•  118
    Consigning to History
    Philosophers' Imprint. forthcoming.
    How might a society wrong people by the way in which it remembers its past? In recent years, philosophers have articulated serval ways in which people may be wronged by dominant historical narratives. My focus will be on a way in which we may wrong people which has yet to feature in this discussion: the consigning of people to history. This paper investigates the wrongs involved in collective narratives that consign certain identities to a country’s past but not its present or future. I will arg…Read more
  •  9
    The Cautionary Account of Supererogation
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    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 indepen…Read more
  •  94
    In what way might public statues wrong people? In recent years, philosophers have drawn on speech act theory to answer this question by arguing that statues constitute harmful or disrespectful forms of speech. My aim in this paper will be add a different theoretical perspective to this discussion. I will argue that while the speech act approach provides a useful starting point for thinking about what is wrong with public statues, we can get a fuller understanding of these wrongs by drawing on re…Read more
  •  354
    Ethics of Parasocial Relationships
    In Monika Betzler & Jörg Löschke (eds.), The Ethics of Relationships: Broadening the Scope, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    In this chapter we analyse the nature and ethical implications of parasocial relationships. While this type of relationship has received significant attention in other interdisciplinary fields such as celebrity studies and fan studies, philosophers have so far had very little to say about them. Parasocial relationships are usually defined as asymmetrical, in which a media-user closely relates to a media-personality as if they were a friend or family member, and where this connection is mostly un…Read more
  •  379
    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 paper is to examine the most plausible way to unders…Read more
  •  75
    Heroic Supererogation
    Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies. 2023.
    In this entry I will introduce two such puzzles that relate to the heroic actions and testimony. I will first introduce the basic idea of supererogation and why some heroic actions give us reason to accept the existence of supererogatory actions. I will then introduce the problem that supererogation raises for moral theory and explain the main responses that have been offered to this problem. I will then explain two related problems that arise from the way that heroes describe their actions and …Read more
  •  8
    Foul-weather fandom
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 50 (3): 383-401. 2023.
    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 dis…Read more
  •  215
    What’s the Use of Non-moral Supererogation?
    In David Heyd (ed.), Handbook of Supererogation, Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 237-253. 2023.
    While moral philosophers have paid significant attention to the concept of moral supererogation, far less attention has been paid to the possibility that supererogation may also exist in other areas of normativity. Recently, though, philosophers have begun to consider the possible existence of prudential, epistemic, aesthetic, and sporting supererogation. These discussions tend to focus on aspects of our practices in these areas of normativity that suggest an implicit acceptance of the existence…Read more
  •  346
    Emotional Imperialism
    Philosophical Topics. forthcoming.
    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 (Archer & Mills 2019; Mills 2019; Srinivasan 2018; Whitney 2018). In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism (Archer & Matheson 2022). This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expan…Read more
  •  27
    Exemplars and expertise: what we cannot learn from saints and heroes
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    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 v…Read more
  •  46
    This book offers readers a pitch side seat to the ethics of fandom. Its accessible six chapters are aimed both at true sports fans whose conscience may be occasionally piqued by their pastime, and at those who are more certain of the moral hazards involved in following a team or sport. Why It's OK to Be a Sports Fan wrestles with a range of arguments against fandom and counters with its own arguments on why being a fan is very often a good thing. It looks at the ethical issues fans face, from th…Read more
  •  18
    Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (2): 340-357. 2023.
    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, celeb…Read more
  •  29
    Being a Celebrity: Alienation, Integrity, and the Uncanny
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4): 597-615. 2023.
    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 c…Read more
  •  272
    Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (n/a). 2023.
    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 victims apply those demands to themselves. We discuss t…Read more
  •  2059
    Talent, Skill, and Celebrity
    with Catherine M. Robb
    Ethical Perspectives 29 (1): 33-63. 2022.
    A commonly raised criticism against celebrity culture is that it celebrates people who become famous without any connection to their skills, talents or achievements. A culture in which people become famous simply for being famous is criticized for being shallow and inauthentic. In this paper we offer a defence of celebrity by arguing against this criticism. We begin by outlining what we call the Talent Argument: celebrity is a negative cultural phenomenon because it creates and sustains fame wit…Read more
  •  427
    Introduction: The Morality of Fame
    Ethical Perspectives 29 (1): 1-6. 2022.
    Introduction
  •  82
    Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 17 (1): 101-118. 2023.
    When the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup was awarded to Qatar, it raised a number of moral concerns, perhaps the most prominent of which was Qatar’s woeful record on human rights in the arena of migrant labour. Qatar’s interest in hosting the event is aptly characterised as a case of ‘sportswashing’. The first aim of this paper is to provide an account of the nature of sportswashing, as a practice of using an association with sport, usually through hosting an event or owning a club (such as Newcastle …Read more
  •  11
    Aesthetic Supererogation
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (1): 102. 2020.
  •  30
    Online affective manipulation
    In Michael Klenk & Fleur Jongepier (eds.), The Philosophy of Online Manipulation, Routledge. pp. 311-326. 2022.
    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 manipul…Read more
  •  47
    It’s much more important than that: against fictionalist accounts of fandom
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 49 (1): 83-98. 2022.
    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 pa…Read more
  •  67
    The Ethics of Love
    The Journal of Ethics 25 (4): 423-427. 2021.
  •  429
    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 close 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 attention to untrustworthy sources. Moreover, c…Read more
  •  37
    Celebrity Politics and Democratic Elitism
    Topoi 41 (1): 33-43. 2021.
    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 demo…Read more
  •  41
    Fans, Crimes and Misdemeanors: Fandom and the Ethics of Love
    The Journal of Ethics 25 (4): 543-566. 2021.
    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 provid…Read more
  •  93
    Is it appropriate to honour and admire people who have created great works of art, made important intellectual contributions, performed great sporting feats or shaped the history of a nation if those people have also acted immorally? This book provides a philosophical investigation of this important and timely question. The authors draw on the latest research from ethics, value theory, philosophy of emotion, social philosophy and social psychology to develop and substantiate arguments that have …Read more
  •  162
    Epistemic Injustice and the Attention Economy
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (5): 777-795. 2020.
    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. 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 distinct form of epistemic injustice. We begin by outlining what w…Read more
  •  941
    The claim that we live in a post-truth era has led to a significant body of work across different disciplines exploring the phenomenon. Many have sought to investigate the role of fake news in bringing about the post-truth era. While this work is important, the narrow focus on this issue runs the risk of giving the impression that it is mainly new forms of media that are to blame for the post-truth phenomenon. In this paper, we call attention to the ways in which journalistic practices in tradit…Read more
  •  71
    Admiration Over Time
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4): 669-689. 2020.
    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, these cases highlight what we call the puzzle of ad…Read more
  •  686
    Supererogation and Consequentialism
    In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism, Oxford University Press. 2020.
    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 accommodate supererogation: including satisficing conseq…Read more