Are competitions involving non-human animals, like horse racing, dog agility, and so on, sports? If so, under what conditions are animal sports morally justifiable? We also discuss activities like bull-fighting, dog fighting, and cockfighting.You can subscribe to The Sports Ethics Podcast in iTunes or get the RSS Feed. More information at The Sports Ethicist Blog
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Thursday, October 23, 2014
The Sports Ethics Show: Animal Sports
Fellow Philosophy of Sport contributor Joan Forry and I talk about Animal Sports in the new episode of The Sports Ethics Podcast.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Are Fantasy Sports Irresponsible?
[Cross-posted from SportsEthicist.com ]
Fantasy Football season is just starting to spin up and millions of football fans are beginning to think about their top draft prospects or clever names for their teams. As big as it is, it is not surprising that it has started to get more and more scholarly attention. Chad Carlson and I discussed philosophical questions arising in fantasy in a podcast back in December (Mike and I also talked fantasy last August).
Scott Aikin joins the fray with his relatively recent article in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy entitled “Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues”. Aikin says Fantasy Sports can bring about “a unique form of distortion of proper spectator performance” (195). In sum, his argument is that those who watch sporting events for the purpose of participating in a fantasy league are failing to be what he calls “responsible spectators”.
Using several different kinds of cases where a spectator intuitively appears to fall short of spectator norms, Aikin presents a “norm of responsible spectatorship” (199):
Aikin also argues that fantasy players fail on (c) because of they are concerned only with “the greedy self-gratification of collecting further points for a team consisting of bytes and bits in cyberspace” (201-2). All these failures, argues Aikin, show us that fantasy players fail to make sense of the game as the game it is; there is a “failure to properly attend to games” (202).
There are a number of issues I have with Aikin’s paper and I won’t tackle them all here. The primary one is that I don’t think he takes seriously enough just what fantasy sports are; or rather, what it is that fantasy players are doing when they watch the sporting events upon which the fantasy games is based.
Aikin’s claim is that fantasy players are improper spectators of the sport. They should be watching the game as it is but instead are watching particular players or actions in various games. Moreover, they ought to be concerned with the narrative or structure of the game they are watching but fantasy players are not primarily concerned about the particular game and its unfolding action. They are concerned with a range of actions across many games.
In this description, Aikin is correct: fantasy player qua fantasy player is not watching the sport event qua sporting event. But this fact doesn’t establish that the fantasy player is doing something irresponsible or improper.
On one hand, Aikin’s argument amounts to a trivial claim: People watching fantasy sports are not watching a sporting event as a sporting event. But that’s just saying that A and non-A are not identical. On the other hand, he seems to be saying something much more substantial: Watching sporting events in a way that is not watching it as a sporting event is wrong (or improper or irresponsible). But this seems clearly wrong without a substantial argument to support it and Aikin’s argument doesn’t get the job done.
He has to show that (1) his vision of proper spectatorship is superior to others and (2) that these norms of spectatorship apply to the fantasy player. I think Aikin falls short on both accounts (but I’m only going to deal with (2) in this post).
He attempts to address (2) within his Fourth Objection. This is the “just another game objection” (204). The objection says that fantasy players are not sport spectators; they are watching a different game altogether. That is, in watching the Bears take on the Rams, the fantasy player isn’t watching a football match qua football match. He is watching the game to see how it impacts his fantasy team as well learn about other the athletes for future moves and fantasy games. So the fact that he doesn’t fit the norms of the responsible spectatorship is not a problem because these norms don’t actually apply to him in this context.
Aikin’s response is that the fantasy player is nonetheless watching the game. He is not merely checking the stats; he is watching the game and so ought to abide by the appropriate norms of watching. But this is to miss the objection almost in its entirety.
Fantasy sports, as Chad Carlson articulates, are second-order games. There are games built of off other games in which others are directly engaged. They are also not reducible to these first-order games: they are different games with different rules and ends.
In playing the second-order game, one is attending to and concerned with the actions at the first-level. But the context and intent of their attention and concern is different. The watching of the sport is not watching the sport qua sport. It is watching the sport qua playing the second-order game. The requisite norms that apply have to do with playing the second-order game. The fact that one may not thereby be complying with the norms of watching the first-order game is not then baldly a deficiency.
It can be a deficiency if one intends to be watching the first-order game qua game but then doesn’t live up to those relevant norms. This is a deficiency of hypocrisy. But that’s not the issue that Aikin is taking up.
