IAPS @ Central APA: Call for Abstracts

The 2012 APA Central Division meeting will be held at the Palmer House Hilton hotel, Chicago, Illinois, Wednesday, February 15 to Saturday, February 18, 2012.

If you would like to present a paper at a session sponsored by IAPS, email an abstract of 250 words or less to Mike Austin, mike.austinatsymbol.eku.edu.

Deadline for Abstracts: September 15, 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?

New blog

Here is a link for a new blog, "The Least Thing," which is run by Roger Pielke, Jr., a well known political scientist at Colorado. "A blog about the study of sport in society," as Pielke describes it, and I'm sure it may be of interest to some of the folks here.

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?

Call for Papers

International Association for the Philosophy of Sport in conjunction with the APA Eastern Division Meeting December 27-30, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

The International Association for the Philosophy of Sport invites the submission of papers to be considered for presentation at the 2011 American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting.  Papers are welcome on any area of philosophy of sport from any theoretical approach.  Presenters must be members of both APA and IAPS and pay regular conference registration fees.  For more information on IAPS, go to http://www.iaps.net/. Papers should have an appropriate scope and length for a twenty-minute presentation.

To be considered, please submit a 500-800 word abstract of the paper by May 10, 2011.  Abstracts should be submitted as attachments by e-mail [.doc, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf format] to joan.g.forry@vanderbilt.edu. Only those contributors who do not have access to e-mail should send a hard copy to Joan Grassbaugh Forry at the address below.

Submitting authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by May 30, 2011.

Dr. Joan Grassbaugh Forry

Vanderbilt University

111 Furman Hall

Nashville, TN 37240