The enhancement of athletic performance using procedures that increase physical ability, such as anabolic steroids, is a familiar phenomenon. Yet recent years have also witnessed the rise of direct interventions into the brain, referred to as “neuro-doping”, that promise to also enhance sports performance. This paper discusses one potential objection to neuro-doping, based on the contribution to athletic achievement, particularly within endurance sports, of effortfully overcoming inner challenges. After introducing the practice of neuro-doping, and the controversies surrounding it, I describe (...) two major mechanisms some have proposed to explain how it might produce its putative performance-enhancing effects. I then clarify the notion of effort, and its relationship to neuro-doping. I also briefly address common concerns about access and safety. My central argument invokes considerations of effort to maintain that we have at least a significant reason for prohibiting the use of neuro-doping in officially regulated endurance competitions – though only conditional upon a specific set of empirical assumptions. I consider three possible objections: that neuro-doping is no different from widely accepted enhancement methods, that it can make athletic competition fairer, and that a broader range of factors can compensate for a reduced scope for effort than I recognize. I ultimately conclude that these objections do not refute the argument from effort, while stressing nonetheless that this argument applies more clearly to hypothetical improved forms of neuro-doping than to existing ones, and is not meant to offer a final overall verdict on how neuro-doping should be regulated. (shrink)

Despite the important role doping plays in the world of sport, insufficient attention has been given to understanding the concept of doping. In this paper, I argue that we should understand doping as a means of gaining a competitive advantage through the use of exogenous substances entering an athlete’s body, where such means undermine the relevant sporting institution. By focusing on sport as socially constructed institution, not merely as competition, we can have a unified explanation for many of our pretheoretic (...) beliefs while giving the tools to understand doping in the ever-changing landscape of contemporary sport and society. (shrink)

Should the development of pharmacological cognitive enhancers raise worries about doping in cognitively demanding activities? In this paper, we argue against using current evidence relating to enhancement to justify a ban on cognitive enhancers using the example of chess. It is a mistake to assume that enhanced cognitive functioning on psychometric testing is transferable to chess performance because cognitive expertise is highly complex and in large part not merely a function of the sum specific sub-processes. A deeper reason to doubt (...) that pharmacological cognitive enhancers would be as significant in mind sports is the misleading parallel with physical enhancement. We will make the case that cognitive performance is less mechanical in nature than physical performance. We draw lessons from this case example of chess for the regulation of cognitive enhancement more generally in education and the professions. Premature regulation runs the risk of creating a detrimental culture of suspicion that ascribes unwarranted blame. (shrink)

Enhancement is a basic principle of modern sport. Their increase of achievement is usually attributed to the sportsmen’s natural assessment, their health, their training methods and their employment. In contrast, increase in output by pharmacological means is outlawed. The modern medical techniques created a whole range, by which sportsmen are supported. Consequently, sometimes difficult decisions with concrete medications develop. It is not always clearly to be differentiated whether something is a pharmacological interference, which serves the therapy or leads however to (...) the outlawed increase in output. At present Enhancement is in discussion, a phenomenon, which is related to doping in sports, but which concerns achievement-increasing use of medicines not only in sportsmen. -/- Leistungssteigerung ist ein Grundprinzip des modernen Sports. Gewöhnlich werden für die Steigerung der Leistung die natürliche Veranlagung der Sportler, ihre Gesundheit, ihre Trainingsmethoden und ihr Einsatzwille veranschlagt. Leistungssteigerung durch pharmakologische Mittel ist dagegen geächtet. Die modernen medizinischen Techniken haben einen ganzen Bereich geschaffen, durch den die Sportler bei der Erbringung ihrer Leistung und deren Erhalt unterstützt werden. Dabei entstehen mitunter schwierige Entscheidungsfragen bei konkreten Medikationen. Nicht immer ist klar zu unterscheiden, ob etwas ein pharmakologischer Eingriff ist, der der Therapie dient oder aber zur geächteten Leistungssteigerung führt. Gegenwärtig wird über Enhancement diskutiert, ein Phänomen, das mit dem Doping verwandt ist, aber leistungssteigernde Verwendung von Medikamenten bei Gesunden im Allgemeinen, also nicht nur bei Sportlern, betrifft. (shrink)

