Rules in games and sports: why a solution to the problem of penalties leads to the rejection of formalism as a useful theory about the nature of sport

ABSTRACT

Bernard Suits and other formalists endorse both the logical incompatibility thesis and the view that rule-breakings resulting in penalties can be a legitimate part of a game. This is what Fred D’Agostino calls ‘the problem of penalties’. In this paper, I reject both Suits’ and D’Agostino’s responses to the problem and argue instead that the solution is to abandon Suits’ view that the constitutive rules of all games are alike. Whereas the logical incompatibility thesis applies to games in which players’ actions are perfectly controlled, it does not apply to sports. This insight not only justifies the rejection of formalism as a theory about the nature of sport but it also helps explain the greater normative complexity of sports, which in turn leads to the idea that in sports ‘cheating’ should be interpreted as a genus.

KEYWORDS:

• Bernard Suits
• Fred D’Agostino
• the logical incompatibility thesis
• the problem of penalties
• cheating
• formalism
• conventionalism
• ethos
• perfect control condition

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and criticisms and Paul Gaffney for his editorial guidance and suggestions. I am responsible for any remaining deficiencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The annual revenues of the major global sports leagues, which include the sports I have listed, is approximately US$79 billion annually and each of the top 50 sports franchises have a valuation over US$ 1 billion. For a list of revenues see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue. For Forbes most recent list of the highest valued sports franchises see https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/07/18/full-list-the-worlds-50-most-valuable-sports-teams-of-2018/#5be755a6b0ef.

2. Thus, he claims, referring to his own conventionalist (i.e. nonformalist) solution, Penalties are invoked, on this nonformalist account, when rules prohibiting certain actions are violated in a way which, according to the ethos of the game, requires the invocation of a penalty. But action of this kind is, generally, action within the limits jointly defined (as ‘acceptable’ if impermissible) by the rules and the ethos of the game in question. (1981, 16)

3. See https://operations.nfl.com/media/2224/2016-nfl-rulebook.pdf. For a summary of the infractions see pp. 72–74.

4. Although this issue is more complicated than I suggest here my point is sound. Filip Kobiela (2018) would argue that my claim overlooks the physical component in at least some versions of chess such as ‘fast chess’ in virtue of which it could be argued that chess is also a sport. However, the salient feature of chess that explains its appeal as a game is its testing of strategic acumen rather than rapidity of coordinated arm-and hand movements or some other such thing, which I regard as incidental. Indeed, the greatest chess player in history is AlphaZero, a machine-learning algorithm that cannot even move a chess piece (see Stephen Strogatz 2018).

5. Suits (2007, 12) made this latter point but never drew the deeper connection to my point about the Perfect Control Condition (PCC).

6. For more on this see Fraleigh (1984, 76–77) and Kretchmar (2001, 165–166).

7. My analysis here simplifies somewhat. For a more nuanced discussion see MacRae (2019).

8. Interestingly the conflation of perfectionist value with ethical value is also a critical flaw in Broad Internalism, the dominant theory of the nature of sport of the past 20 years or so.