Some philosophers of sport have suggested that strategic fouling is acceptable if you pay full compensation. In this paper I will argue that the idea of ‘compensation’ is conceptually inadequate to deal with strategic fouling. Compensation is a legal remedy designed to make the victim of a wrong whole again, i.e. make good the loss or harm they have suffered. But compensation as the analogon between law and games is ill-conceived when applied to strategic fouling. I will suggest another analogon (...) from the law of obligations – restitution – which is more apt to deal with strategic fouling and which shows more clearly why the ‘compensation’ prescribed by the rules often fails to restore the fouled side. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Meritocracy, in which success depends on ability and effort, is a desirable goal for sport, even if sport does not achieve this goal perfectly. However, even in a meritocracy whether athletes deserve praise is questionable, given that a determinant of success, genetic endowments, is beyond their control. From a hard determinist perspective, even the elements of athletes’ actions that appear to be within their control—their diligence in developing their skill and strategy and their good sportsmanship—are themselves a function of (...) other environmental and genetic factors for which they deserve no credit. However, a more plausible approach is the compatibilist view that enables us to combine moral evaluation of athletes’ actions with recognizing the causal influences on human behavior. In contrast with manipulation, which really does negate control over our actions, causation that operates via our rational agency is benign and perfectly consistent with our deserving praise for our achievements. (shrink)

The paper defines the practice of tanking in regard to sport organizations and differentiates this approach from activities such as match fixing and team building. Thereafter, the ethical implications tanking presents are developed using Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotilean ethical framework. In particular, MacIntyre’s concept of a practice that supports both internal and external goods is discussed to examine the moral questions tanking presents. The insights developed within this analysis are applied throughout to the specific practice of basketball within the discrete institution (...) of the National Basketball Association. Finally, the paper discusses some broader implications the tanking strategy presents for the management and leadership of a sophisticated sport franchise. (shrink)

Herein I address and extend the sparse literature on deception in sports, specifically, Kathleen Pearson’s Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics and Mark J. Hamilton’s There’s No Lying in Baseball. On a Kantian foundation, I argue that attempts to deceive officials, such as framing pitches in baseball, are morally unacceptable because they necessarily regard others as incompetent and as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. More dramatically I argue, contrary to Pearson and Hamilton, that some forms of competitor-to-competitor deception are (...) similarly unacceptable. Specifically, I offer a ‘principle of caustic deceit’ according to which any strategic deception that divorces a game from its constitutive skills is morally untoward and ought to be met with negative social pressure at least, and/or legislated out of existence. The problem with these forms of strategic deception is that they treat one’s opponents, again in the Kantian sense, as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. (shrink)

Almost four decades ago, Kathleen Pearson examined deceptive practices in sport using a distinction between strategic and definitional deception. However, the complexity and dynamic nature of sport is not limited to this dual-categorization of deceptive acts and there are other features of deception in sport unaccounted for in Pearson's constructs. By employing Torres’s elucidation of the structure of skills and Suits's concept of the lusory-attitude, a more thorough taxonomy of in-contest sport deception will be presented. Despite the ubiquitous presence of (...) deception in sport, few scholars have examined this concept in the sport philosophy literature since Pearson’s contribution. This paper hopes to advance a deeper understanding of deceptive practices in competitive sport and also comment on the ethical permissibility of certain sport skills from a moral perspective. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the normative role of conventions in sports. However, the approach I have in mind does not dispatch the theory of interpretivism. What I offer is a synthesis that aims to show how interpretivism works in concert with – and relies heavily on – conventions. To make this point, I will argue that historical, cultural, and even simple preferential needs and desires help to determine what counts as athletic ‘excellence’ in sports.

Despite frequent calls by players, managers and fans, FIFA's resistance to the implementation of goal-line technology (GLT) has been well documented in national print and online media as well as FIFA's own website. In 2010, FIFA president Sepp Blatter outlined eight reasons why GLT should not be used in football. The reasons given by FIFA can be broadly separated into three categories; those dealing with the nature and value of the game of football, those related to issues of justice, and (...) those concerned with the practical implementation of GLT. This paper intends to evaluate these eight reasons in order to assess whether there are, indeed, any good arguments against GLT in football. (shrink)