Recent discussions among lawyers, philosophers, policy researchers and athletes have focused on the potential threat to privacy posed by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) whereabouts requirements. These requirements demand, among other things, that all elite athletes file their whereabouts information for the subsequent quarter on a quarterly basis and comprise data for one hour of each day when the athlete will be available and accessible for no advance notice testing at a specified location of their choosing. Failure to file one’s (...) whereabouts, or the non-availability for testing at said location on three occasions within any 18-month period constitutes an anti-doping rule violation that is equivalent to testing positive to a banned substance, and may lead to a suspension of the athlete for a time period of between one and two years. We critically explore the extent to which WADA’s whereabouts requirements are in tension with existing legislation on privacy, with respect to UK athletes, who are simultaneously protected by UK domestic and EU law. Both UK domestic and EU law are subject to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, which establishes a right to “respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. We critically discuss the centrality of the whereabouts requirements in relation to WADA’s aims, and the adoption and implementation of its whereabouts rules. We conclude that as WADA’s whereabouts requirements appear to be in breach of an elite athlete’s rights under European workers’ rights, health & safety and data protection law they are also, therefore, in conflict with Article 8 of the ECHR and the UK Human Rights Act 1998. We call for specific amendments that cater for the exceptional case of elite sports labour if the WADA requirements are to be considered legitimate. (shrink)

The most plausible line of anti-doping argumentation starts with the fact that performance enhancing substances are harmful and put at considerable risk the health and the life of those who indulge in the overwhelming promises these substances hold. From a liberal point of view, however, this is not a strong reason neither to morally reject doping altogether, nor to put a blanket ban on it; on the contrary, allowing adult, competent and informed athletes to have access to performance enhancement drugs (...) is often showcased as a liberty-related right of noninterference. In this article I will first discuss doping from the liberal point of view, especially in the light of the harm principle as it was introduced by Mill and elaborated by his successors, most notably by Joel Feinberg. Then I will examine whether – and to what degree – one’s decision to receive performance enhancement drugs would mean to use humanity in one’s own person only as a means, which would be self-defeating in the light of Kantian ethics. From this I will move one step backwards to what I consider as the core question concerning the ethics of doping, the one that is logically prior to any other in my view, and concerns the consistency of the thesis that doping may be compatible with sport. I will argue that there is an inherent logical antinomy between doing sport and using performance enhancement drugs, one that presents any argumentation in favor of doping as essentially self-contradictory. (shrink)

Sport is one of the first areas in which enhancement has become commonplace. It is also one of the first areas in which the use of enhancement technologies has been heavily regulated. Some have thus seen sport as a testing ground for arguments about whether to permit enhancement. However, I argue that there are fairness-based objections to enhancement in sport that do not apply as strongly in some other areas of human activity. Thus, I claim that there will often be (...) a stronger case for permitting enhancement outside of sport than for permitting enhancement in sport. I end by considering some methodological implications of this conclusion. (shrink)

A strong moral reason for prohibiting doping in sport is to be found in the bad choices that would be faced by clean athletes in a sporting world that tolerated doping. The case against doping is not, however, to be grounded in the concept of coercion. Instead, it is grounded in a general duty of sport to afford fair opportunity to the goods that are distinctively within sport's sphere of control. The moral reason to prohibit doping need not be balanced (...) against any autonomy claim of athletes who would prefer to dope because, upon closer examination, such claims have no force. The moral reason to prohibit doping does, however, need to be balanced against the enforcement costs imposed on all athletes by effective prohibition. (shrink)

Sports physicians are continuously confronted with new biotechnological innovations. This applies not only to doping in sports, but to all kinds of so-called enhancement methods. One fundamental problem regarding the sports physician's self-image consists in a blurred distinction between therapeutic treatment and non-therapeutic performance enhancement. After a brief inventory of the sports physician's work environment I reject as insufficient the attempts to resolve the conflict of the sports physician by making it a classificatory problem. Followed by a critical assessment of (...) some ideas from the US President's Council on Bioethics, the formulation of ethical codes and attempts regarding a moral topography, it is argued that the sports physician's conflict cannot be resolved by the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Instead, we also have to consider the possibility that the therapy-based paradigm of medicine cannot do justice to the challenges of the continuously increasing technical manipulability of the human body and even our cognitive functions as well. At the same time we should not adhere to transhumanist ideas, because non-therapeutic interventions require clear criteria. Based on assistive technologies an alternative framework can be sketched that allows for the integration of therapeutic and non-therapeutic purposes. After a thorough definition of standards and criteria, the role of the sports physician might be defined as that of an assistant for enhancement. Yet the process of defining such an alternative framework is a societal and political task that cannot be accomplished by the sports physicians themselves. Until these questions are answered sports physicians continue to find themselves in a structural dilemma that they partially can come to terms with through personal integrity. (shrink)

