Armstrong was a Cheat: A Reply to Eric Moore

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we reply to Eric Moore’s argument that Lance Armstrong did not cheat, at least according to one, standard account of cheating. If that is the case, we argue, so much the worse for the standard account of cheating, since Armstrong was a cheat. We argue that the standard account of cheating fails on several counts: it specifies conditions that are not necessary for cheating: that cheating involves trying to secure an unfair advantage and that cheating depends on fair application of the rules. We dispute Moore’s claim that doping in the peloton was a convention that had normative force, and reject his anti-formalist analogy between doping in the peloton and bodily contact in basketball.

KEYWORDS:

• Doping
• cheating
• Lance Armstrong
• Eric Moore
• conventions

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor of SEP, Andrew Edgar for improving suggestions. We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for SEP and a reviewer who we understand to be Eric Moore: we are especially grateful to Moore for his very detailed and generous engagement with our paper. We would like to thank audiences at the Open University Philosophy Department and at the BPSA conference in Swansea 2018 for comments, especially Alfred Archer, Alex Barber, Chris Belshaw, Sophie-Grace Chappell, Cristina Chimisso, John-William Devine, Manuel Dries, Yuval Eylon, Derek Matravers, Mike McNamee, Verner Møller, and Carolyn Price.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. USADA ’s Reasoned Decision (USADA 2012).

2. compare (Russell 2013).

3. Here we, like Moore, leave aside the interesting question of the actual intent of the would-be cheater in relation to what she brings about (need she intend only the advantage, or also that the advantage be an unfair one?).

4. Or perhaps at least not doping in the way(s) or to the extent that Armstrong was. It could be argued, against Moore, that Armstrong did in fact seek or attain an unfair advantage in this sense by his particular way(s) of doping, even though doping in general was pervasive. For Armstrong and his team were reputed to have taken doping to an ‘industrial level’, such that it is very likely that his doping was way ahead of the field.

5. There is one caveat to this thought. At least one of us thinks that some supposed new techniques would not be techniques of that sport because they would be contrary to the essence of the sport. But our argument here does not rely on a controversial essentialist premise of this sort.

6. Again, we have no quarrel with Moore on the extent or seriousness of this complicity.

7. That is, go further than merely fulfilling one’s own obligations, so as to redress the imbalance of others failing to fulfil theirs.

8. On specifically sporting supererogation, see Alfred Archer (2017).

9. At least, such an argument could be developed from the perspective of the individual competitor. A proponent of collective responsibility could argue that the relevant group itself had a moral responsibility to eschew rule-breaking doping in the first place or ‘clean up’ the sport in response to its prevalence. On this kind of view, the collective responsibility may not be reducible to, or fully explicable by, individuals’ responsibility- and thus may be untouched by the type of contractarian argument which Moore proffers. Arguments for this kind of collective responsibility can be found in Isaacs (2014) and Pettit (2007).

10. For further discussion of the view that cheating may be morally permissible, or even required, see Upton (2011) and Royce (2012).

11. Others since Ross such as Susan Hurley (1989) have adopted the term pro-tanto (to this extent’) to supersede Ross’s earlier use of prima facie (‘on the face of it’) in a similar context. Though this may appear a subtle shift it is, in this context, an improvement in precision.