We argue that some sports test athletes’ capacities to endure specific types of suffering, and in such cases the suffering is constitutive of the sport: the sporting contest would not be a good sporting contest if that capacity were not tested. We then argue that it is morally acceptable for athletes to experience pleasure (Schadenfreude) in response to the constitutive suffering of competitors insofar as that pleasure is compatible with pity or sympathy for non-constitutive suffering. We use the case of (...) morally acceptable pleasure in the constitutive suffering of a competitor to clarify the sense of Schadenfreude. We defend a little recognised distinction of Aristotelian provenance between benign and malignant Schadenfreude, and, in contrast to the prevailing scholarly assessment, we show that Schadenfreude is not necessarily a passive emotion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the dynamics of extrinsic pressure in sport and its relation to athletic excellence. We argue that psychological pressure exerted by activities extrinsic to sport can be relevant to success or failure in it, such that how one manages extrinsic pressures can transmit to failure to perform in sport and thus be a determinant to victory, with no reason to think failure mitigated by the non-sporting nature of one’s other behaviour. To make this argument we offer a (...) series of examples to test intuitions about what constitutes sporting excellence and what constitutes sporting failure. On the basis of these examples, we offer a categorization of pressures in sport and argue that psychological pressure from almost any area of life may be relevant to competition, whether intrinsic or extrinsic to the sporting contest. We substantiate this claim by proposing a framework for adjudicating the relevance of extrinsic pressures to sporting performance by appealing to the internal goods of each sport and their contribution to flourishing. (shrink)

The debate about the Strategic Foul has been rumbling on for several decades and it has predominantly been fought on moral grounds. The defenders claim that the rules of a game must be supplemented by the ‘ethos’ of the game, by its conventions or informal rules. Critics of the Strategic Foul argue that to break the rules deliberately, in order to gain an advantage, is morally wrong, spoils the game, or is a form of cheating. Rather than entering the moral (...) maze I will argue that the Strategic Foul rests on a conceptual mistake. I will contrast the Strategic Foul with the idea of Efficient Breach in the economic approach to law in order to bring out some of the salient features. While doing so I will attempt some cross-fertilisation between jurisprudential insights and philosophical reflection on game rules. Finally, I will re-cast Searle’s distinction between constitutive and regulative rules in order to bring out the conceptual mistake more clearly. (shrink)

This paper argues that an instance of trash-talking is permissible if and only if the relevant sports organization’s system of rules permits the expression. The argument for this position rests on the notion that if there is no relevant side-constraint on trash-talking, then if the player commits to a moral boundary on trash-talking then that is the moral boundary on trash-talking. I then argued that there is no relevant side-constraint on trash-talking and that the players commit to the ownership theory (...) as the moral boundary on trash-talking. Hence, the ownership theory is the moral boundary for trash-talking. I then considered a number of objections, the most important of which are that there is a side-constraint against trash-talking because it is degrading, disrespectful, exploitative, or objectifying and that the ownership theory is false because it confuses what is wrong with what is penalized. (shrink)

So the Uruguayan footballer Luis Suárez has confessed, apologised and given assurances as to future good behaviour, after his 2014 World Cup assault on the Italian defender Chiellini. There were three immediate excuses and mitigations offered, which we dismiss: that it was inconsequential; that it was no different from many other ‘assaults’; and that it was not particularly serious. Our central question has a different focus: what makes biting in sport such a bad thing, especially since it does not seem (...) always to threaten as much harm to opponents as some other practices? We examine the place of biting in sports rules, especially in combat and contact sports, and the role of consent and criminal liability, before considering when and why biting is seen as unacceptable. We consider arguments from harm, skin penetration, ‘dirty fighting’ and animalism. Finally, we consider the topical case of Luis Suárez, distinguishing reactive from proactive bitin.. (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)

Lately, a number of referee decisions appear to have reignited the debate over the need to bring more in-game officiating technology into soccer. The fallacies behind the arguments for the inclusion of technology to aid game officials can be narrowed down to those behind current arguments for or against goal-line technology. Both the proponents and opponents of these arguments appear to overemphasise the role of referees to the point of claiming that if refereeing errors could be eliminated in goal-line situations, (...) then the most deserving team would most of the time be expected to win the contest. While we firmly believe that the game of soccer would benefit immensely from infallible officiating, we intend to show that these arguments are founded upon a number of inconspicuous assumptions. First, they assume that goal-line situations can be shown to affect the outcomes of games more than all other game situations. This can easily be shown to be a myth, since goals can be scored from all areas of the playing field. In addition, winning a soccer game, obviously, involves more than just scoring goals. Second, these arguments seem to support the view that referee decisions affect the outcomes of games more than decisions made by players, coaches and managers. This is merely a myth, since one can show that, in light of Cesar Torres's insights, referee involvement in game is limited to regulating situations that demand that the game be restored to its constitutive actualisation. Third, most arguments for goal-line technology tend to support the erroneous view that technology can actually eliminate most ?crucial? human mistakes from sport and, thus, ensure fairness of game outcomes. Such a myth can easily be refuted by reference to numerous cases of inconclusive slow-motion video replays in soccer. Therefore, this paper aims at arguing that, instead of reinforcing the scapegoating of referees and overemphasising the importance of isolated referee decisions to the point of attributing victory or defeat to these ?crucial? decisions, both sides of the goal-line technology debate need to put forth compelling arguments which go beyond the current misguided search for referee infallibility. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that formalism and the logical incompatibility thesis together imply that fouls cannot be part of the game. Some philosophers think this proves that therefore strategic fouls are always morally wrong, but other philosophers think this result undermines formalism itself, since strategic fouls clearly are part of the game and are at least sometimes morally permissible. I show that formalism in fact does accommodate strategic fouls and that it is neutral about whether strategic fouls are morally permissible (...) or not. (shrink)