A debate has arisen over whether “the spirit of sport” is an appropriate criterion for determining whether a substance should be banned. In this paper, I argue that the criterion is crucial for Olympic sport because Olympism celebrates humanity, specifically human agency, so we need to preserve the degree to which athletes are personally and morally responsible for their performances. This emphasis on what I call “athlete agency” is reflected metaphysically in the structure of sport, which characteristically prescribes inefficiencies in (...) order to create challenges, and seeks to reduce or eliminate the proportion of a performance outside an athlete’s control. Emphasizing athlete agency also prevents wealthier and more technologically developed countries from using their resources to gain an advantage in sport. Interpreted according to athlete agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) “spirit of sport” can be clarified to imply that substances, techniques, and equipment that reduce athlete agency should be reduced or eliminated, while things that increase it should be encouraged. (shrink)

This article argues that performance enhancing drugs ought to be allowed across all elite sporting competitions for athletes over the age of 16 so long as consuming them does not pose a significant risk to their health. I begin with a brief explanation of the current state of PED use in professional sports before assessing the prospect of allowing PEDs by three widely accepted measures of ethical merit: well-being, autonomy, and justice. I end with a critique of the World Anti-Doping (...) Agency's criteria for banning PEDs, concluding that allowing athletes to use PEDs is a superior alternative to the current prohibitive approach. (shrink)

Biomedical technologies can increasingly be used not only to combat disease, but also to augment the capacities or traits of normal, healthy people – a practice commonly referred to as biomedical enhancement. Perhaps the best‐established examples of biomedical enhancement are cosmetic surgery and doping in sports. But most recent scientific attention and ethical debate focuses on extending lifespan, lifting mood, and augmenting cognitive capacities.

From 1900 onwards, scientists and novelists have explored the contours of a future society based on the use of “anthropotechnologies” (techniques applicable to human beings for the purpose of performance enhancement ranging from training and education to genome-based biotechnologies). Gradually but steadily, the technologies involved migrated from (science) fiction into scholarly publications, and from “utopia” (or “dystopia”) into science. Building on seminal ideas borrowed from Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk has outlined the challenges inherent in this development. Since time immemorial, and at (...) least since the days of Plato’s Academy, human beings have been interested in possibilities for (physical or mental) performance enhancement. We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, both collectively and individually, for better or for worse. At present, however, new genomics-based technologies are opening up new avenues for self-amelioration. Developments in research facilities using animal models may to a certain extent be seen as expeditions into our own future. Are we able to address the bioethical and biopolitical issues awaiting us? After analyzing and assessing Sloterdijk’s views, attention will shift to a concrete domain of application, namely sport genomics. For various reasons, top athletes are likely to play the role of genomics pioneers by using personalized genomics information to adjust diet, life-style, training schedules and doping intake to the strengths and weaknesses of their personalized genome information. Thus, sport genomics may be regarded as a test bed where the contours of genomics-based self-management are tried out. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band intendiert die Herstellung von Unterrichtsmaterialien für Lehrer und Schüler, und zwar nicht aus einer fachspezifischen Perspektive, sondern als ein Projekt fachübergreifenden oder fächerübergreifenden Unterrichts. Wir lassen uns von der Vorstellung leiten, dass komplexe Probleme, die ihren Ursprung in einer ebenso komplexen Gesellschaft haben, sich nicht mehr allein durch Spezialwissen lösen lassen. Vielmehr erfordert die gegenwärtige Situation vernetztes Wissen und Menschen, die Kompetenzen erworben haben, um an einer dynamischen Wissensgesellschaft zu partizipieren. Im Hintergrund steht dabei auch die Vorstellung, (...) dass die Anforderungen des Berufs- und Wirtschaftslebens zugleich ein lebenslanges Lernen erfordern. Es geht uns darum, alle paternalistischen oder moralistischen Implikationen zu vermeiden; vielmehr sollen Schüler in die Lage versetzt werden, eine eigenständige und damit nachhaltige Auffassung zu entwickeln. Um die Vielschichtigkeit und Komplexität der Bezüge eines jeden Faches und der Fächer untereinander abzubilden, werden die für die Dopingthematik besonders relevanten Fächer Sport, Biologie, Philosophie/Ethik, Religion und Sozialwissenschaften in einzelnen Modulen durch ausgewiesene Experten, die einen jeweils aktuellen fachdidaktischen und inhaltlichen Stand der Forschung garantieren, abgehandelt und didaktisch aufbereitet. Somit werden die Schwerpunkte Leistung und Kontrolle (Sport), biologische Manipulation (Biologie), ethische Urteilsfindung (Ethik/Bioethik), Selbst- und Weltbild (Religion), die gesellschaftliche sowie ökonomische Relevanz (Sozialwissenschaften) in ihrem transdisziplinären bzw. fächerübergreifenden Zusammenhang abgebildet und zugänglich gemacht. Jedes Modul enthält neben parallelen Themen (wie Gendoping) auch didaktische Hinweise und einige Anregungen für konkrete Anknüpfungspunkte zu den anderen Modulen. Durch diese fächerübergreifende Verständigung wird das didaktisch wesentliche Ziel erreicht, die Schüler zu einer reflektierten Bewertung der Dopingthematik zu befähigen und zu motivieren. (shrink)

