Introduction
In a book devoted to the ethics of sports, one might properly expect a clear account of what sports are, what ethics is and how – if at all – they are related.
What form those clarifications take, however, is a matter of some dispute.
While I will develop a virtue-ethical account of sports that unfolds through-out the course of the book, this chapter focuses on what sport is taken to mean. I will argue that attempting to locate some transhistorical essence of the concept sport simply by reducing its complexity and variety to a set of nec-essary and sufficient conditions is not a helpful way to proceed. I conclude the chapter with an account of sports that I hope is sufficiently uncontentious (at least) for the purposes of the book. I understand sports in a rather more open-ended way than many authors who have attempted to circumscribe the concept. I argue that sports are best understood ritually as rule-governed contests with a gratuitous logic, and which necessarily embody an ethical dimension.
Defining sports as games
On the national holiday that occurs each year at the end of August, the World Championships for a not very well-known sport is hosted in the smallest town in Great Britain: Llanwrtyd.1 In the heart of rural Wales, the smallest of the nations that comprise Great Britain, the championships take place in a stretch of water in the middle of a dense peat bog (Waen Rhydd) on the outskirts of the town. It is that much heralded sport called ‘Bog Snorkelling’. For those of you unfamiliar with the activity, the following account is offered on their web site (see Llanwrtyd Well Coming Events, 2007):
Competitors have to complete two lengths of a 60 yard [50m] trench cut through the peat bog in the quickest time possible, wearing snorkels and flippers (wet suits optional but advisable) but without using any conven-tional swimming strokes.
One can imagine addicts of baseball, devotees of basketball and aficionados of cricket arise in shared outrage. You cannot ‘call that a sport’ they surely will protest. Well, ‘why ever not?’ the bog snorkellers might respond. One common way of settling this matter, or the host of similar conceptual border disputes that are vented frequently in the media (such as the sporting status of darts, ice-dance, pool, river-swimming, synchronised swimming and so on) is by defining what sports essentially are and then applying that definition to the disputed activity. The problem at the heart of the definitional project is almost as old as philosophy itself. Aristotle thought that a definition was a phrase signifying a thing’s essence. This common approach allows us to think of a definition then as a kind of conceptual abbreviation. Defining might be thought of as an activity where the complex (or at least many similar) things are analysed into simpler (constitutive) elements. Consider the following sim-ple examsim-ples: a bachelor is an unmarried male; a mother is a female parent; a fortnight is fourteen days; a triangle is a plane three-sided object whose inter-nal angles add up to 180 degrees.
Technical terms such as these, possessed of a certain determinacy, present us with a definitional task that seems straightforward. On first inspection at least, other concepts such as ‘art’, ‘democracy’ and ‘education’2seem consid-erably less promising candidates for definitions. For our present purpose, understanding sport by way of defining it will take us to consider its concep-tual cousin ‘game’ of which Wittgenstein (1953) famously remarked there was no essence. In order to test out the value of each of any definition we might look for tests of inclusion and exclusion. Does the definition allow things other than those properly belonging to the class to be defined or does it fail, in the opposing direction, by ruling out cases which it is agreed should fall in the class? In each of the conceptually simple cases above (bachelor, mother, fortnight, triangle) what is being defined corresponds to the thing falling under the definition. This activity seems reasonable enough, one might think, therefore the application of it to sport should not trouble us too much.
While most adults would have little difficulty in recognising as sports those commercialised activities that appear regularly on the back pages of newspa-pers or on prime time weekend viewing such as baseball, football or tennis, others might be less clear. Consider the example above: should bog snorkelling be properly classified as a sport? Well, if we looked at what these examples had in common we could attempt to see whether there was any-thing by way of necessary conditions (conditions that were necessary for the ascription of the term sport properly to the activity in question) which jointly would be sufficient (for the proper ascription). Working through such an example as this might lead us to a position, often attributed to Wittgenstein, and loosely labelled ‘anti-essentialism’. Here is what Wittgenstein famously had to say:
Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games.” I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What
is common to them all?-Don’t say: ‘There must be something common or they would not be called “games” ’ – but look and see whether there is anything common to all. – For if you look at them you will not see some-thing that is common to all, but similarities, relationships and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! . . .
And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similari-ties, sometimes similarities of detail.
