I spoke with Michel Martin of NPR’s All Things Considered about the ethics of the USA’s 13-0 victory over Thailand at the Women’s World Cup. There was a bit of controversy over the USA ‘running up the score’ as well as celebrating each goal. I defend the US team on both counts, and argue that neither the scoring nor celebrating was disrespectful to Thailand.
You can listen or read the transcript.
Filed under media, sportsmanship, Women's Sports, World Cup
I will be teaching PHI 370: Sports Ethics at ASU in fall 2019.
For ASU students: Check with your academic advisor, but this course may be used to meet your HU general studies requirement and your general upper-division hours requirement. It may also be used as one of your upper-division electives in both the Philosophy and the Morality, Politics and Law majors, as well as the Ethics Certificate.
This course is also one of the required courses for the new Sports, Cultures and Ethics Certificate.
Course Description:
A study of moral issues in sports, including but not limited to the nature and application of sportsmanship, the prohibition of performance enhancing drugs, ethical issues in the economics of sports, the role of violence, and fandom.
Prerequisite(s): ENG 102, 105, or 108 with C or better; minimum 25 hours; Credit is allowed for only PHI 370 or PHI 394 (Sports Ethics)
The class is scheduled for T/TH 9-10:15 am on the Tempe campus. SLN#: 90250
Tentative Weekly Reading and Unit Schedule
(subject to change)
Week 1: Course Introduction
Week 2: Philosophy and Sport: What is ‘sport’ and why study it?
Week 3: Sport and Society: What is and ought to be the social impact of sport?
Week 4: What is sportsmanship?
Week 5: Is it ethical to run up the score?
Week 6: Is it wrong to foul?
Week 7: Is competition moral?
Weeks 8 & 9: Violence in Sport: Can fighting or football be justified?
Weeks 10 & 11: Should performance-enhancing drugs be banned?
Week 12: How should sport deal with sex and gender equality?
Week 13: Should disabled athletes compete against non-disabled athletes?
Weeks 14 & 15: What is the role of money in sport?
Week 16: Is being a fan moral?
Filed under Arizona State, Classes, Sports Ethics, Sports Studies
The IAPS meeting at the Pacific APA will focus on Sport and Admiration. The Pacific APA is being held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 17-20, 2019.
Date/Time: Thursday, April 18, 6 – 8 pm
Chair: Shawn E. Klein (Arizona State University)
Speakers:
Abstracts for the talks:
Appreciation of Sport: How the Seemingly Trivial Becomes Essential
Jack Bowen, Menlo School
Sport is considered by some as trivial: athletes spending countless hours honing a skill which only has value in the institution of that particular sport (throwing a ball through a circle, in the case of basketball for example). Though, it is actually becauseof this that sport and the athletes who play it are worthy of our appreciation. Throughout human history and until recently, we have needed to hunt for our own food, fight in various wars and battles and, yet, at a time of great peace and abundance, sport now fills that niche for many of us. Sport provides a venue in which we can show appreciation on various levels: regarding physical accomplishments, moral achievement, and, from there, an appreciation of our own good fortune to even be able to appreciate—which has its own benefits. In doing this, it turns out we may actually need certain mantras in place often dismissed by those who love sport such as, “winning is everything,” and that sport is a matter of “life and death,” and other such hyperbole. In addition, we may need to continue the narrative of athletes as making sacrifices, etc, despite the fact that such assertions fall flat outside of the sports context. In a sense, we’re asking of ourselves and those who participate to maintain a sense of dissonance in order that our appreciation rings true with what we otherwise rightly celebrate and hold dear.
“Moral Achievement, Athletic Achievement, and Appropriate Admiration”
Kyle Fruh, Stanford University
There is a strong presumption that when we respond to moral excellence with admiration, the object of our admiration is virtue. I develop three arguments to show that morally reflective practices of admiring should generally spurn this widely shared presumption about the object of admiration and take instead as their object what I will call moral achievements – discrete, morally remarkable actions – rather than aspects of an agent’s character. In each argument, I draw on an analogy with a domain of non-moral admiration – namely, admiration of athletic achievement. As a rich terrain of admiring responses, sports offer us relatively well-understood distinctions among possible objects of admiration – a particular feat or play, a set of skills, a career, a team, etc. I suggest, in each of the three arguments I develop, that the analogy is instructive for reflective moral admiration. The upshot of the paper is, on the one hand, theoretical, inasmuch as it develops a tension between the conditions governing appropriate admiration and an empirically informed view of the nature of character. But there is also practical upshot, especially in the context of collective, public practices of admiring and honoring, as when we build statues of heroes or name buildings after them
“On a Pedestal—Sport as an Arena for Admiration”
Tara Smith, Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
In philosophical analyses of the value of sport, a relatively unheralded feature is the opportunity that sport offers for admiration. While we readily salute many of the things that people admire (the amazing catch, the sensational comeback), we do not sufficiently appreciate that admiration itself is a positive good, potentially beneficial to the admirer. At a time when much in the world around us seems distinctly unadmirable and when admiration itself is often dismissed as naïve, athletic achievements and the qualities that propel them present palpable counter-evidence to our darker conclusions.