Commentary on Neuhaus and Parent, 'Gene doping--In Animals?' (2019).

Until recently, the problem of traumatic brain injury in sports and the problem of performance enhancement via hormone replacement have not been seen as related issues. However, recent evidence suggests that these two problems may actually interact in complex and previously underappreciated ways. A body of recent research has shown that traumatic brain injuries, at all ranges of severity, have a negative effect upon pituitary function, which results in diminished levels of several endogenous hormones, such as growth hormone and gonadotropin. (...) This is a cause for concern for many popular sports that have high rates of concussion, a mild form of TBI. Emerging research suggests that hormone replacement therapy is an effective treatment for TBI-related hormone deficiency. However, many athletic organizations ban or severely limit the use of hormone replacing substances because many athletes seek to use them solely for the purposes of performance enhancement. Nevertheless, in the light of the research linking traumatic brain injury to hypopituitarism, this paper argues that athletic organizations’ policies and attitudes towards hormone replacement therapy should change. We defend two claims. First, because of the connection between TBI and pituitary function, it is likely many more athletes than previously acknowledged suffer from hormone deficiency and thus could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. Second, athletes’ hormone levels should be tested more rigorously and frequently with an emphasis on monitoring TBI and TBI-related issues, rather than simply monitoring policy violations. (shrink)

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide-ranging, multi-stranded, and interpretatively contested perspective, phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. (...) The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method, and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the ‘essences’, corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body. The use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is also critically addressed. Key words: phenomenology; existentialist phenomenology; interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA); sporting embodiment; the lived-body; Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

Laura Specker Sullivan (2022) makes a fairly compelling case for the value of the perspectives of Buddhist practitioners in neuroethics. In this study, Tibetan Buddhist monks have been asked, among other things, whether consciousness, in brain-injured patients in a minimally conscious state, entails a duty to preserve life. In our view, some of the participants’ responses could be used to inform the bioethical debate on death determination.