(Wittgenstein, 1967: §66–7) The idea of recognising family resemblances rather than attempting forlornly to locate a conceptual essence is often accorded great status within the thought of the later Wittgenstein. In contrast to the picture theory of meaning which he advocated in the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, where words sup-posedly stood for some thing in external reality, Wittgenstein begins to develop a more subtle and complex appreciation for the complexity of the relations between language, thought and the world. The earlier picture theory of meaning was based upon the idea that the sum world was the sum of all facts that could be captured in propositions. Facts represented the world and did so in a pictorial way. Coming to understand these propositions, how words captured the world, meant that philosophers were required to grasp the meaning of words by analysing what was essential to them. The idea of generality and diversity in language is brought about in his posthumously col-lected lectures Philosophical Investigations by several variations of the fam-ily metaphor such as ‘famfam-ily of meaning’ (1953: §77), ‘famfam-ily of structures’
(§108), ‘family of cases’ (§168) and ‘family of language games’ (§179), and most famously ‘family resemblances’ (McFee, 2003a). What lay behind the deployment of the familial metaphor was Wittgenstein’s foil against those who craved such generality in meaning. This notion, after Bambrough (1968:
189), is commonly illustrated in the following manner where numbers 1–6 are the names of certain games and the letters beneath them are their observ-able features or characteristics:
1 2 3 4 5 6
abcde bcdef cdefg defgh efghi fghij
It can be seen from this representation of the family resemblance idea that there is a very strong set of resemblances between one grouping and the next (i.e. between 1 and 2, 2 and 3 and so forth) but that there is no single common element that holds all groups together. So Wittgenstein tells us to consider things we call games that are as diverse as chess, football, patience, the Olympic Games and children’s games. Contra the idea set out in the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus Wittgenstein does not accept that a definition can be given for the essence of language. Rather, the metaphor shows us that of
words in general, and ‘games’ in particular, ‘these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, – but they are related to one another in many different ways’ (1953: §65). Wittgenstein uses the analogy that the concept of ‘games’ is held together by the similarities that hold between members of a family; build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament and the like. One member of the family may share the same colour eyes as his brother, yet have the build of his father, the gait of his mother and so forth. Wittgenstein offers, perhaps, a better analogy by asking us to consider a thread; the thread is held together not by a single fibre that runs the entire length, but by the criss-crossing, overlapping and inter-twining of many fibres.
Many critics have, however, latched on to what appears to be a throw-away line of Wittgenstein in §66: ‘don’t think, but look!’ For if we do not think how are we to know what to look at, where to look for it, and how do we recognise whatever it is when we see it? Or, as Baker and Hacker put it most philosophers criticising Wittgenstein on this point have found his answers ‘either non existent or inadequate’ (Baker and Hacker, 1980: 332 cited in McFee, 2003a: 21).
This simple line of criticism belies a more fundamental objection to the idea of family resemblances as a family of meanings for a given concept. If this arti-ficial construction of Wittgenstein’s suggestion is followed through one could conceivably end up with the following:
7 8 9 10 11 12
ghijk hijkl ijklm jklmn klmno lmnop
While it is clear that 7 is closely related to 8 and, likewise, 8 to 9, it is not immediately apparent what resemblances 1 has in common with 9, 10, 11 or 12? It can be seen that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are clearly related to each other. But what similarities have these in common with 9 other than empirical traits shared with other groups that might ordinarily be considered quite disparate?
Kovesi puts the point less abstractly:
The similarities are connected like threads in a rope. The family resem-blances between games illustrate this picture well. But I do not see any foundation for a claim that we call both football and chess games because football is played with a ball, and so is tennis, while tennis is played by two people, and so is chess.
(Kovesi, 1972: 22) One might anticipate the following response: ‘It is only when we know that these individuals are members of a family that we test them to see if they have empirical similarities.’ On this reading the resemblances themselves do not make them members of the family. Rather it should be said that they are mem-bers of the family and they have resemblances. The ‘family resemblances’ idea
is simply an analogy to prove that there is no single essence or essential char-acteristic within a given concept.
Within the philosophy of sport literature, a celebrated attempt to define sports by way of a definition of games was given by Bernard Suits.3Suits argued for a definition of game that met the demands of inclusivity and exclu-sivity without remainder. He conceived of his thesis as a direct response to Wittgenstein’s challenge to ‘look and see’ and a refutation of his anti-essentialist line of thinking. It was argued by Suits that all sports were a type of game. His account was not circular for he also argued that there were cer-tain games that were not sports. This looks like a strong contender to estab-lish whether, for our purposes, bog snorkelling should indeed be classified a sport. The elements of his definition act as individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of the concept ‘sport’. This is the very thing that Wittgenstein had denied. That is to say, that for any X to count as a sport it must contain all necessary elements and that, moreover, any activity that contained them was sufficient to be classified a sport.
Suits argued that for an activity to be called a game it must have (1) a pre-lusory goal (that is to say a goal specified prior to the contest such as scoring more goals, jumping the furthest, and so on); (2) a set of means that limited the ways in which the goal could be legitimately achieved; (3) rules that define the activity and specify permissible and impermissible means in the achievement of the pre-lusory goal; and (4) a disposition that the game player must adopt in their attempt to achieve the pre-lusory goal.
This disposition to achieve the pre-lusory goal (as opposed to any further goals the sportsperson may individually hold) is called the ‘lusory attitude’:
‘the knowing acceptance of constitutive rules just so the activity made possi-ble by such rules can occur’ (Suits, 1998). Anyone failing to hold such a dis-position is simply not playing sport even where they share the same field, or court, or track with others so engaged. In a wonderfully pithy summary Suits (1978) holds: ‘Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unneces-sary obstacles.’ Now all this seems apposite for sports. It seems, if we take paradigmatic examples such as football or hockey they certainly fit the bill.
