In his ‘Rules and Obligations,’ Bogdan Ciomaga defends a pluralist account of moral obligations to follow sport rules by arguing that no single explanation of such obligations will plausibly apply in multiple contexts. I dispute this claim by showing that consent generates rule-following obligations in a very wide variety of the contexts in which sports are played, including each of those Ciomaga cites in support of his pluralist account. The contractualist or consent-based theory of rule normativity therefore offers a substantially (...) unifying – though not a unitary, for reasons I go on to explain – source of moral obligations to follow sport rules. (shrink)

Two recent articles in this journal – one by Morris, the other by Pfleegor & Rosenberg – have revived the philosophical discussion of the ethics of deception in sport which had largely laid dormant since the 1973 publication of Pearson’s ‘Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics’. Morris and Pfleegor & Rosenberg both share with Pearson the view that ethical deceptive sport acts are those that relate to sport-specific skills. However, whereas Pearson ultimately grounds this view in the agreement she takes to obtain (...) amongst sport participants, both recent treatments overlook this fundamental aspect of her account and offer alternative justifications for that view. I argue, though, that in both cases the arguments offered are incomplete precisely because they require an appeal to the agreement amongst participants that lies at the foundation of Pearson’s account. On all three treatments, I argue, what ultimately determines an action’s ethical status is not its relation to sport-specific skills, but its conformit... (shrink)

In the last 35 years many philosophers have appealed to reference magnetism to explain how it is that we mean what we mean. The idea is that it is a constitutive principle of metasemantics that the interpretation that assigns the more natural meanings is correct, ceteris paribus. Among other things, magnetism has been used to answer the challenges of grue and quus, Quine’s indeterminacy of translation argument, and Putnam’s model-theoretic argument against realism. Critics of magnetism have usually objected to the (...) base notion of naturalness. Here I assume naturalness for the sake of argument, but argue that even still, reference magnetism should be rejected. The supposed force of reference magnetism is arbitrarily weak, and the best explanation of this is that it simply does not exist. (shrink)

Via the existential questioning outlook supplied by the Grasshopper’s three visions as relevant to the fate of humankind – oblivion, delusion, and really magnificent games – this article seeks to alleviate some of the ambiguity surrounding Bernard Suits’ provocative claim that Utopian existence is fundamentally concerned with game-playing. Specifically, after proposing an interpretation of Suits’ parable designed to enrich the logical intelligibility of his Utopian thesis, I advance the suggestion that the Grasshopper’s picture of people playing really magnificent games is (...) reasonably interpreted as a clue that the philosopher’s quest to discern games worthy of a Utopian might very well be that which saves humanity from the desolate oblivion-delusion paradox erected as a consequence of the initial two visions. (shrink)

In The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Suits maintains the following two theses: game-playing is defined as ‘activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity’ and ‘game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible.’ Observing that these two theses cannot be jointly maintained absent paradox, this essay explores the (...) logical possibility that if is true, then must be false. More specifically, in the tradition of conceptual analysis it is argued that Suits’ definition of game-playing is too narrow inasmuch as it excludes really magnificent Utopian games of significance. (shrink)

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper begins with a conceptual analysis of good sportspersonship. From this, four action categories are identified including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, not trying, and lusory self-handicapping. A strategy for evaluation is derived from the Grasshopper’s theory. Game-playing (...) is defined as action reflecting lusory attitude acknowledgement. Game-spoiling is introduced as action demonstrating lusory attitude abandonment. Three of the four actions categories are characterized as game-spoiling including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, and not trying. It is concluded that genuine good sportspersonship is characterized solely by altruistic forms of lusory self-handicapping. (shrink)

The question of acceptability in respect to the strategic foul in sport has provoked a rich and seemingly irreconcilable dispute with normative theorists currently divided amongst three schools of thought including formalism, conventionalism and interpretivism. In this paper, I seek to transcend the three-way intellectual stalemate portrayed in the literature via a consideration as to whether or not the strategic foul qualifies as ‘Utopian’. More specifically, after demonstrating that Bernard Suits’ theory of game-playing is fully capable of embracing all three (...) rival accounts, I seek to end the normative debate altogether via a conceptual analysis of the strategic foul as unacceptable via the higher-order point of view afforded by essentialism. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the coercion argument against performance-enhancing drugs . According to this argument, lifting the ban on PEDs would undermine the autonomy of athletes by creating a situation where everyone must either use PEDs or not compete at the highest levels of sport. Four problems are raised for this argument and it is concluded that the argument fails. A variation on the coercion argument is also considered and rejected.