Neuroethics is the body of work exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications of neuroscience. This work can be separated into two rough categories. The neuroscience of ethics concerns a neuroscientific understanding of the brain processes that underpin moral judgment and behavior. The ethics of neuroscience, on the other hand, includes the potential impact advances in neuroscience may have on social, moral and philosophical ideas and institutions, as well as the ethical principles that should guide brain research, treatment of brain (...) disease, and cognitive enhancement. Central to the questions posed in neuroethics is the way in which neuroscience might impact our sense of self and personal responsibility, and our understanding the structure of moral judgments. (shrink)

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)

In bioethics, the first decade of the twenty-first century was characterized by the emergence of interest in the ethical, legal, and social aspects of neuroscience research. At the same time an ongoing extension of the topics and phenomena addressed by neuroscientists was observed alongside its rise as one of the leading disciplines in the biomedical science. One of these phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and moral psychologists was the neural processes involved in moral decision-making. Today both strands of research are often (...) addressed under the label of neuroethics. To understand this development we recalled literature from 1995 to 2012 stored in the Mainz Neuroethics Database (i) to investigate the quantitative development of scientific publications in neuroethics; (ii) to explore changes in the topics of neuroethics research within the defined time interval; (iii) to illustrate the interdependence of different research topics within the neuroethics literature; (iv) to show the development of the distribution of neuroethics research on peer-reviewed journals; and (v) to display the academic background and affiliations of neuroethics Researchers ... (shrink)

It has become increasingly popular for sports fans, pundits, coaches and players to appeal to ideas of ‘sporting integrity’ when voicing their approval or disapproval of some aspect of the sporting world. My goal in this paper will be to examine whether there is any way to understand this idea in a way that both makes sense of the way in which it is used and presents a distinctly ‘sporting’ form of integrity. I will look at three recent high-profile sporting (...) incidents that caused sporting integrity to be called into question. I will then examine three different ways in which philosophers have sought to understand integrity and examine whether any of these accounts can provide us with a plausible account of sporting integrity. I will argue that such an account can be given and show how this helps us to understand the three cases. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the usefulness of the concept of ‘movement compression’ for understanding sport and games, and particularly the differences between traditional sport and eSport (as currently practised). I suggest that movement compression allows us to distinguish between different activities in terms of how movement quality (in the sense of the qualities the movement possesses, rather than that the movement is of ‘high quality’) affects outcome. While it applies widely, this concept can in particular help us to (...) understand the persistent idea that eSports are in some key way distinct from traditional sports. (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)

Growing awareness of the ethical implications of neuroscience in the early years of the 21st century led to the emergence of the new academic field of “neuroethics,” which studies the ethical implications of developments in the neurosciences. However, despite the acceleration and evolution of neuroscience research on nonhuman animals, the unique ethical issues connected with neuroscience research involving nonhuman animals remain underdiscussed. This is a significant oversight given the central place of animal models in neuroscience. To respond to these concerns, (...) the Center for Neuroscience and Society and the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania hosted a workshop on the “Neuroethics of Animal Research” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the workshop, expert speakers and attendees discussed ethical issues arising from neuroscience research involving nonhuman animals, including the use of animal models in the study of pain and psychiatric conditions, animal brain-machine interfaces, animal–animal chimeras, cerebral organoids, and the relevance of neuroscience to debates about personhood. This paper highlights important emerging ethical issues based on the discussions at the workshop. This paper includes recommendations for research in the United States from the authors based on the discussions at the workshop, loosely following the format of the 2 Gray Matters reports on neuroethics published by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. (shrink)

Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience of sport. By challenging the idea that sport offers an “escape” from reality—a realm separate to the politics of everyday life—each chapter critically considers the unconscious desires, fantasies, and fears that underpin the sporting spectacle for both participants and spectators. Indeed, beyond simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, this book proposes how sport can (...) be used to pose questions to psychoanalysis, thus using sport as a medium to elucidate key psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. This volume addresses a diverse range of theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Norman O. Brown, and Frantz Fanon, and applies them across a variety of topics and sports, including NFL coaching, Manny Pacquiao, play, football, basketball, baseball, poker, and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, therefore providing a unique understanding of the cultural, social, and psychic significance of sports. A timely and relevant collection, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding sport from both the cultural and clinical application of psychoanalytic theory as well as academics and practitioners in sport studies, psychology, sociology, education, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The main message of Neuroethics is that neuroscience forces us to reconceptualize human agency as marvelously diverse and flexible. Free will can arise from unconscious brain processes. Individuals with mental disorders, including addiction and psychopathy, exhibit more agency than is often recognized. Brain interventions should be embraced with cautious optimism. Our moral intuitions, which arise from entangled reason and emotion, can generally be trusted. Nevertheless, we can and should safely enhance our brain chemistry, partly because motivated reasoning crops up in (...) everyday life and in the practice of neuroscience itself. Despite serious limitations, brain science can be useful in the courtroom and marketplace. Recognizing all this nuance leaves little room for anxious alarmism or overhype and urges an emphasis on neurodiversity. The result is a highly opinionated tour of neuroethics as an exciting field full of implications for philosophy, science, medicine, law, and public policy. (shrink)