How are we to know that the definition offered is authoritative in the set-tling of the conceptual dispute? One difficulty with the idea, that is to say the whole enterprise, is to consider the idea of conceptual revision. Suits, like so many others in different contexts, offers an analysis of the concept in a way that is ahistorical. It is as if the concept has been crystallised in time by the analysis. One way of challenging the thesis, then, will be to look back at examples of activities we might recognise as games but that do not fit the features of the activity thus defined.
No one, I think, would call an activity a game were it not rule-governed.
And games typically have a purpose or a goal that is specified in the game.
And not any means could constitute a legitimate way of achieving the ends of the activity lest we have mayhem. And games may be manic, but not mayhem.
Could we not, it might be said, imagine players making up rules as they go
along, and deciding on the precise goal and its manner of achievement as they went along their merry way? It is unlikely to be sure, but it is not logically impossible. Consider now a much stronger objection. Suits argues that the lusory attitude is a necessary condition for a game. That is to say, for any X to be a game it must be played and played in a certain way. Contrast this lusory attitude with an account from (not a philosopher but a classicist) David Young who criticises Harris’s account of Ancient Greek athletics:
The glaring difference between Harris’ ideal amateur sport and Greek athletics lies in the seriousness of the latter. They were not a diversion or recreation. They were not play. The Greek verb paizen, “to play” in Greek comes from the word pais, “child.” Etymologically, at least, “to play” means to act like a child and in a sportive way. The Greeks some-times apply the verb to playing music, to dancing and playing games (such as board games or drinking games) to playing ball, to jesting and to what we call mere “horseplay.” Yet I know of no text that uses the verb paizen, “play”, for athletic contests. They were not associated with child-hood behaviour. [. . .] a boy athlete was acting like a man, not the other way around. Neither game nor play, Greek athletics were a serious busi-ness and an organized adult activity.
(Young, 1984: 171–2) Here then, we have at least a plausible candidate for an exception to what should be an exceptionless class: that is after all the point of developing nec-essary and sufficient conditions. Of course, one can just say if these activities were not play-like then they cannot have been games. But to stipulate such a meaning is itself like offering a prescriptive definition. Why should one not offer a definition that bore no reference to the motivations of the gamewrights? Analysis is supposed to offer more than mere prescriptive def-initions. Might it not be the case that modern sports, in the Western world at least (for I have said nothing of similar activities whether in antiquity or the present4), have come to embrace the lusory attitude? Young (1984) is highly critical of the romantic writings of De Coubertin that try to link the aristo-cratic amateur sensibility of playing the game for its own sake to a con-structed tradition that harked back to Ancient Greece.
Well, if this is the case then we have to acknowledge not some timeless essence but a meaning that is shared and revised over time. I will develop this idea below. Another move might be to say that Greek athletics is not the same as sports. But that would beg another argument: what kinds of activities are sports?
Suits’ definition of ‘sports’
Suits’ original argument has it that all sports are games but that they are games of a particular kind. He argues that in addition to being games,
there are four necessary conditions for sports that, taken together, are sufficient:
1 That the game be a game of skill;
2 That the skill be physical;
3 That the game have a wide following;
4 That the following achieve a wide level of stability.
The first condition rules out games that are entirely based on, say, luck or chance such as lotteries. By holding that the skill is physical Suits attempts to rule out card games or board games such as chess. It is interesting to note, however that in Cuba, for example, chess is considered a sport. So that nec-essary condition appears not to hold or else the relevant Cuban institutions are ill-conceived in designating it thus. For the moment let us set this aside for it is true of certainly most sports that we think of them as requiring and culti-vating physical skills. How does our example of bog snorkelling fare? Let us say that bog snorkelling is a game. And it certainly fits the condition of being physical. Does it further satisfy these conditions in order for it to fall under the definition, or within the class of sports?
Suits’ final two necessary conditions have a vagueness about them which is not apparent in the first two. It is true that one could argue for chess players the skills involved do entail moving the pieces around the board according to its constitutive rules but one can easily imagine a disabled chess player who was physically unable to so move the pieces and had someone else to move them without this negating the general claim. One can imagine a tightening up of this condition to the effect of specifying the relation of physical skill to the achievement of the pre-lusory goal where the skill of the player was inter-nally related to the achievement. Yet here we can imagine that the champion bog snorkeller will have to have efficient techniques (though not those
Suits’ final two necessary conditions have a vagueness about them which is not apparent in the first two. It is true that one could argue for chess players the skills involved do entail moving the pieces around the board according to its constitutive rules but one can easily imagine a disabled chess player who was physically unable to so move the pieces and had someone else to move them without this negating the general claim. One can imagine a tightening up of this condition to the effect of specifying the relation of physical skill to the achievement of the pre-lusory goal where the skill of the player was inter-nally related to the achievement. Yet here we can imagine that the champion bog snorkeller will have to have efficient techniques (though not those