It can also be deficient if the first-order game has a privileged status. This seems to be what Aikin believes, but it is never argued for. The privileged status is not automatic merely because it is first-order.
For the sake of argument (but only for the sake of argument), I’ll concede that fantasy players are deficiently watching the games from Aikin’s standard of responsible spectatorship. However, if they are doing something else by their watching then it is not obvious or necessary that this standard applies.
An appreciator of great art walks through the Louvre. She stops at the classic paintings that exemplify the standards and purposes of great art. She attends to them as she learned to do as an Art History major. She is, let’s say, a responsible appreciator of paintings.
Another patron is walking through the Louvre. He stops at paintings with no discernable pattern from the perspective of the standards of great works. He doesn’t pay attention to some paintings that from the norms of a responsible appreciator of paintings he ought. After each viewing, he checks a few things off on his computer tablet and moves on. He seems deficient in his art appreciation. And maybe if his intent was to appreciate the paintings as the previous patron, he would be. But he is actually engaged in an online game with patrons at art museums all over the world. He is checking off that, for example, he found a painting of a farmhouse or one that doesn’t include the color red. He is attending to very different kinds of things about the paintings than the Art Historian because his goals are different. It is unreasonable to hold him to the Art Historian standard of appreciation. It’s just not what he is engaged in even if it looks similar.
He is engaged in a second-order game. It is built off of the first-order activity of art appreciation, but it is not the same thing. Like many second-order games, it can run counter to the goals and aims of art appreciation (e.g. the painting of the farmhouse that the game players are hunting down might barely be museum-worthy) and so the norms for each activity will be different (though not necessarily at odds or mutually exclusive).
The point is that insofar as the art scavenger hunt game-player is trying to appreciate art, he may be falling short. But since that is not what he is doing, then it is a mistake to apply that standard to him.
The same goes for the fantasy sport player. He might be in various ways failing short of the standards of spectatorship as Aikin presents it, but since that’s not the activity he is primarily engaged in, we shouldn’t be holding him to that standard.
That said, there is nothing inherently incompatible here. The art scavenger hunt game-player can at the same time conform to the art appreciation standards as he plays his game. And maybe he can learn more about these standards and art itself by playing the scavenger game.
Similarly, the fantasy player can uphold the standards of good spectatorship while also engaging in fantasy. I don’t take these as mutually exclusive activities and, though they can at times be at odds, they are more often, I think, reinforcing of each other. (One learns more about the athletes, the game, its intricacies and strategies, etc. and through this can appreciate the first-order game more. Much like the art scavenger hunt is probably a great way to learn about art.)
So while there is a bit of a concession here (the fantasy player is not watching sport as one ought to be watching sport qua watching sport); this concession doesn’t undermine the counter to Aikin’s argument against fantasy. The fantasy player is not being an irresponsible spectator nor is he failing short of an obligation of spectatorship. He is not, when he is playing fantasy, being a spectator and so the norms just don’t apply.
This leaves open an important question, one that is probably more philosophically important. Does Aikin get the norms of spectatorship correct? That’ll have to be a discussion for a future post.
Fantasy Football season is just starting to spin up and millions of football fans are beginning to think about their top draft prospects or clever names for their teams. As big as it is, it is not surprising that it has started to get more and more scholarly attention. Chad Carlson and I discussed philosophical questions arising in fantasy in a podcast back in December (Mike and I also talked fantasy last August).
Scott Aikin joins the fray with his relatively recent article in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy entitled “Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues”. Aikin says Fantasy Sports can bring about “a unique form of distortion of proper spectator performance” (195). In sum, his argument is that those who watch sporting events for the purpose of participating in a fantasy league are failing to be what he calls “responsible spectators”.
Using several different kinds of cases where a spectator intuitively appears to fall short of spectator norms, Aikin presents a “norm of responsible spectatorship” (199):
Responsible spectators (a) strive to make sense of the individual games they watch in terms of the objectives of the game, (b) pull for properly sporting actions in the game, and (c) pursue these ends in ways that appropriately fit with their wider ethical obligations (199-200).Fantasy players fail, according to Aikin, to satisfy these norms. They fail on (a) and (b) because they don’t watch a game as an integrated whole. They watch and root for specific actions by specific players irrespective of the consequence of those actions on the actual game played. For example, rooting for a team to go for a touchdown in a situation where the game-situation calls for running down the clock and kicking a game-clinching field goal (a ‘b’ failure). Moreover, fantasy players fail to see the game as a whole: it’s not Patriots vs. Jets; it’s whether Brady throws enough TDs (an ‘a’ failure).