In a nMOS graphene field effect transistor, the resistance between two electrodes can be transferred or controlled by a third electrode. In a multilayer graphene field effect nMOS transistor, the current between the two electrodes is controlled by the electric field from the third electrode. Unlike the bipolar transistor, it is capacitively connected to the third electrode and is not in contact with the semiconductor. Three electrodes in the structure of the nMOS graphene field effect transistor are connected to the (...) source, drain and gate, and this action increases the switching speed (doping) in the nMOS graphene transistor circuit. (shrink)

Previous discussions on the value of sport in remote locations have concentrated on 1) environmental and process concerns, with the rejection of competition and goal-directed or use oriented activity, or 2) the value of risk and dangerous sport for self-affirmation. It is argued that the value of risk in remote sport is in self-knowledge rather than self-affirmation and that risk in remote sport, while enhancing certain kinds of experience, is not necessary. The value of remote sport is in offering the (...) opportunity for experience that enhances the participants’ knowledge both of self and of the environment with which they interact. (shrink)

Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of sportswashing, the exploration of the role of sportswashing and its connection to the “sports fan” presents an essential and necessary area of investigation and theoretical inquiry. To unpick this dilemma, this article proposes the concept of “fetishistic disavowal” to help theorize the impact of sportswashing, (...) as well as its relation to the sports fan and critical sports academic. This argues that, as spectators and fans of sport—and, moreover, as critical academics—we often acknowledge and accept that sport is used to perpetuate and even maintain a variety of social, economic, and political inequalities. Yet, while we are aware of such knowledge, we nonetheless remain fully capable of disavowing this very knowledge as an accepted part of sport. Given this, it is argued that the fetishization of sport can provide a suitable conduit for the fetishistic disavowal that sportswashing requires, with the concept offering a unique way of approaching sport’s inherent contradictions, while also theorizing how subjects relate to these contradictions as part of their involvement in and with sport. Where sportswashing directly implicates the fan in its implementation—relying upon a level of fetishistic disavowal between the fan and their club and proffering a disavowed acknowledgement of the effects of sportswashing and its interpellation through sport—this article outlines how applications of fetishistic disavowal provide a unique theoretical lens through which analyses of sport, and its ethical significance, can be critiqued. (shrink)

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

Understandings of play are frequently tied to a sense of instinctual gratification—a something that must be completed, that all humans, young or old, should or need to partake in. Indeed, for many, play is characterised as a unique activity that stands apart from the ordinary and every day. While such assessments prefigure a clear demarcation between the fun of play and the more laborious, boring aspects of profane life, what this distinction alludes to is a greater sense of the creativity (...) that underlies play. Drawing from a Lacanian perspective, the following chapter will determine that an essential aspect of play and sport is the creativity it provides, namely, by considering how the act of creativity is intricately tied to the very lack that constitutes the Lacanian subject. To do so, the concept of sublimation is used to consider how the codified rules and regulations that sport both asserts and requires renders apparent the importance of the limit. Rather than conceiving of this limit as a barrier to creativity, what is revealed in sublimation is how this limit proves constitutive of our very creativity. That is, the ability to sublimate—to creatively perform unique displays of physical or artistic expression— lies in the mundanity and utter importance of the playful and sporting activity and, more importantly, the inherent restrictions and constraints these activities impose. It is in accordance with the limit that one’s creativity can expose an emancipatory potential in the context of play and sport. (shrink)

A commonly accepted feature of commonsense morality is that there are some acts that are supererogatory or beyond the call of duty. Recently, philosophers have begun to ask whether something like supererogation might exist in other normative domains such as epistemology and esthetics. In this paper, I will argue that there is good reason to think that sporting supererogation exists. I will then argue that recognizing the existence of sporting supererogation is important because it highlights the value of sport as (...) a mutual pursuit of excellence and reinforces the value of sportsmanship. (shrink)