On a widely held view in aesthetics, appreciation requires disinterested attention. George Dickie famously criticized a version of this view championed by the aesthetic attitude theorists. I revisit his criticisms and extract an overlooked challenge for accounts that seek to characterize appreciative engagement in terms of distinctive motivation: at minimum, the motivational profile such accounts propose must make a difference to how appreciative episodes unfold over time. I then develop a proposal to meet this challenge by drawing an analogy between (...) how attention is guided in appreciation and how practical action is guided in ‘striving play’—a mode of game play recently foregrounded in the philosophy of games. On the resulting account, appreciation involves an ‘inverted’ motivational structure: the appreciating agent's attention is guided by cognitive goals taken up instrumentally, for the sake of the cognitive activity that results from attending under the guidance of those goals. (shrink)

In this explorative study, we investigated motives of autonomous learners to participate in an online course, and how these motives are related to gameplay motivations, engagement in the course experience, and learning outcomes. The guiding premise for the study has been the idea that learning and game playing carry phenomenal similarities that could be revealed by scrutinizing motives for participating in a massive open online course that does not involve any intentionally game-like features. The research was conducted by analyzing survey (...) data collected from individuals who had voluntarily participated in an open online course about artificial intelligence and its societal impact. The survey included an explorative Motives for Autonomous Learning inventory. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the MAL inventory consisted of six dimensions out of which four were consistent with factors that earlier research has associated with motives to engage with video games. Of the identified factors, the dimension that most clearly described autonomous and playful predispositions was found to be a main precedent for both experienced gamefulness of the learning experience and positive learning outcomes. In all, the results of this study demonstrated that playfulness and autonomy were both prominent and significant factors across the whole learning process. (shrink)

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 5, Issue 2, Page 161-174, May 2011.

The analysis of so-called ?strategic intentional fouls? (SIF) as well as the discussion of their validity in the normative systems of sports have a long track record. These fouls can be characterised as rule violations committed in order to be detected and which accept the corresponding sanction. However, there is an additional goal of obtaining an advantage or subsequent benefit in the competition. In fact, this practice is not infrequent and it is even occasionally accepted by the players themselves, referees, (...) judges, sports authorities and spectators. In this work I have analysed the internal structure of SIFs (the features of an axiological gap and a ?special intention?) with a view to providing a deeper understanding and stressing the differences with closely related concepts: cheating, and especially fraus legis or what in Anglo-Saxon culture is called ?spoiling the game?. Finally, I try to show some difficulties in distinguishing SIF from gamesmanship. (shrink)

The first goal of this paper is to reply to a number of criticisms levied by Gunnar Breivik and Robert L. Simon against an account of sporting skills I published almost 20 years ago in which I distinguished between constitutive and restorative skills and examined their normative significance. To accomplish this goal, I first summarize my characterization and classification of skills and then detail the criticisms. After responding to the latter, and thus reconsidering and hopefully strengthening my account of skill (...) in sport, I turn my attention to Scott Kretchmar and Tim Elcombe’s inquiry into the skills involved in competitive sport. These authors claim that contesting skills demand the same respect usually accorded to testing skills. The second goal of this paper is then to explore Kretchmar and Elcombe’s inquiry under the light of my reconsidered analysis of skill. I specifically advocate a plausible relationship, both in terms of their distinctive character and relative import, between testing and contesting skills and constitutive and restorative skills. In doing so, I seek to present a more comprehensive account of skill in non-competitive and competitive sport. (shrink)

One important limitation of the current renditions of interpretivism is that its emphasis on the moral dimension of sport has overlooked the aesthetic dimension lying at the core of this account of sport. The interpretivist’s failure to acknowledge and consider the aesthetic implicitly distances this realm from the moral. Marcia Muelder Eaton calls this distancing the separatist mistake. This paper argues that interpretivism presupposes not only moral but also aesthetic principles and values. What it sets out to demonstrate is that (...) interpretivism is an integralist, or nonseparatist, account of sport, one in which ethical and aesthetic values are not exclusive. Making explicit and specifying interpretivism’s combined moral-aesthetic approach to sport not only helps to better distinguish the whole range of values that make up sport as well as their interconnection but also encourages sportspeople to pursue more coherent sport and, thus, more enriching lives. (shrink)

