Doping arguments

thanks for your interesting contribution Carl. I'd like to see the reference for the full piece. You cite Miller Brown's wonderful summary of the doping and anti doping arguments and I agree pretty much with his conclusion that thinking through the ideas of athletic excellence will require us also to think about what constitutes human excellence. I have tried to do something a little like this in my latest (and long overdue) book on virtue ethics in sports.

I take a really simple line - beneath the arguments about doping are arguments about sportspershonship and (if you will forgive the crudity that follows) that requires some thinking about personhood. I tried this at my first PSSS conference organised by Bill Morgan when he was at Tennessee (1991 I believe). I had the great good fortune to have the paper responded to by Scott Kretchmar who said a lot of nice things but felt essentially the line I had taken (following Charles Taylor) was too cognitively biased. Being the wise-young PhD student I was back then, I promptly ignored the advice. When I came to revising the paper for the book (last year) I was forced to concede that the ever-modest Professor saw it right all along and that I had to soften up the position and concede that, useful an idea as strong evaluation is (the capacity to choose evaluatively among ends), if we make this the benchmark for all persons, then infants, those in Persistent Vegitative States, severely mentally disabled (among others) don't count - and to lump them in a category of non-persons is just unacceptable.

Nevertheless, there is something in the idea that a full blown ideal of a sportsperson is someone who can stand outside of ego and economic incentives to realise that a fair contest is at the heart of sports. This does not mean that all inequalities can or ought to be wiped away. Sigmund Loland gave a great keynote at the last British Philosophy of Sport Association Conference last week in Denmark (a long story and one for anohter blog) where he reminded us that we are all interested in athletic inequalities so long as they are demonstrated by way of fair opportunity (a line reminiscent of Warren Fraleigh before him).

So the fairness will apply to the contest and certain aspects of the pre-contest (no genetic tests just yet though please). It will be conceded by anyone that certain inequalities are present which it is unreasonable to ask sports institutions to eliminate (your country's level of altitude, your parental genetic stock, and so on) but doping is something we can and ought to take a stand on for a variety of harm and sports-integrity reasons as applied sensitively to the heterogeneity of cases that occur.

I offer in the book a virtue theoretical critique (based in the vices of greed (well, pleonexia in the greek catalogue -a sort of unjust greed not mere gluttony) and the loss of shame (aidos) by those who simply "prepare badly" their pharmacological regime. But these virtue based arguments add to but do not clinch the argument necessarily. I offer further more technical ones in the shape of slippery slopes and a refutation of the ambiguity of doping rules based on arguments from the conceptual vaguess literature.

But a more simple and provocative one comes often to mind. We know that people speed when driving their cars. We know we won't stop (all of) them.
Driving too fast will not always harm others or ourselves.
Yet we think that posting a limit is a posture to settle an ideal - if you drive more than (say) 30mph near a built up area you may end up killing careless pedestrians; if you drive more than say 80mph and have a tyre blow out you may very well kill yourself.

People drive faster than this. Sometimes they do it with reckless disregard to their person, sometimes to other persons.

The rules present a rationally defensible ideal, that it is impossible always to enforce, but which is an ethically justified pursuit nonenetheless. And so it is with sport.

See what you think. Sorry about the egregious plug.

Mike

Doping and the Double Standard in Professional Sport

People are generally opposed to the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport, and this negative reaction has a number of arguments at its root. For example, critics claim that these drugs affect the purity of the sport, or that they could possibly have unforeseen and negative side-effects on athletes. By far the most prominent claim against performance enhancers is that they give an illegal and undeserved edge to those who use them. I take issue with this view, not necessarily because it is incorrect, but because it masks what I see as a blatant double standard in professional sport. The full version of this argument appears in the latest edition of Think; I would just like to present the main idea here.

I believe that questioning the use of performance enhancers is valuable, as it leads to discussions concerning the legitimacy of rewarding athletes who are using all types of synthetic aids to be better and, ultimately, to win. There are also important ethical questions which occur on the slippery slope between sport in the traditional, amateur, ‘Greek’, understanding of the term, and sport played by super-enhanced, ‘semi-human’, and extremely well-paid athletes. If technology allowed one to alter one’s genes, or to attach robotic arms, legs, etc to become better at a sport (or for that matter, better human beings), should we allow it?