Sport is a global phenomenon, which can make sport an important arena for integration into new societies. However, sport is also an expression of national culture and identities. The aim of this study is to explore images and experiences that newly-arrived immigrant children in Sweden have about sport in their country of origin, and challenges that can arise in processes of integration through sport. We asked 20 newly arrived children aged 10 to 13 to make drawings about sporting experiences from (...) their countries of origin. Three themes emerged: sport as feeling joy, where activities were performed with friends during leisure time; sport as acting formally, where activities were carried out in clubs; and sport as a spectator, where children were non-participants. We emphasise that development of sport should be two-way processes, where cultural learning should be mutual processes. Immigrant children’s experiences should be foregrounded when utilising and developing sports programmes. (shrink)

Open Peer Commentary, referring to "Neuroethics at 15: The Current and Future Environment for Neuroethics".

Our purpose in this article is to draw attention to a connection that obtains between two dilemmas from two separate spheres: sports and the law. It is our contention that umpires in the game of cricket may face a dilemma that is similar to a dilemma confronted by legal decision makers and that comparing the nature of the dilemmas, and the arguments advanced to solve them, will serve to advance our understanding of both the law and games.

This paper addresses two specific and related questions the Buddhist neuroethics program raises for our traditional understanding of Buddhist ethics: Does affective neuroscience supply enough evidence that contempla- tive practices such as compassion meditation can enhance normal cognitive functioning? Can such an account advance the philosophical debate concerning freedom and determinism in a profitable direction? In response to the first question, I argue that dispositions such as empathy and altruism can in effect be understood in terms of the mechanisms that (...) regulate affective cognition. In response to the second question, I claim that moral agency is a type of achievement that comes with learning the norms of ethical con- duct, which are not tractable by specifically neurobiological mechanisms and processes (though, once learned, such norms would have their neural cor- relates when enacted). (shrink)

This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself grounded in the work of Jacques Lacan), can be used to explore the relationship between sport, nationalism and enjoyment (jouissance). In outlining this approach, specific attention is given to Žižek’s account of the ‘national Thing’. Accordingly, by considering the various ways in which sport organizes, (...) materializes and structures our enjoyment, the emotive significance of sport during national sporting occasions is both introduced and applied. Moreover, it is argued that such an approach offers a unique and valuable insight into the relationship between sport and nationalism, as well as an array of social and political antagonisms. (shrink)

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (shrink)

It has been argued that competitive elite sport both (i) reduces the humanity of athletes by turning them into beings whose sole value is determined in relation to others, and (ii) is motivated by a celebration of the genetically superior and humiliation of the weak. This paper argues that while (i) is a morally reproachable attitude to competition, it is not what competitive elite sport revolves around, and that (ii) simply is not the essence of competitive elite sport. Competitive elite (...) sport is an exploration of the physical and mental demands of sport. Finally, the paper explores a number of consequences of the different views of sport with respect to the problem of intersexual women. (shrink)

Optogenetics is an invasive neuromodulation technology involving the use of light to control the activity of individual neurons. Even though optogenetics is a relatively new neuromodulation tool whose various implications have not yet been scrutinized, it has already been approved for its first clinical trials in humans. As optogenetics is being intensively investigated in animal models with the aim of developing novel brain stimulation treatments for various neurological and psychiatric disorders, it appears crucial to consider both the opportunities and dangers (...) such therapies may offer. In this review, we focus on the memory-modifying potential of optogenetics, investigating what it is capable of and how it differs from other memory modification technologies. We then outline the safety challenges that need to be addressed before optogenetics can be used in humans. Finally, we re-examine crucial neuroethical concerns expressed in regard to other MMTs in the light of optogenetics and address those that appear to be unique to the memory-modifying potential of optogenetic technology. (shrink)

Over the last decades we have witnessed a proliferation of new human rights claims (e.g. the ‘human right’ to internet access) . But Milan Kundera (1991) reminds us that not all desires are human rights. Trans women athletes (and their supporters) often claim that there is a human right to sport and they derive a further ‘human right’ from this: the right to compete in the sex category with which they identify (i.e. the female category). The purpose of this article (...) is to critically assess these two claims: 1. every person has a human right to compete in sport; 2. trans women have a human right to compete in the female category in sport. (shrink)

Is neuroscience on the road to showing that character, consciousness and sense of spirituality are in fact no more than ?features of the machine??