Johnson and Hudecki argue that Bernard Suits fails to refute Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ view of games because Suits’s account of how games begin, how they are played, and the ends they involve, fails to match basic facts of player experience. In reply, the current paper describes three keys to interpreting The Grasshopper: (1) distinguishing the four perspectives from which Suits describes games, (2) recognizing Suits' dispositional view of rule following, and (3) understanding the geometrical metaphor Suits uses to describe rules. (...) In light of these, this paper argues that Johnson and Hudecki’s critiques are either mistaken or are actually affirmations of Suits' position. (shrink)

Bernard Suits is commonly thought to have defined games as challenges. This paper argues that Suits could not have done so without ruining his larger philosophical project. It then argues that he did not do so. Suits defined game playing in quantitative terms (i.e. being more or less efficient) not qualitative ones (e.g. difficulty, struggle). The paper concludes by exploring the consequences of this shift in perspective.

The outcomes of sports and competitive games excite intense emotions in many people, even when those same people acknowledge that those outcomes are of trifling importance. I call this incongruity between the judged importance of the outcome and the intense reactions it provokes the Puzzle of Sport. The puzzle can be usefully compared to another puzzle in aesthetics: the Paradox of Fiction, which asks how it is we become emotionally caught up with events and characters we know to be unreal. (...) In this article, I examine the prospects of understanding our engagement with competitive games on the model of our engagement with works of fiction, thus enabling analogous explanations for both puzzles. I show that there are significant problems with such an approach and offer an alternative, mobilizing ideas from David Velleman and Thomas Nagel, that appeals to the volatility of our motivational attitudes. (shrink)

Smartfounding is the opposite of “dumbfounding” introduced by Jonathan Haidt’s research on disgust. Dumbfounders have general competence at thought experiment. However, they are flustered by thought experiments that support repugnant conclusions. Instead of following the supposition wherever it leads, they avoid unsettling implications by adding extraneous information or ignoring stipulated conditions. The dumbfounded commit performance errors, often seeming to regress to the answers of people who lack formal schooling. Smartfounders retain their composure. They practice subversive compliance, obeying the instructions in (...) a way that spoils the aim of the thought experiment. Smartfounders offer a more sophisticated grade of resistance to thought experiment. Whereas the lower grades of resistance are merely fallacious, smartfounding often constitutes a penetrating internal critique of the thought experiment and sometimes of thought experiments in general. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to reconceptualise the relationship between politics and sporting practice with the aim of gesturing towards broad themes that a political theory of sport could explore. Many philosophical theories of sport, including the dominant mutualist view, are internalist: they suggest that there is some distinctive logic internal to sports that must feature in the best explanation of our sporting practices. Yet, in attempting to articulate this distinctive internal logic, mutualists quarantine sport from its wider context (...) to understand sporting practice on its own terms. This methodological decision, I argue, invites the unwarranted assumption that sporting practice and politics constitute two separate domains bearing little to no relation to one another. Consequently, mutualism provides us with an impoverished understanding of sporting practice – especially in colonial contexts. Against this view, I use CLR James' writings to show how the internal norms and rules of cricket simultaneously perpetuate an oppressive social structure and articulate the beginnings of an emancipatory political project. This, in turn, has the potential to connect debates within the philosophy of sport to questions around resistance and oppression. (shrink)

The aim of this paper has been to contribute to the ongoing discourse on skill, know-how, and expertise in the sporting world by posting an alternative view, one that explores the meaningfulness of difference from the outlook of difference. Hence, my ambition was to put focus on how we look at difference in the sporting world and, subsequently, to set the stage for expanding the analytical framework we use in exploring sports today. Essentially, my argument is based on an assumption (...) that the prevailing paradigm of sports is constructed and continuously redeveloped on the grand narrative of modernity emphasizing sameness over difference, and consequently, leaving sportification as its evolutionary footprint. Accordingly, in pursuit of an alternative, I have utilized a postmodern outlook with emphasis on emancipation, deconstruction, vocabulary, dialog, diversity, and aesthetics as the analytical framework in constructing a narrative of difference, rather than sameness. More so, as to frame the argu... (shrink)