Aikin also argues that fantasy players fail on (c) because of they are concerned only with “the greedy self-gratification of collecting further points for a team consisting of bytes and bits in cyberspace” (201-2). All these failures, argues Aikin, show us that fantasy players fail to make sense of the game as the game it is; there is a “failure to properly attend to games” (202).
There are a number of issues I have with Aikin’s paper and I won’t tackle them all here. The primary one is that I don’t think he takes seriously enough just what fantasy sports are; or rather, what it is that fantasy players are doing when they watch the sporting events upon which the fantasy games is based.
Aikin’s claim is that fantasy players are improper spectators of the sport. They should be watching the game as it is but instead are watching particular players or actions in various games. Moreover, they ought to be concerned with the narrative or structure of the game they are watching but fantasy players are not primarily concerned about the particular game and its unfolding action. They are concerned with a range of actions across many games.
In this description, Aikin is correct: fantasy player qua fantasy player is not watching the sport event qua sporting event. But this fact doesn’t establish that the fantasy player is doing something irresponsible or improper.
On one hand, Aikin’s argument amounts to a trivial claim: People watching fantasy sports are not watching a sporting event as a sporting event. But that’s just saying that A and non-A are not identical. On the other hand, he seems to be saying something much more substantial: Watching sporting events in a way that is not watching it as a sporting event is wrong (or improper or irresponsible). But this seems clearly wrong without a substantial argument to support it and Aikin’s argument doesn’t get the job done.
He has to show that (1) his vision of proper spectatorship is superior to others and (2) that these norms of spectatorship apply to the fantasy player. I think Aikin falls short on both accounts (but I’m only going to deal with (2) in this post).
He attempts to address (2) within his Fourth Objection. This is the “just another game objection” (204). The objection says that fantasy players are not sport spectators; they are watching a different game altogether. That is, in watching the Bears take on the Rams, the fantasy player isn’t watching a football match qua football match. He is watching the game to see how it impacts his fantasy team as well learn about other the athletes for future moves and fantasy games. So the fact that he doesn’t fit the norms of the responsible spectatorship is not a problem because these norms don’t actually apply to him in this context.
Aikin’s response is that the fantasy player is nonetheless watching the game. He is not merely checking the stats; he is watching the game and so ought to abide by the appropriate norms of watching. But this is to miss the objection almost in its entirety.
Fantasy sports, as Chad Carlson articulates, are second-order games. There are games built of off other games in which others are directly engaged. They are also not reducible to these first-order games: they are different games with different rules and ends.
In playing the second-order game, one is attending to and concerned with the actions at the first-level. But the context and intent of their attention and concern is different. The watching of the sport is not watching the sport qua sport. It is watching the sport qua playing the second-order game. The requisite norms that apply have to do with playing the second-order game. The fact that one may not thereby be complying with the norms of watching the first-order game is not then baldly a deficiency.
It can be a deficiency if one intends to be watching the first-order game qua game but then doesn’t live up to those relevant norms. This is a deficiency of hypocrisy. But that’s not the issue that Aikin is taking up.
It can also be deficient if the first-order game has a privileged status. This seems to be what Aikin believes, but it is never argued for. The privileged status is not automatic merely because it is first-order.
For the sake of argument (but only for the sake of argument), I’ll concede that fantasy players are deficiently watching the games from Aikin’s standard of responsible spectatorship. However, if they are doing something else by their watching then it is not obvious or necessary that this standard applies.
An appreciator of great art walks through the Louvre. She stops at the classic paintings that exemplify the standards and purposes of great art. She attends to them as she learned to do as an Art History major. She is, let’s say, a responsible appreciator of paintings.
Another patron is walking through the Louvre. He stops at paintings with no discernable pattern from the perspective of the standards of great works. He doesn’t pay attention to some paintings that from the norms of a responsible appreciator of paintings he ought. After each viewing, he checks a few things off on his computer tablet and moves on. He seems deficient in his art appreciation. And maybe if his intent was to appreciate the paintings as the previous patron, he would be. But he is actually engaged in an online game with patrons at art museums all over the world. He is checking off that, for example, he found a painting of a farmhouse or one that doesn’t include the color red. He is attending to very different kinds of things about the paintings than the Art Historian because his goals are different. It is unreasonable to hold him to the Art Historian standard of appreciation. It’s just not what he is engaged in even if it looks similar.