The paper proceeds in four stages: first, explaining what admiration is; second, identifying the kinds of things that sport distinctly offers to admire; third, demonstrating the value of athletic admiration, tracing how this contributes to a flourishing life through the role-modeling that it offers, the action that it encourages, and the feelings that it fosters; fourth, addressing objections, which serves both to clarify and to fortify its central contention.
Filed under APA, Conferences, IAPS
In this episode of Examined Sport, I look at Randolph Feezell’s “Sportsmanship and Blowouts: Baseball and Beyond.” Published in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport in 1999, Feezell responds to Nicholas Dixon’s paper on blowouts that was the subject of a previous episode of Examined Sport. Feezell proposes what he calls the Revised Anti-Blowout thesis to better explain the ethics of blowouts.
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Filed under Examined Sport, podcast, sportsmanship
I will be organizing the IAPS session at the 2019 Pacific APA. It takes place in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, April 17-20, 2019.
I have one paper lined up that looks at the relationship of sport to the value of admiration. If you are interested in commentating on this paper, please contact me.
If you have a paper on some related (broadly construed) topic, please contact me.
If you know you will be at the Pacific APA and are willing to provide comments to any of the potential papers, also, please contact me.
sklein(at)asu(dot)edu
Thanks!
Filed under APA, CFP, Conferences, IAPS
Published in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport in 1992, Nicholas Dixon’s paper: “On Sportsmanship and Running up the Score” spurred a discussion on the ethics of wide-margin victories in sport. Dixon argues against what he calls the Anti-Blowout Thesis. Blowouts are not, on his view, always or necessarily unsporting.
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Filed under Examined Sport, podcast, sportsmanship
Kathleen Pearson’s “Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics,” published in Quest in 1973, analyzes the ethical status of deception in sport and athletics. This short and exceptionally clear paper influenced later work regarding deception and fouls in sport.
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Filed under Examined Sport, Fouls, podcast, sportsmanship
Along with several philosophy of sport colleagues, I have an article in a recently published special issue of Cultura_Ciencia_Deporte (Vol 13, No. 38). The issues explores philosophical theories of play, sport, and games.
My article focuses on the value of play and argues that play, like virtue and friendship, is an important part of the good human life.
The Value of Play and The Good Human Life by Shawn E. Klein
Abstract:
The dominant conception of play in philosophy of sport is that it is autotelic. This conception is the subject of important criticisms by Stephen Schmid and others. With these criticisms in mind, my paper seeks to move the discussion of play beyond the apparent dichotomy of autotelicity and instrumentality. Drawing a parallel to the role virtue and friendship have in a broadly construed (neo-)Aristotelian ethic, I argue that play is an important part of the good human life. Like virtue and friendship, play is chosen both for the sake of its importance to the good life and for its own sake. It is partly constitutive of the good life and thus chosen as part of and for the sake of the good life. At the same time, however, play is chosen for its own sake: for what it is distinct from any further ends it might bring about. Thus, play is not autotelic, but nor is it instrumental. Play should be considered, therefore, a constituent value of the good human life.
Filed under Philosophy, play, publications, virtue
J.S. Russell’s “Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With?”, published in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport in 1999, presents a theory of sport adjudication that Russell argues better explains sport, the role of officials and umpires, and guides those officials in officiating their sports. Russell’s paper is one of the first explicit attempts to explain and apply interpretivism, one of the central philosophical accounts of sport. This is part two of two episodes on Russell’s paper. Part One.
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Filed under baseball, Examined Sport, Officiating, podcast, Uncategorized
J.S. Russell’s “Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With?”, published in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport in 1999, presents a theory of sport adjudication that Russell argues better explains sport, the role of officials and umpires, and guides those officials in officiating their sports. Russell’s paper is one of the first explicit attempts to explain and apply interpretivism, one of the central philosophical accounts of sport. This is part one of two episodes on Russell’s paper.
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Opening and Closing Musical Credits:
Filed under baseball, Examined Sport, Officiating, podcast
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