(2001). Fruits, Apples, and Category Mistakes: On Sport, Games, and Play. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 151-159. doi: 10.1080/00948705.2001.9714610.

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

In this paper, I am going to present a condensed version of my theory of what sport is from my book The Philosophy of Football. In that work, I took my starting point in Bernard Suits’ celebrated,...

The conclusion of this paper will be that e-sports are not sports. I begin by offering a stipulation and a definition. I stipulate that what I have in mind, when thinking about the concept of sport, is ‘Olympic’ sport. And I define an Olympic Sport as an institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill. The justification for the stipulation lies partly in that it is uncontroversial. Whatever else people might think of as sport, no-one denies that Olympic Sport is sport. (...) This seeks to ensure that those who might wish to dispute my conclusion might stay with the argument at least for as long as possible. Secondly, the justification for the stipulation lies partly in its normativity—I have chosen an Olympic conception of sport just because it seems to me to offer some kind of desirable version of what sport is and might become. Thirdly, I give examples which show how prominent promoters of e-sports agree with my stipulation, as evidenced by their strenuous attempts to comply with it i... (shrink)

This paper has two main parts to it. First, it is an attempt to clarify certain metaphysical issues regarding play. Play scholars from any number of academic disciplines have created a vast body of literature on the topic that seems overwhelming. Therefore, I offer descriptions of four characteristics of play that seem most experientially prominent and most indicative of the many play descriptors that previous authors have used. Second, I make axiological claims that follow from the metaphysical descriptions. I argue (...) against many previous authors, as I assert that play is not different in kind from our normal workaday lives but instead is only different by degree. Play is a deeper engagement with the world than that which we normally experience. (shrink)

Formulating a metaphysical definition of human play faces three main difficulties. First, for many years the very possibility, or need, for such a definition has been questioned. Second, very often...

Formulating a metaphysical definition of human play faces three main difficulties. First, for many years the very possibility, or need, for such a definition has been questioned. Second, very often...

ABSTRACTIn the philosophy of sport, an opinion that chess is in fact not sports because it lacks physical skills is a standard position. I call the argument that leads to this conclusion a mind sport syllogism. Its analysis enables me to explicate four possible positions concerning the sport-status of chess. Apart from the standard position, which excludes chess from the sport family, I also present analysis of other possible positions, which – for various reasons – do not deny that chess (...) is a sport. A position that postulates including chess into the family of sport by broadening the definition of sport turns out to be particularly interesting from the philosophical viewpoint. Having confronted this position with the standard, i.e. ‘conservative’, position, I come to the conclusion that the conceptual revision consisting in the broadening of the concept of sport is a rational option and is a probable direction of the evolution of the concept of sport. (shrink)

Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a measure of heart-brain interaction and autonomic modulation, and it is modified by cognitive and attentional tasks. In cognitive tasks, HRV was reduced in participants who achieved worse results. This could indicate the possibility of HRV predicting cognitive performance, but this association is still unclear in a high cognitive load sport such as chess Objective: To analyse modifications on HRV and subjective perception of stress, difficulty and complexity in different chess problem (...) tasks. Design: HRV was assessed at baseline. During the chess problems, HRV was also monitored, and immediately after chess problems the subjective stress, difficulty and complexity were also registered. Method: A total of 16 male chess players, age: 35.19 (13.44) and ELO: 1927.69 (167.78) were analysed while six chess problem solving tasks with different level of difficulty were conducted (two low level, two medium level and two high level chess problems). Participants were classified according to their results into two groups: high performance or low performance. Results: Friedman test showed a significant effect of tasks in HRV indexes and perceived difficulty, stress and complexity in both high and low performance groups. A decrease in HRV was observed in both groups when chess problems difficulty increased. In addition, HRV was significantly higher in the high performance group than in the low performance group during chess problems. Conclusions: An increase in autonomic modulation was observed to meet the cognitive demands of the problems, being higher while the difficulty of the tasks increased. Non-linear HRV indexes seem to be more reactive to tasks difficulty, being an interesting and useful tool in chess training. (shrink)

This paper addresses the possibility of robots engaging in sports. Recently, several movies like Ex-Machina, Chappi, and Transcendence challenge the spectator to think of the consequences of creating artificial intelligences. Although we refer to athletes who have outstanding sporting performances as machines, for example, in cycling people say ‘the cyclist looked like a machine with wheels,’ the potential participation of such AI in sport has not been addressed. For our argument’s sake, we will assume that the creation of human-like robots (...) who will mirror human athletes’ behavior in the playing field will be possible. Recent advances in cybernetics and robotics point in this way. As argued in the literature on philosophy of mind, the fact that intelligent robots seem to be doing something does not imply they are actually doing it. Understood in this way, sport can be conceived as a particular ‘imitation game’ or Turing test, which permits us to distinguish between an artificial intelligence... (shrink)

In this paper, linguistic-analytic philosophy has been identified as the dominant methodology in the philosophy of sport. The hermeneutics of sport is contrasted with linguistic-analytic philosophy by analyzing Heidegger’s view of Truth. In doing so, two views of philosophy are compared: ontology or description. Sport hermeneutics’ task has to do with description. Hermeneutical explanations of sport attempt to describe the facticity of sport. Such a facticity is formed by three moments: embodiment, capabilities, and tradition. They are not components of sport (...) that can be identified as essential components but rather, they are identifiable only for analytic purposes. These three above-mentioned elements cannot be identified as elements, because they are intrinsically intertwined forming a unitary network of meaning. The task of sport hermeneutics is to describe the different relationships that compose such a network of meaning. In doing so, sport is a humane activity linked to the constitutive human task of making sense of reality by projecting meaning into it. (shrink)

What is play? Why do we play? What can play teach us about our life as social beings? In this critical investigation into the significance of play, Henning Eichberg argues that through play we can ask questions about the world, others and ourselves. Playing a game and asking a question are two forms of human practice that are fundamentally connected. This book presents a practice-based philosophical approach to understanding play that begins with empirical study, drawing on historical, sociological and anthropological (...) investigations of play in the real world, from contemporary Danish soccer to war games and folk dances. Its ten chapters explore topics such as: play as a practice of search playing, learning and progress the light and dark sides of play playing games, sport and display folk sports, popular games, and social identity play under the conditions of alienation. From these explorations emerge a phenomenological approach to understanding play and its value in interrogating ourselves and our social worlds. This book offers a challenging contribution to the interdisciplinary field of the philosophy of play. It will be fascinating reading for any student or researcher interested in social and cultural anthropology, phenomenology, and critical sociology as well as the ethics and philosophy of sport, leisure studies, and the sociology of sport.. (shrink)

In this article, I first address the ethical considerations about football and show that a meritocratic-fairness view of sports fails to capture the phenomenon of football. Fairness of result is not at centre stage in football. Football is about the drama, about the tension and the emotions it provokes. This moves us to the realm of aesthetics. I reject the idea of the aesthetics of football as the disinterested aesthetic appreciation, which traditionally has been deemed central to aesthetics. Instead, I (...) argue that we should try and develop an agon aesthetics where our aesthetic appreciation is understood as involving and being embedded in our engagement in the game. The drama of football is staged but not scripted. The aesthetics of competitions like football matches—the agon aesthetics—lies in engaging in the conflict that a competition is, while being aware that the conflict is not over ordinary world or everyday life issues, but unnecessary and invented for the very purpose of having a conflict to enjoy. (shrink)