Are norms of inquiry in tension with epistemic norms? I provide a (largely) negative answer, turning to a picture of epistemic practices as rule-governed games. The idea is that, while epistemic norms are correctness standards for the attitudes involved in epistemic games, norms of inquiry derive from the aims of those games. Attitudes that, despite being epistemically correct, are inadvisable regarding the goals of some inquiry are just like bad (but legal) moves in basketball or chess. I further consider cases (...) in which the aims of inquiry recommend breaking epistemic norms. I compare them to strategic infractions, which are common in many coherent games. Finally, I explore the connections between rules and aims in games and in inquiry. I show that in both cases respecting the rules is constitutively required for satisfying the aims of the practice. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on sport and games has had little to say about boredom beyond presuming that sports and games can be important ways of overcoming or preventing it. But boredom is an interesting and often misunderstood phenomenon with overlooked implications in this context. Boredom has significant human value and motivates play in ways that contribute to well-being and culture, often through encouraging engaged agency and exploration of novelty. Understanding boredom can also help to clarify problems and tendencies in sports (...) and games that qualify them as havens from boredom. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a ‘core-periphery’ model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as ‘sport-likeness’ – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers (...) interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. (shrink)

Accounts of aesthetic valuing emphasize two constraints on the formation of aesthetic belief. We must form our own aesthetic beliefs by engaging with aesthetic value first-hand (the acquaintance principle) and by using our own capacities (the autonomy principle). But why? C. Thi Nguyen’s proposal is that aesthetic valuing has an inverted structure. We often care about inquiry and engagement for the sake of having true beliefs, but in aesthetic engagement this is flipped: we care about arriving at good aesthetic beliefs (...) for the sake of the values that arise in the process of doing so. The engagement is the point, so we must use our own capacities in first-hand encounters. Here I challenge Nguyen’s account. I argue that it misconstrues the value of aesthetic belief; it conflicts with restrictions on aesthetic testimony; and it has trouble harnessing engagement-value for a theory of aesthetic value. A better approach emphasizes the social character of aesthetic valuing. On this view, aesthetic valuing is a social practice structured around the collaborative exercise and improvement of certain special capacities. The autonomy and acquaintance principles tell us to engage these capacities in forming our aesthetic beliefs. Understood aright, and contrary to consensus, these rules are identical. (shrink)

One of the most pressing and debated issues in contemporary sport is the inclusion of transgender athletes in competition. This is especially the case of transgender women who seek to compete in th...

The concept of metagames can be of use to philosophers of sport and games. However, the term “metagame” is used throughout the literature in several different, distinct senses, few of which are clearly defined, and as a result there remains ambiguity about what, precisely, this term means. In this paper, I attempt to disambiguate the term metagame. I have come across at least four different senses of “metagame” in academic literature about games. Of these four senses, most relevant to philosophers (...) of sport and games is what I have termed “ludic” metagames. Ludic metagames involve playing a game “on top of” another game. I attempt to spell out this concept in particular detail, distinguishing it from related – but distinct – ways in which the formal features of a game can be modified without giving rise to metagames. (shrink)

Since its beginnings, modern bodybuilding has been accompanied by the background issue of whether it should be considered a sport. The problem, culminating in its provisional acceptance as a sport by the International Olympic Committee, was later retracted. The uncertainty of whether bodybuilding is a sport or not seems to linger. Addressing this issue, Aranyosi (2018) provided an account to determine the status of bodybuilding as a sport that arrives at the negative answer: bodybuilding is not a sport but rather (...) a form of artistic presentation. In this paper, we disagree with Aranyosi. We argue that by the standards he presents in his first argument, bodybuilding should be considered a sport. Further, we argue that his alternative approach on how to evaluate a discipline as more sport- or art-like on a spectrum, is not a valid basis to make such a judgment regarding bodybuilding. Further, even if his spectrum was modified to enable such a judgment, again it would result in bodybuilding being evaluated as a sport. Therefore, we conclude that everyone who accepts Aranyosi´s (or any less restrictive) requirements to decide whether bodybuilding is a sport, has to consider bodybuilding as a sport or refrain from making claims about its status. (shrink)