Technological innovations are present in all sports, and at all levels. Companies like Nike, Adidas, Speedo, New Balance and Reebok are constantly striving to manufacture products which give athletes the edge over their opponents. For example, swimmers are now using full-body suits made out of material that minimizes friction with the water. Yes, would come the reply, but how much difference do these suits really make? Well, since it was introduced in February, 19 long-course world swimming records have been set, all but one of those by a swimmer wearing Speedo’s new LZR suit. Coincidence? I think not (see
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__sport/&articleid=337502)

Spiked athletic shoes are also standard issue today. These shoes have been proved to reduce times by full seconds by virtue of the better grip, and therefore propulsion, that they afford the athlete. Simply put, if you don’t wear them, you are going to lose.
The examples above of swimmers and track athletes are particularly good ones as they both involve sports that have been the traditional bastions of those blowing the anti-doping trumpet the loudest. But isn’t this remarkable, as it seems athletes can use any technology (clothes, shoes, heart-rate monitors etc) to help them beat their opponent, as long as this technology is put on the outside of the body. Yes, comes the immediate response, but when you take performance enhancers, you are not competing. It is some super-you; you are performing way beyond your natural capacity. People who use this line of argument are simply (and conveniently) omitting the impact of new technology. Don’t swimming suits and running spikes do exactly the same thing? Anyone arguing from an “all athletes need equal footing” perspective is going to have to go the whole way and have us all passing the baton barefoot and naked.

This then is the double standard present today in professional sport: we allow technological improvements in equipment, like the Speedo LZR above, to help our athletes, but declare using (some) technological improvements in synthetic stimulants for the same ends illegal. This is not an argument for all types of steroids to be made available whole-sale to the public; I feel that this could well endanger many lives. I suggest as well that the best argument against drugs of this nature will come from the harm they may do our athletes. Some athletes might also want to argue (quite fairly) that they don’t want to risk their lives to compete and win, and that others willingness to do this puts them at a disadvantage. The fact is that many safe performance enhancers are banned alongside those that are dangerous – why not just ban the dangerous ones? I am not offering a complete policy on performance enhancers; I am merely asking us to rethink our intuitive reactions towards performance enhancers.

Contributor Introduction - Carl Thomen

I am currently completing my PhD at the University of Gloucestershire, after meeting my supervisor Emily Ryall through this blog! To the best of my knowledge, I am the only South African actively pursuing a career in Sports Philosophy (if there's anyone else who is, or wants to, please email me!). As I'm sure you know, Apartheid had a devastating effect on South Africa, and 14 years into our new democracy, its repercussions are nowhere more visible than in our sporting structures, where issues concerning quotas and "transformation" make headlines almost every day. This was the subject of my Masters thesis, which I completed last year at UCT under Professor David Benatar.

Apart from the above, I am also interested in performance enhancement (see my next post) and the effects of technology on sport and sportspeople. I also think that there is a good argument for the re-amateurization of (some) sport lurking around somewhere - when I have time, I would like to investigate it. I was a member of the national championship winning Eastern Province field hockey side in 2003, and have coached professionally in England and South Africa. Philosophically, I lean towards Nietzsche, Thoreau, Emerson and Stephen Vizinczey, among others. Otherwise, I am just grateful to get the opportunity to contribute to this forum - thanks Mike.

Fairness and Performance-Enhancing Drugs

There is an ongoing debate about the use of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids, human growth hormone, and EPO amid scandals and allegations involving elite athletes such as Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, and Roger Clemens, among others. One argument often given against the use of performance-enhancing drugs is as follows:

(1) The use of certain performance-enhancing substances constitutes a form of cheating.
(2) Therefore, the use of such substances is fundamentally unfair.
(3) Such unfairness should not be allowed in sport.
(C) The use of certain performance-enhancing substances should not be allowed.

There is some initially plausibility to this argument. It does strike one as unfair that a cyclist might win a race because he used EPO, when his opponents did not. However, as W.M. Brown points out in his "As American as Gatorade and Apple Pie: Performance Drugs and Sports," this argument misses the point in an important way. If we are considering whether or not the bans in professional leagues and international competitions like the Olympic Games should be in place, then arguing that they should be forbidden because they are against the rules is not relevant and begs the question. What is required is a justification for the rules themselves.

Moreover, another problem arises when considering issues related to fairness. There are numerous inequalities that might lead one to conclude unfairness is simply a part of sport. For example, financial resources, quality of equipment, availability of well-funded training centers, excellence of coaching, and so on could create inequalities that directly or indirectly impact athletic performance. The upshot is that we need an argument showing why some inequalities are acceptable, whereas others are not. My own view is that introducing at least some performance-enhancing substances is wrong, though I'll save my reasons for that position for a later post.

Philosophy of Sport at the Central APA

The annual meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association is being held this week in Chicago, IL at the Palmer House Hilton.
The International Association for the Philosophy of Sport is holding a session. I attended this session last year, and it was enjoyable and thought-provoking. For those who live nearby or are already planning to attend, please note the following:

Saturday, April 19, 12:15-2:15 p.m.
International Association for the Philosophy of Sport
12:15-2:15 p.m.
Topic: Philosophy of Sport
Chair: Jeffrey P. Fry (Ball State University)
Speakers: Michael W. Austin (Eastern Kentucky University)
“Magnanimity, Modafinil, and Moral Theory”
Heather Reid (Morningside College)
“Sport as Philosophy”
Nicholas Dixon (Alma College)
“Trash Talking as Irrelevant to Athletic Excellence: Response to Summers”
Jeffrey P. Fry (Ball State University)
“Underdogs, Upsets, and Overachievers”