Alfred Archer
@alfredarcher.bsky.social
440 followers 640 following 37 posts

Scottish philosopher working in the Netherlands at Tilburg University. Views my own. Extravagance and Misery https://shorturl.at/09JoQ Why It's OK to be a Sports Fan https://shorturl.at/bgJX0 Honouring and Admiring the Immoral https://t.co/ZBPrZ .. more

Philosophy 26%
Psychology 19%
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
New publication! ✨

Why does the growing everyday use of psychotherapy terms feel both empowering and troubling?

Because two practices are at play: mental health-speak, which empowers, and therapy-speak, which distorts.

w/ @almagro.bsky.social
in @journalphp.bsky.social

🔓 tinyurl.com/24bhx4e9

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Back to abusive partners demanding respect for their “boundaries” & abusive bosses recommending mindfulness.

I talked with @seiaraimanova.bsky.social about my work w/ @almagro.bsky.social on therapy-speak on her amazing podcast Behind the Stigma🎙️

Check it out!

www.buzzsprout.com/1402324/epis...

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Check out the latest issue from affiliated journal Passion, the SI 'Emotions—More Like Stars or Constellations?', edited by Heidy Meriste and Bruno Mölder (Tartu). The issue asks how to categorize emotions, and how much weight should we put on the study of folk emotion concepts. Open access! /1

Reposted by Alfred Archer

New paper accepted!🎉

Is Taylor Swift responsible for how she makes her fans feel?

Yes; the notion of affective power (the ability to influence how others feel) can help identify the responsibilities celebrities have towards their fans.

w/ G.Mills & @alfredarcher.bsky.social

Preprint ⬇️

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Was going to suggest all the things Jake did. On this topic, I don't know anything that draws on speech acts but this paper of mine takes an affective scaffolding approach and argues that fans creating a hostile atmosphere can be justified in certain sports link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Away from Home: The Ethics of Hostile Affective Scaffolding - Topoi
During live sporting events, fans often create intense atmospheres in stadiums, expressing support for their own local players and discouragement for the opposition. Crowd hostility directed at opposi...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Alfred Archer

‘These are not deals that lead to the British people owning industry, which Miliband claimed in 2023 was one of Labour’s objectives. They are subsidies and incentives, large sums of public money accruing no equity.’

@ewangibbs.bsky.social on an oil refinery closure: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ewan Gibbs · Goodbye to Grangemouth
Any form of ‘just transition’ – managing the move to a greener economy while also protecting workers and...
www.lrb.co.uk

An absolute pleasure to work on this together with @isernmas.bsky.social and Katrien Schaubroeck
New publication! ✨

Should we mourn morally flawed celebrities?

We argue that public mourning risks reinforcing testimonial and affective injustice and normalizing wrongdoing –and discuss how to mourn without causing these harms.

w/ K. Schaubroeck & @alfredarcher.bsky.social
🔓 shorturl.at/Z3LXN
No One Mourns the Wicked: The Ethics of Mourning Morally Flawed Celebrities
Click on the article title to read more.
shorturl.at

Reposted by Alfred Archer

New publication! ✨

Should we mourn morally flawed celebrities?

We argue that public mourning risks reinforcing testimonial and affective injustice and normalizing wrongdoing –and discuss how to mourn without causing these harms.

w/ K. Schaubroeck & @alfredarcher.bsky.social
🔓 shorturl.at/Z3LXN
No One Mourns the Wicked: The Ethics of Mourning Morally Flawed Celebrities
Click on the article title to read more.
shorturl.at

Reposted by Alfred Archer

First publication out! It questions whether people who report loss of community due to gentrification and migration should both be treated as victims of injustice. My view is that we should, although injustice has different grounds in the latter case: the unjust distribution of affective burdens.
Gentrification, migration, and non-material injustice
Gentrification can harm residents at a personal and emotional level, even when they are not physically displaced. Recognising these non-material harms as a source of wrongful ‘phenomenological disp...
www.tandfonline.com

And congrats to you Jules!

Reposted by Constantine Sandis

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Passion Special Issue: Faces of Affective Injustice CFP!

Join our amazing contributors - Eleanor Byrne, Myisha Cherry, Francisco Gallegos, Federica Gregoratto, Carme Isern Mas, Imke von Maur, Jan Slaby, Shiloh Whitney, and Michalinos Zembylas - and send us your work on Affective Injustice

Here is something I wrote about why it's dangerous for those campaigning for equality to draw on the power of celebrity to advance their cause. #philsky onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Using Celebrity to Advance Equality
Click on the article title to read more.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Lisa Bortolotti

New paper of mine out (open access) in @journalphp.bsky.social together with @jakewojtowicz.bsky.social and Kyle Fruh exploring sports fandom, fanaticism, exploitation and sportswashing #philsky
Latest papers: Jake Wojtowicz, Alfred Archer & Kyle Fruh sketch the similarities between fandom and fanaticism and argue that sports fandom is often a form of fanaticism in this open access article doi.org/10.1080/0951...
Three sports fans

Reposted by Alfred Archer

This impressive book was a subject of a symposium at this conference, which i couldn’t attend and sent a recording with my commentary. The centrepiece of the book is a model of a particular type of misery characteristic of a life in a market society 1/n

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Latest papers: Jake Wojtowicz, Alfred Archer & Kyle Fruh sketch the similarities between fandom and fanaticism and argue that sports fandom is often a form of fanaticism in this open access article doi.org/10.1080/0951...
Three sports fans

Reposted by Alfred Archer

🚨 for everyone interested in the state of Italian political thought today, you can now pre-order our book An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought. Coming soon in early 2026. And it’s even for a reasonable price!

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/introduct...
An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought
Over the past three decades, Italian thought has emerged as a major field within continental philosophy. But what are the latest developments since Italian theo…
www.bloomsbury.com

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Very pleased to finally get this out:

doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaf036

I show how fictional examples can (subject to certain conditions) function like real case studies in providing evidence about the social world.

And in certain areas of philosophy, fictional examples can even offer unique benefits.
In defence of fictional examples
Abstract. This paper provides a novel defence of the philosophical use of examples drawn from literature, by comparison with thought experiments and real c
doi.org

Reposted by Alfred Archer

Hi folks! We're hiring another 3-year postdoc to join a project on human-LLM communication. Based in the philosophy dept but also open to candidates from other relevant fields (e.g., linguistic pragmatics, experimental psychology). Application deadline 30th April.
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Postdoctoral Fellow/Researcher - "Artifical Intelligence: Human-LLM Communication" (276987) | University of Oslo
Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow/Researcher - "Artifical Intelligence: Human-LLM Communication" (276987), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
www.jobbnorge.no