In domains as disparate as playing Go and predicting the structure of proteins, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have begun to perform at levels beyond which any humans can achieve. Does this fact represent something lamentable? Does superhuman AI performance somehow undermine the value of human achievements in these areas? Go grandmaster Lee Sedol suggested as much when he announced his retirement from professional Go, blaming the advances of Go-playing programs like AlphaGo for sapping his will to play the game at (...) a high level. In this paper, I attempt to make sense of Sedol’s lament. I consider a number of ways that the existence of superhuman-performing AI technologies could undermine the value of human achievements. I argue there is very little in the nature of the technology itself that warrants such despair. (Compare: does the existence of a fighter jet undermine the value of being the fastest human sprinter?) But I also argue there are several more localized domains where these technologies threaten to displace human beings from being able to achieve valuable things at all. This is a particular worry for those in unequal societies, I argue, given the difficulty of many achievements and the corresponding amount of resources needed to achieve great things. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show that fraleigh, in "right actions in sport", has not successfully argued for the supremacy of knowledge as an inherent value in sport. this involves a discussion of how fraleigh misapplied criteria from the moral point of view (baier), why he should not have attempted to use these criteria in the first place, and how the application of nonmoral standards fails to show the putative supremacy. "challenge" and "uncertainty" are offered as potentially stronger (...) candidates to explain human fascination with sport. (shrink)

UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations represent the most restrictive regulatory intervention European club football has ever seen. Put simply, it demands from clubs to operate on the basis of their own football-related incomes. While the policy has attracted considerable attention from the economic and social sciences, very few contributions systematically investigate it from a philosophical-ethical perspective. The present paper fills this research gap by posing questions on FFP in relation to fair play as a normative concept. We draw on sport (...) economic assessments concerning potential outcomes of FFP and argue that the policy should go beyond the mere pragmatic goal of promoting financial sustainability and truly aim for creating a level playing field, otherwise it should not be labeled ‘fair play’. (shrink)

(1993). Why Olympic Athletes Should Avoid the Use and Seek the Elimination of Performance-Enhancing Substances and Practices From the Olympic Games. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 64-81. doi: 10.1080/00948705.1993.9714504.

What are rules? In this paper I develop a view of regulative rules which takes them to be a distinctive normative kind occupying a middle ground between orders and normative truths. The paradigmatic cases of regulative rules that I’m interested in are social rules like rules of etiquette and legal rules like traffic rules. On the view I’ll propose, a rule is a general normative content that is in force due to human activity: enactment by an authority or acceptance by (...) a community. Rules are unlike orders in being not necessarily communicative, not an expression’s of the giver’s will, not evaluable for sincerity, and in that they have propositional content. And they’re unlike normative truths in that they’re themselves not even truth-evaluable (though their contents are). This is because rules qua things that are in force are not like constatives which have a mind to world direction of fit, but more like performatives. Furthermore, they differ from normative truths in that their normativity is isolated from their background justification and is therefore not dependent on contributory notions like reasons coming together in a weighing explanation. As such, they occupy a middle ground between orders and normative truths, much like in H. L. A. Hart’s opinion law occupies a middle ground between “coercion” and “morality” (Hart 1961/1994). I also illustrate the virtues of this understanding of rules by showing how proper appreciation of how they differ from normative truths helps us defuse a common objection to Hart’s practice theory of rules. (shrink)

C. Thi Nguyen claims that although we can make aesthetic judgements based on testimony or inference, we resist doing so owing to a contingent norm of our social practice. For Nguyen, aesthetic engagement involves a ‘motivational inversion’ similar to games in which we adopt inefficient means of winning so that we can enjoy the process of playing. Similarly, he says, adopting the norm enables us to engage in the autonomous activity of appreciation. I argue that Nguyen is right that the (...) purpose of our practice is appreciation, but wrong to think any motivational inversion is required in pursuing it. (shrink)

In our life with science, we trust experts; we form judgements by inference from past evidence. We conduct ourselves very differently in the aesthetic domain. We avoid deferring to aesthetic experts. We form our judgements through direct perception of particulars rather than through inference. Why the difference? I suggest that we avoid aesthetic testimony and aesthetic inference, not because they’re unusable, but because we have adopted social norms to avoid them. Aesthetic appreciation turns out to be something like a game. (...) We have laid down certain rules and restrictions in order to shape a kind of activity we cherish. And aesthetic properties turn out to be a kind of social construct. Much like the goal of a game, they are constituted in part by our obedience to certain rules. The norms of aesthetic life are different from those of science because our purposes are different. We engage in science to get the right answers; we engage in aesthetic appreciation to be absorbed in the activity of the sensuous perception of particulars. Our aesthetic practices are a constructed shelter from science; they restore to us a small domain where we may once again engage in our own sensuous perception of particulars. (shrink)