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)

The purpose of this paper is to study the expressive part of game performance in soccer by introducing the concept of theatricality to describe a special form of expression. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of game performance by looking into the appearance, role and value of theatricality. The main argument of the paper is that theatricality can describe an important, but rarely noticed performance aspect, as it provides a unifying concept for expressive distancing in four dimensions of (...) the players? life-worlds: the subjective, intersubjective, collective and institutional. By explicating the value of this kind of expression in soccer the paper can provide a philosophical basis for including theatricality in performance and development strategies. (shrink)

The Greek word mētis (μῆτις) traditionally refers to a particular form of wily intelligence associated with the arts of deception (dolos) and the knowledge of tricks (kerdē), subterfuges, and traps. Mētis evokes innovative and ground-breaking solutions, based on the capability to understand, anticipate, and possibly violate the others’ expectations. Most importantly, mētis presupposes practical wisdom, or prudence (phrόnesis), a dispositional quality that underpins all the virtues that deserve to be cultivated by sportspersons and that is pivotal to perfect sportspersons’ moral (...) character. Not only is prudence required to apply mētis profitably for winning a game, but it is also indispensable to perform consistently with the game’s norms—cognizant of sport values. This analysis of mētis is key to illuminate the embodied dimension of tactical and moral reasoning in contemporary sport practice. In this paper, we first argue that the strategic effectiveness of mētis proves that not only sensorimotor control but also higher forms of intelligence, like strategic reasoning, are embodied and inform skilful performance; second, we argue that relying on mētis is necessary not only to interpret the rules of the game in one’s own favor but also to respect the shared values that these rules uphold in the sport practice. (shrink)

This paper considers the concept of a good game in terms of its relation to the fair testing of relevant skills and their aesthetic values. As such, it will consider what makes football ‘the beautiful game’ and what part penalty shoot-outs play, or should play, within it. It begins by outlining and refuting Kretchmar’s proposal that games which end following the elapsing of a set amount of time, such as football, are structurally, morally and aesthetically inferior to games which end (...) following the attainment of a designated goal. Instead, it is suggested that the structural deficits of t-games are compensated by the fact that they allow for a fuller test of more valuable open skills than the closed skills that tend to define e-games, such as golf. Moreover, it is the rationing of time in t-games that provides an added aesthetic value that does not occur in e-games. Finally, it is concluded that although it may appear that the existence of the penalty shoot-out supports Kretchmar’s argu.. (shrink)

This article develops a novel theory of sport that I call ‘Confucian mutualism’. Confucian mutualism is underpinned by the Confucian Golden Rule and the Confucian conception of human dignity. It resembles the mutualist theory of sport developed by Robert L. Simon in maintaining that sport participants ethically ought to prioritize promoting sporting excellence both in themselves and in their co-participants. However, while Simon’s mutualism maintains that sporting excellence consists in proficiency at sport constitutive skills, Confucian mutualism maintains that sporting excellence (...) consists in success at achieving the Confucian virtues through sport participation. I provide a preliminary case for why Confucian mutualism’s virtue-centric conception of sporting excellence makes it better able than Simon’s mutualism to explain why sporting excellence is stance-independently ethically significant for all sport participants. I do so by trying to show that we have prima facie justification for believing that Confucian mutualism is not vulnerable to certain kinds of criticisms that have been leveled at Simon’s mutualism. (shrink)

Sports referees are not always as unbiased or impartial as they ideally should be. Studies have shown, for example, that in their decisions, referees seem to be biased against people of different r...