He is engaged in a second-order game. It is built off of the first-order activity of art appreciation, but it is not the same thing. Like many second-order games, it can run counter to the goals and aims of art appreciation (e.g. the painting of the farmhouse that the game players are hunting down might barely be museum-worthy) and so the norms for each activity will be different (though not necessarily at odds or mutually exclusive).
The point is that insofar as the art scavenger hunt game-player is trying to appreciate art, he may be falling short. But since that is not what he is doing, then it is a mistake to apply that standard to him.
The same goes for the fantasy sport player. He might be in various ways failing short of the standards of spectatorship as Aikin presents it, but since that’s not the activity he is primarily engaged in, we shouldn’t be holding him to that standard.
That said, there is nothing inherently incompatible here. The art scavenger hunt game-player can at the same time conform to the art appreciation standards as he plays his game. And maybe he can learn more about these standards and art itself by playing the scavenger game.
Similarly, the fantasy player can uphold the standards of good spectatorship while also engaging in fantasy. I don’t take these as mutually exclusive activities and, though they can at times be at odds, they are more often, I think, reinforcing of each other. (One learns more about the athletes, the game, its intricacies and strategies, etc. and through this can appreciate the first-order game more. Much like the art scavenger hunt is probably a great way to learn about art.)
So while there is a bit of a concession here (the fantasy player is not watching sport as one ought to be watching sport qua watching sport); this concession doesn’t undermine the counter to Aikin’s argument against fantasy. The fantasy player is not being an irresponsible spectator nor is he failing short of an obligation of spectatorship. He is not, when he is playing fantasy, being a spectator and so the norms just don’t apply.
This leaves open an important question, one that is probably more philosophically important. Does Aikin get the norms of spectatorship correct? That’ll have to be a discussion for a future post.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Ethics and the Beautiful Game at The Boot Room
I am a passionate soccer fan. I love to play, ref, coach, and watch the sport. I also am passionate about my job - being a philosopher. One of the great blessings of my life is to be able to combine these two things. And I think that at least some of us who are academics and benefit from the public trust invested in us should try to bridge the gap between our scholarship and public life.
To that end, I will begin regularly contributing to a new but quickly growing site devoted to soccer, The Boot Room, at http://tbrfootball.com/. My focus will be on ethical issues that arise in the game. My first piece explains why I, as an Arsenal fan, don't want the club to sign Luis Suarez: http://tbrfootball.com/no-to-suarez-at-arsenal/
Enjoy, and if you are so inclined comment at CLSoccer. I'd love to get an ethics discussion going over there!
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Olympics and Philosophy: Publication Announcement
The Olympics and Philosophy is now available in physical and Kindle formats. The book is divided into 6 parts: The Ideal Olympian, Ancient Heritage, Modern Ideals, Ethical Issues, Race and Gender Issues, and Political Power. The chapters include Olympic figures Jesse Owens, Emil Zatopek, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Wilma Rudolph and philosophers Jane English, Aristotle, and Edmund Husserl, among others. There are discussions of Olympic boxing, soccer/football, women's beach volleyball, and various athletic events.
From the publisher's description:
It is said the champions of the ancient Olympic Games
received a crown of olive leaves, symbolizing a divine blessing from
Nike, the winged goddess of victory. While the mythology of the ancient
games has come to exemplify the highest political, religious, community,
and individual ideals of the time, the modern Olympic Games, by
comparison, are widely known as an international, bi-annual sporting
event where champions have the potential to earn not only glory for
their country, but lucrative endorsement deals and the perks of
worldwide fame. The Olympics and Philosophy examines the Olympic
Movement from a variety of theoretical perspectives to uncover the
connection between athleticism and philosophy for a deeper appreciation
of the Olympic Pillars of Sport, Environment, and Culture.
While today's Olympic champions are neither blessed by the gods nor rewarded with wreaths of olive, the original spirit and ancient ideals of the Olympic Movement endure in its modern embodiment. Editors Heather L. Reid and Michael W. Austin have assembled a team of international scholars to explore topics such as the concept of excellence, ethics, doping, gender, and race. Interweaving ancient and modern Olympic traditions, The Olympics and Philosophy considers the philosophical implications of the Games' intersection with historical events and modern controversy in a unique analysis of tradition and the future of the Olympiad.