Successful athletic performance requires precision in many respects. A batter stands behind home plate awaiting the arrival of a ball that is less than three inches in diameter and moving close to 100 mph. His goal is to hit it with a ba­­t that is also less than three inches in diameter. This impressive feat requires extraordinary temporal and spatial coordination. The sweet spot of the bat must be at the same place, at the same time, as the ball. A (...) basketball player must keep a ball bouncing as she speeds from one end of the court to another, evading defensive players. She may never break pace as she lifts from the ground, throwing the ball fifteen feet toward a hoop that is eighteen inches in diameter. One task facing a psychologist involves explaining how the body does such things within the sometimes very demanding spatial and temporal constraints that a given task imposes. Part of the goal of this chapter is to sketch the commitments of an embodied approach to such an explanation. We shall see that an embodied account of motor skills draws concepts that depart radically from more traditional cognitivist theories of motor activity. Similarly, because an embodied approach to cognition introduces new ways to understand the human capacity for social interaction, it also promises to shed new light on how athletes coordinate their actions with each other. (shrink)

Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical–cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, we examine here the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, in our specific physical–cultural worlds of distance-running, triathlon and jogging in the United Kingdom. Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and the findings from five separate auto/ethnographic projects, we explore the (...) ‘weather-worlds’ and weather work involved in our physical–cultural engagement. In so doing, we address ongoing sport sociological concerns about embodiment and somatic, sensory learning and ways of knowing. We highlight how weather work provides a key example of the phenomenological conceptualisation of the mind–body–world nexus in action, with key findings delineating weather learning across the meteorological seasons that contour our British weather-related training. (shrink)

Within the sociology of sport, phenomenologically-inspired perspectives on sensory embodiment have emerged in recent years. This corpus includes investigations into the senses in water-based sports such as scuba diving (Merchant, 2011), performance swimming (Allen-Collinson et al., 2021 ; McNarry et al., 2021) and in land-based sports such as distance running (Allen-Collinson et al., 2018, 2021 ; Allen-Collinson & Jackman, 2021), and cycling (Hammer, 2015 ; Spinney, 2006). In this article, I draw upon phenomenological sociology (Allen-Collinson, 2009) and ‘sensory work’, to (...) investigate the experience of asthma in sports participants. Currently, despite the prevalence of asthma globally, there remains a lack of in-depth research on actual experiences of coping with asthma and ‘breathing battles’ in sporting contexts. Here, I draw on data from two linked research projects: a collaborative autoethnography and an interview-based study , which generated findings that highlighted sensory aspects relating to the lived experience of asthma and sporting embodiment. (shrink)

This article addresses the question whether skiing as a nature sport enables practitioners to develop a rapport with nature, or rather estranges and insulates them from their mountainous ambiance. To address this question, I analyse a recent skiing movie from a psychoanalytical perspective and from a neuro-scientific perspective. I conclude that Jean-Paul Sartre’s classical but egocentric account of his skiing experiences disavows the technicity involved in contemporary skiing as a sportive practice for the affluent masses, which actually represents an urbanisation (...) of the sublime, symptomatic for the current era. (shrink)

This paper addresses relations between memory and imagery in expert sport in relation to visual or visuospatial perspective. Imagining, remembering, and moving potentially interact via related forms of episodic simulation, whether future- or past-directed. Sometimes I see myself engaged in action: many experts report switching between such external visual perspectives and an internal, 'own-eyes', or field perspective on their past or possible performance. Perspective in retrieval and in imagery may be flexible and multiple. I raise a range of topics for (...) empirical research on perspective and visualization. (shrink)

Seit 2018 regt sich im anglo-amerikanischen Raum vermehrt das Interesse, Sport als quasi-rechtliches Regelsystem zu untersuchen. Man geht davon aus, dass die Probleme und Lösungen in Sportsystemen den Vergleich mit Rechtssystemen erlauben. Tagungen, Aufsätze und Bücher zum Thema „Jurisprudence of Sport“ deuten darauf hin, dass hier ein neuer Forschungsbereich entsteht. Dieser Beitrag bietet eine Einführung in die Thematik.