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn (...) from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it. If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of expertise and skilled movement in sport by analysing the bodily practice of learning a new movement at a high level of skill in parkour. Based on Sennett’s theory of craftsmanship and an ethnographic field study with experienced practitioners, the analysis offers insight into the skilful, contextual and unique practice of parkour, and contributes to the renewed discussion of consciousness in sport at a high level of skill. With Sennett’s (...) concept of craftsmanship, it is possible to describe and grasp important aspects of obstacles put up, repetitions and material consciousness in developing perceptual and physical skills in parkour. The parkour craftsmen conduct a constant dialogue between concrete, material practices and thinking. It is argued in the article that Sennett’s ideas about craftsmanship are, in many ways, similar to Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ concept of mastery, but are less elitist and exclusive than the theory of skill acquisition... (shrink)

Ethics is a skill set. But what skill set is it? An answer to this question would help make progress for both theory and moral agency. I argue that moral performance may best be understood on the model of athletic performance; both moral and athletic performance are rule-structured unions of efficiency and inefficiency, enabling us to engage in the wholehearted and autonomous pursuit of goals subject to constraints. By understanding how athletics demands embodied performance, we better understand moral demand and (...) wrongdoing: less moral psychology, more moral kinesiology. (shrink)

It is popularly believed within sport's practice communities that a contest fails if the competitor who performs most skilfully in it does not win. The belief is rarely acknowledged explicitly, and therefore deserves to be considered ideological in a sense. In this paper I challenge that belief. For conceptual reasons, I confine the discussion to the purposive sports, e.g. football and tennis. The concept of skill is approached by articulation of a set of platitudes about skill in the purposive sports. (...) The first is the conceptual wedge between skill and success. The second is the distinction between skill and other performance-relevant qualities such as courage, strength and luck. The third is the fact that skill deficits can be compensated by sufficient amounts of the other performance relevant qualities. The fourth is the dispositional and dynamic character of skill. The relation between skill and final objectives in the purposive sports means that (i) qualities such as nerve and courage can trump the more skilful performance; and (ii) poor execution of a narrow range of skills can result in the competitive failure of the more skilful performance. There is no viable ideal of sport that would ground regret about the realisation of the immediately preceding possibilities. The inclination towards such regret might be partly motivated by the wish to take a gratifying view of ourselves. An end to this response, and a more inclusive, less hierarchical conception of sport skills, is worth recommending. (shrink)

This essay delineates and analyzes two kinds of questions that sport ethicists tend to ask: questions about athletic excellence and questions about justice. To pass ethical judgements when delving into questions concerning athletic excellence, sportspeople rely largely on a sport’s internal values, primary skills, or sport-specific athletic excellences. In contrast, questions about justice do not and should not include the reference or application of principles derived from the nature of a sport. Instead, sportspeople must refer to general theories, most often (...) based on the rights and obligations of fellow citizens. There are multiple benefits to pointing out this distinction. First, it can help sportspeople and sport philosophers recognize the normative standards most appropriate within specific debates. Second, the distinction may explain why some disputes in sport philosophy remained unresolved. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, an awareness of the differences between these types... (shrink)

In forms of physical recreation associated with ‘wilderness experiences’, such as backcountry hiking or mountain climbing, technology is omnipresent. As a result, some may wonder whether genuine wilderness experiences are possible. In this essay, I argue that wilderness experiences are possible and that they can be enhanced through games. That is, I contend there are often physically challenging aspects to wilderness experiences that certain games can help to promote. This analysis will stress the fact that Bernard Suits delineated two comparable (...) but distinct ways to engage in games. Following Suits’s logic, I explain how ‘literal skills’ like walking or climbing can function as the ‘constitutive skills’ of games. I then consider how games predicated on ‘literal skills’ can help promote the meanings available in wilderness experiences. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the role of hand goals in football and analyzes what should be considered part of the game. First, the arguments most frequently used to defend hand goals are presented and analyzed. Then, these arguments are evaluated from an interpretivist theory of competitive sport understood as a social practice. This evaluation demonstrates the invalidity of the arguments in support of hand goals.

As sports have become more professional, winning has become more important. This emphasis on results, rather than sporting virtue and winning in style, probably explains the rising incidence of the Strategic Foul. Surprisingly, it has found some apologists among the philosophers of sport. The discussion of the Strategic Foul in the literature has produced subtle distinctions (e.g. Cesar Torres: constitutive skills versus restorative skills) as well as implausible distinctions (e.g. D’Agostino: ‘impermissible’ but ‘acceptable’ behaviour). In this paper I will review (...) Robert Simon’s defence of strategic fouling and conclude that his justification is not convincing. (shrink)

In this article I present the Philosophy of Sport through the analysis of its origin and historical development. We shall see that the Philosophy of Sport emerged in pedagogic circles during the mid nineteenth century and that, through four different stages, it became Practical Philosophy of Sport or Sport Ethics, which is the prevailing paradigm nowadays.