While today's Olympic champions are neither blessed by the gods nor rewarded with wreaths of olive, the original spirit and ancient ideals of the Olympic Movement endure in its modern embodiment. Editors Heather L. Reid and Michael W. Austin have assembled a team of international scholars to explore topics such as the concept of excellence, ethics, doping, gender, and race. Interweaving ancient and modern Olympic traditions, The Olympics and Philosophy considers the philosophical implications of the Games' intersection with historical events and modern controversy in a unique analysis of tradition and the future of the Olympiad.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Life After the NFL
From cnn.com:
During the NFL lockout this year, some startling numbers came to light as many players were forced to consider what their lives would be like without football.
• The average NFL career is 3.52 seasons;
• The average age of retired NFL players is 28;
• Within five years of leaving the league, 75% of NFL players end up broke, divorced or unemployed;
• 65% of NFL players leave the game with permanent injuries;
• At least 20% of players reading this are clinically depressed;
• The average life expectancy for retired NFL players is 53-59 years.
During the NFL lockout this year, some startling numbers came to light as many players were forced to consider what their lives would be like without football.
• The average NFL career is 3.52 seasons;
• The average age of retired NFL players is 28;
• Within five years of leaving the league, 75% of NFL players end up broke, divorced or unemployed;
• 65% of NFL players leave the game with permanent injuries;
• At least 20% of players reading this are clinically depressed;
• The average life expectancy for retired NFL players is 53-59 years.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Fantasy Football
I've got a post over at Ethics for Everyone that may be of interest to readers of this blog:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201109/whats-wrong-fantasy-football
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201109/whats-wrong-fantasy-football
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Brain damage in sport
The problem with ethics is that there is always a gap between what is the case (according to evidence) and what ought to be done about it.
As such, readers might be interested in a news story about former NFL player Dave Duerson who requested his brain be left for medical analysis in his suicide note. If it can be substantially evidenced that certain sports have a high likelihood of significant brain damage, then does it mean that such sports should be banned or drastically altered to reduce this likelihood?
Equally interesting, former Olympic Gold medalist James Cracknell has made a video about the importance of wearing cycling helmets after he suffered brain injury whilst cycling in Arizona. In it, he states that he is no longer James Cracknell as the accident altered his personality but implies that despite this is, this new existence is still preferable to death. Some obvious philosophical questions arise here about identity: if James Cracknell says he is no longer James Cracknell, then who is he? And would that mean that James Cracknell is the equivalent of dead anyway? In which case, wouldn't that undermine his point about the wearing of a cycle helmet?
Monday, April 4, 2011
Respect for Opponents and the Postgame Handshake
I've been thinking some lately about the practice of shaking an opponent's hand after a game, and wondering whether--as Randolph Feezell and Craig Clifford put it in Sport and Character--"...at the end of the game, should we always, without exception, attempt to shake the hands of our opponents (p. 36)?"
My intuition is to say that there can be morally justified exceptions to this practice. For example, as a player I would think it would be justified to refrain from this practice if an opponent has clearly intentionally injured one of my teammates. Or if an opponent consistently displays deep disrespect for the game, officials, and her opponents, is there something disingenuous about shaking her hand after the game?
Or take a case that is less clear, but one that I've been thinking about lately for personal reasons. As a coach in youth sports, am I obligated to shake the hand of my opposing coach if he or she spends the entire game berating their own players, criticizing the referee, and engaging in other patterns of disrespectful behavior?
The bottom line question is this: Is the respect that is communicated via the postgame handshake dependent in some sense on how an opponent conducts themselves, such that there are times when it is appropriate to refrain from this tradition? Thoughts, anyone?
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Football, Fame, and Fortune
This paper was just published in the online journal, The Other Journal, and is available here:
http://bit.ly/eucRRX
Here's a short excerpt:
http://bit.ly/eucRRX
Here's a short excerpt:
The external goods that are available through participating in football (and many other practices) include fame, fortune, status, social influence, and power. Football players at the professional level often acquire a fortune and some achieve a significant amount of fame. These goods are external to football because one could play football and even achieve excellence in the sport without receiving any of these goods. In fact, in the past this was true of many of the great players who excelled prior to the escalation of salaries and media coverage of the sport. They experienced football’s internal goods but not the external ones. This shows that the external goods are not essential to football.
What is the significance of the difference between the internal and external goods when considering the relationship between football and celebrity? As I will demonstrate, in football (as well as many other sports), the pursuit of the external goods by individual players can undermine the pursuit of the internal goods of the sport, some of which are grounded in a Christian understanding of the nature of God.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
What's wrong with a potential NFL lockout?