In recent years, reports on youth sports excesses and abuses of minors underscore the need for a safer sport environment. However, the way in which parents guide their children in dealing with winning and losing in sports is less understood. A care ethical inquiry into sport parenting might contribute to a better understanding of the role parents play in creating a safe sport environment for their children. This study applies theoretical perspectives from care ethics into practical context focusing on the (...) relationship between parents and their sporting children through the lens of relational identity. An interpretative phenomenological study was conducted into the meaning of competitiveness amongst Dutch parents of children aged eleven and twelve, who play hockey and are in the midst of transitioning from sport as a game to competitive sport. This article concludes that the meaning of competitiveness for these parents is twofold. On the one hand there is a desire to be proud of your child’s success, fuelled by meritocratic ideals. On the other hand, parents desire their child’s ongoing commitment to sport, which they consider a return investment for the sacrifices they make to support their child’s sport participation. From a care ethical stance of relational responsibility, parents should not solely view sport as a quid pro quo concept in which desires are fulfilled or battles settled, but rather as a game that is enjoyed by both parents and children. Mature sport parenting can only emerge once the tensions resulting from parental sacrifices on the one hand and the child’s loyalty to meet parental expectations on the other are overcome through dialogue and reflection, aimed at elucidating responsibilities within the relationship. More research is needed to gain insight into the significance of this relational connection for the youth sports climate. (shrink)

This essay develops a Kantian theory of sport which addresses: (1) Kant’s categories of aesthetic judgment (2) a comparable analysis applied to athletic volition; (3) aesthetic cognition and experience and athletic volition and experience; (4) ‘free’ and ‘attached’ beauty; (5) Kant’s theory of teleological judgment; (6) the moral concept of a ‘kingdom of ends’ and sportsmanship; (7) the beautiful and the sublime in sport-experience; (8) respect and religious emotion in sport-experience; (9) the Kantian system and philosophical anthropology; and (10) sport (...) and self-knowledge. (shrink)

In 'The Grasshopper' Suits proposes that ‘playing a game’ can be captured as an attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs (prelusory goal), using only means permitted by rules (lusory means). These rules prohibit more efficient means, and are accepted because they make the activity possible (lusory attitude). I argue these conditions are not jointly sufficient. The starting point for the argument is the idea that goals, means and attitudes can pick out their content in different ways. They can (...) involve a direct reference (‘crossing this specific finish line’), or a description that picks out something (‘crossing a line on the track after running 100 m’). I provide cases in which one’s attitudes, accepted goals or accepted means pick out their content by a description such that the person does not play a game, even if Suits’s conditions are satisfied. I show that this demands an epistemic condition for playing a game that also applies to commitment based accounts. Finally, I discuss what such an epistemic condition could be. I argue that the condition does not require personal knowledge of all goals and means, but merely enough epistemic access that the goal and permissible means can guide one’s behavior safely enough. This might be satisfied by social extensions, such as access to tools (e.g. a rulebook) or other people (e.g. referees). (shrink)

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

Roller derby, once known for scripted theatricality that made it more like a stage play than a sport, has reinvented itself as a legitimate athletic endeavour. Since its rebirth as the Women's Flat Track Derby Association in the early 2000s, it has experienced exponential growth, from 30 flat track derby leagues in 2005 to more than 450 leagues in 2010. This translates to more than 15,000 skaters worldwide. Roller derby provides a unique case of a women's sport that is not (...) derived from, or a diminutive version of, a men's sport, proudly stating as its philosophy a commitment to be?by the skaters, for the skaters?. This do-it-yourself aspect opens the way for examination of what a sport wholly created by women looks like and how that differs from sports created by men. The WFTDA claims that roller derby is empowering and revolutionary, yet some critics have claimed that the skaters reinforce rather than dismantle gender stereotypes. Using tools from previous gender critiques, I analyse several aspects of roller derby for their emancipatory potential and conclude that, while not completely unproblematic, the sport can function as a force for reshaping ideas about women, femininity, and sport. (shrink)

“Look Great Naked!” “Sexy Legs Now!” “Score a Perfect 10 Body!” These invitations appear regularly on the covers of glossy fitness magazines, always beside a photograph of a too-perfect-not-to-be-airbrushed, generally scantily clad, young woman. Are they really invitations or are they imperatives? What should we make of the apparently presumed connection between fitness and sex? These are the questions that drive this article, in which we distinguish between fitness and sport and provide a feminist account of fitness to set the (...) stage for analysis of the conflict between norms of femininity and heteronormativity in sport and in the fitness industry. We examine the medicalization of fitness to show that women’s... (shrink)