gives us a better grip on the nature of online affective manipulation, as well some tools to help us understand when and why it is morally problematic.

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 gives us reason to accept a radically demanding view of morality. We argue against this view by appealing to similar testimony from aesthetic exemplars. If we accept that the testimony of moral exemplars gives us reason to accept a radically demanding view of morality, then we should accept that the testimony of aesthetic exemplars supports a radically demanding view of aesthetic normativity. We argue that we should reject both arguments for radically demanding views, and instead see the testimony of exemplars as having something important to tell us about the nature of ideals. What we learn about morality and aesthetics from attending to the lives of moral exemplars is that those who embody an ideal are subject to obligations that others are not.

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 alienated from and that is at the same time closely connected to them and shapes many of their personal interactions. We offer three ways in which a celebrity might approach this conflict: (i) eradicating the divide between their public and private selves, (ii) splitting or separating their private and public selves, or (iii) embracing the arising tension. We argue that it is only this third approach that successfully mitigates the negative effects of the alienation felt by many celebrities.

Emotions play an important role in both sport and games, from the pride and joy of victory, the misery and shame of defeat, and the anger and anxiety felt along the way. This volume brings together experts in the philosophy of sport and games and experts in the philosophy of emotion to investigate this important area of research. The book discusses the role of the emotions for both participants and spectators of sports and games, including detailed discussions of suffering, shame, anger, anxiety, misery and hatred. It also investigates the issues of collective emotions in relation to sport such as the shared joy of a football crowd when their team scores a goal. In addition, this volume examines the role of pretence and make believe in emotional reactions to sport. In so doing, it makes important contributions both to the philosophy of sport and to the philosophy of emotions, which will be of interest to researchers and students in both fields.

How should feminists view acts of self-sacrifice performed by women? According to a long-standing critique of care ethics such acts ought to be viewed with scepticism. Care ethics, it is claimed, celebrates acts of self-sacrifice on the part of carers and in doing so encourages women to choose caring for others over their own self-development. In doing so, care ethics frustrates attempts to liberate women from the oppression of patriarchy. Care ethicists have responded to this critique by noting limits on the level, form, or scope of self-sacrifice that work to restrict its role in their theories. While we do not here take issue with the initial feminist critiques of self-sacrifice, we suspect that the strategies offered by Care ethicists in response are importantly flawed. Specifically, these responses undervalue the positive roles that self-sacrifice can play in fighting patriarchal oppression. As a result, in attempting to restrict an oppressive norm, these responses risk foreclosing on valuable means of resistance. Our aim is to explore these positive roles for self-sacrifice and thereby rehabilitate its standing with feminists.

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 distinct moral communities and identities. Third, celebrities possess high levels of epistemic power which can be used to help change and adapt our moral norms. We will then investigate two kinds of problems that arise from using celebrities in this way. Firstly, harm is done to celebrities because they are used in the ways explained in the first part of the article; secondly, celebrity life has a distinctive nature that can affect the moral agency of celebrities. Fame, we suggest, might lead to a morally unhealthy asymmetry in human relationships. We end by discussing the ethical implications of our analysis and conclude that when using stars for moral navigation, we should take into account the harm this does to them and the distinctive nature of their lives.

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 this solution, which is in its general form independent of virtue ethics, provides a plausible explanation of what makes some acts supererogatory and faces two important advantages over the most popular response to the problem of supererogation, The Sacrifice View. Unlike The Sacrifice View, The Cautionary Account can class acts of benevolence that advance the agent's own interests as supererogatory and easily explain why certain acts of sacrifice are neither permissible nor praiseworthy.

A familiar debate in the philosophy of sport concerns the question of whether fans should seek to be partisans (those who support particular teams or individuals) or whether they should instead adopt the impartial attitude of the purist. More recently, Kyle Fruh et al. have argued in defense of fair-weather fandom, which they understand as a form of fandom that involves adopting temporary allegiances in response to non-sporting considerations. This paper will add a new form of fandom to this discussion: the foul-weather fan. While fair-weather fans adopt temporary allegiances or strengthen existing allegiances for teams when things are going well, foul-weather fans do so when things are going badly. We will argue that foul-weather fandom can be both instrumentally valuable, as it helps to protect valuable sporting institutions, and non-instrumentally valuable, as these fans display concern, empathy, or support for sporting individuals or teams that are going through tough times. We finish by discussing how a specific form of foul-weather fandom may be associated with a distinctive moral danger in putting people in positions where they may become complicit in a club’s immorality.

Many accept that there are some acts that are ‘supererogatory’ or ‘beyond the call of duty’. Risking one’s life to save others or dedicating one’s life to helping the needy are often thought to be examples of such acts. Accepting the possibility of acts of this sort raises interesting problems for moral philosophy, as many moral theories appear to leave no room for the supererogatory. While these problems are increasingly recognized in moral philosophy, there remain a number of debates that have failed to pay sufficient attention to the existence of acts of this sort. In this thesis I investigate the implications of accepting the possibility of supererogation for three of these debates. The first issue I investigate is the relationship between morality and self-interest. One popular view is that supererogatory acts are those that demand too much sacrifice from those who could perform them. However, I argue that looking at self-reported accounts and empirical psychological studies of moral exemplars gives us good reason to reject this view, as it has the implausible implication that those with less developed moral consciences are excused from obligations that apply to those with more developed moral sensibilities. We should accept, then, that performing an act of supererogation may be in line with an agent's self-interest. The next debate I examine concerns the connection between moral judgements and motivation. Motivational judgement internalists claim that there is a necessary connection between moral judgements and motivation. However, it is often unclear which moral judgements this view is supposed to cover. The claim is made about judgements of 'moral goodness', 'moral rightness' and 'moral requirement'. I argue that internalists need to restrict their claim to moral obligation judgements. I then examine how to give an account of the relationship between moral obligations and reasons for action. It is often claimed that moral reasons are overriding. A related view is moral rationalism, which holds that agents have most reason to act in line with their moral requirements. I start by examining the differences between these two views before looking at what form of either view it is plausible to hold if we accept the existence of supererogation. I finish by looking at whether accepting the existence of supererogatory acts goes far enough or whether there is a need to make room for additional deontic categories, such as suberogation, quasi-supererogation or forced supererogation. I will argue that none of the arguments put forward in defence of these claims show that there is a need to make room for these additional categories.

This chapter critically analyses the ethical and political dimensions of supposedly subtle and non-coercive interventions that aim to ‘prevent crime’ through environmental designs making certain public spaces less attractive for specific groups. Examples include benches designed to discourage sleeping (targeted at homeless people), high-pitched noises or classical music played to deter lingering (targeted at youngsters), and specific lighting to prevent aggression (targeted at nightlife). While these interventions may appear less problematic than more traditional exclusionary measures, they raise ethical and political worries that come into view clearly when we analyse them as instances of nudging, on the one hand, and niche construction and affective scaffolding, on the other. Employing this approach reveals how these exclusionary environmental designs not only risk reinforcing problematic stereotypes and social inequalities and discipline rather than prevent crime, they also can alienate specific groups, constitute affective injustices, and inflexibly reduce the diverse purposes public spaces potentially have. The chapter argues that environments are never neutral as they inevitably support and encourage some bodies, behaviours, moods, and emotions while suppressing and discouraging others.