One area of disagreement I have with this is that the greed of the players is not addressed. Surely it isn't only the greed of the owners in play here? However, it does seem to me that one of the wrong-making properties of a lockout is the negative economic impact in each city with an NFL team. And it does seem that healthcare benefits are obligatory, given that most players don't have long careers, with some not adequately prepared for life after football (for more on this, see Racing the Sunset, by Scott Tinley). Even though one might argue that the players make more than enough money to cover health care expenses, I still think that healthcare benefits should be offered by the owners, perhaps as a matter of principle.
"The NFL is preparing a 'lock out' next season unless football players agree to its demands.If there's no football season, it would impact 150,000 jobs – and cause more than $140 million in lost revenue – in each and every city with an NFL team.Local economies will be devastated. All because of the NFL's greed.It's easy to see how crushing a lockout would be... Picture a 60,000-seat football stadium... EMPTY. Now picture all the bars, restaurants, hotels, t-shirt shops, hot dog carts surrounding the stadium... CLOSED. And all of the stadium's janitors, vendors, and support staff... OUT OF WORK.But the NFL and team owners don't care, because they'll still make billions. They've already signed TV contracts that will pay out even if the season is canceled.The NFL owners' greed is unbelievable. In ditching an agreement that was working just fine, the owners actually want players to make absurd, unjustified concessions around wages and benefits – like taking away ALL healthcare benefits from players and their families.It's only fair that NFL owners pick up the tab for these health costs when players risk their lives for the game. An average football player's career lasts only three and a half seasons – but the injuries they face on the job aren't short-lived at all. Tackles, hits, and blocks result in intense physical trauma, impacting players' health, well-being, and medical expenses far into retirement."
Moreover, I believe that the wealthy, which includes the owners and players, have an obligation to those whose livelihood depends on the season happening. Whatever responsibilities there are for promoting the common good, it arguably includes avoiding a lockout, in part because of the negative impact of this on the lives of other human beings.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Coubertin Olympic Awards Essay Contest
Interested students should check this out:
http://www.coubertin-awards.org.uk/
http://www.coubertin-awards.org.uk/
Friday, February 19, 2010
The next frontier: gene doping
Interesting article on the CNN website today about genetic engineering and the idea of creating better athletes through gene doping. A bioethicist is quoted as saying he is in favor of such manipulations:
The entire article is at http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/19/genetic.doping/index.html?hpt=T2 .Andy Miah, a bioethicist and University of the West of Scotland professor, argues that society is morally obligated to find safer means to genetically enhance athletes.
"If we can develop technologies that more carefully align with an athlete's individual physiology, then the chances of it leading to unforeseen side effects diminishes considerably," Miah said.
If it's possible to create webbed fingers so that swimmers can improve their stroke, he's for it.
"Some will recoil at the idea of this, since they feel it will sully the good name of so-called 'clean' sports. My response is that this is already happening," he said. "Every athlete makes a choice about what technology they will use to help them prepare for competition. Some athletes will reject the advice of nutritionists, psychologists, physiotherapists and so on.
"They may not even wear running shoes. However, the majority of athletes immerse themselves in a world of technology -- whether they perceive it or not -- and modern sport has always been about the obsession to evolve performance, beat world records and generally test the boundaries of human capability."
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The New Yorker: Football and Dogfighting
This is worth the read, and merits attention from philosophers of sport.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Update on Semenya
The case of of Caster Semenya and the insensitivity of the IAAF was discussed in this post. Now Semenya has been "made over" by a South African magazine and is a "cover girl". This would seem to only exacerbate the problems first raised by her case.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Balancing Sports and Academics
Or I could entitle this post "Find the Logical Fallacies". See the Chronicle of Higher Ed for a brief interview with the president of the University of Florida.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Equity of prize money in tennis...
Although it's not a particularly new area of debate, David Edmonds on the University of Oxford Practical Ethics blog has recently written a post arguing against the claim that women and men should receive the same prize money in tennis. His main syllogism is that prize money should be dependent on ability, men have greater ability than women, therefore men should receive more prize money than women. He does concede that there is a degree of personal interest involved in his claim in that any counter-argument resting on the premise that women should receive extra advantage in their 'handicap' [my word not his] by virtue of sex, would descriminate against him as a less tennis-abled man.
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