https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4241-8443
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ABSTRACT
J. S. Russell has argued that it is morally permissible for children to participate in dangerous sports and that much of value can be gained from such participation. He attempts to justify children’s participation in dangerous sport with two arguments, which he calls the common sense view and the uncommon sense view, and I apply the basic reasons given in these general arguments to the specific case of justifying children’s participation in mixed martial arts (MMA). To safeguard against wanton and gratuitous risk of great harm, Russell also includes some basic limitations for children’s participation in dangerous sports, and I use these limitations as a general framework for providing a number of additional constraints to render children’s MMA morally permissible.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank two anonymous referees for Sport, Ethics, and Philosophy for helpful suggestions and critical feedback. I would also like to thank Michael Bright, Steve Ventura, Stephen Innocenzi, and John Del Rio for many helpful conversations about the martial arts and sciences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Russell’s discussion of children’s participation in dangerous sport connects in a number of ways with his work on the value of dangerous sport in general (Russell Citation2005), as well as with specific virtues closely associated with dangerous sport, such as resilience (Russell Citation2015) and striving (Russell Citation2020). In describing the common sense view, Russell draws on Ungar (Citation2007).
2. While Russell does not clearly distinguish between ‘danger’ and ‘risk,’ Martinkova and Parry (Citation2017) suggest that, while ‘danger’ is generally used to mean exposure to a significant risk of harm, ‘risk’ does not always imply harm, because it can be used to mean simply ‘chance’ or ‘probability.’ In making these sorts of distinctions, Marinkova and Parry argue contra Russell that children can be educated in risk assessment and management without exposing them to danger. While I am sympathetic to some of Martinkova and Parry’s arguments, much of what is of value in Russell’s claims can be preserved while observing more terminological and conceptual nicety. To that end, while I will be appropriating some key elements of Russell’s arguments, I will reserve the terminology and concept of ‘danger’ for cases where the probability of a fundamentally damaging and harmful event’s occurrence is high enough to warrant serious concern, and ‘risk’ to stand for the probability of an event’s occurrence. In addition, Martinkova and Parry emphasize that facing danger is distinct from risk education, and my appropriation of Russell’s arguments presumes that dangerous sports can promote both skillful coping with danger and also risk-management education.
3. However, Russell does include boxing as an example of a dangerous sport justified by his uncommon sense view, which I discuss in section six below. Findler (Citation2015) considers (and rejects) some Russellian arguments for permitting children to play US-style football, which are also explored in section six.
4. Many of the arguments in favor of permitting children to participate in MMA, or affording such participation, as preparation for their lives as adults, also apply to their interactions with other children. For the sake of simplicity, I will initially keep the focus on preparation for adult life, but will consider interactions between and among children further in section five. Empirical evidence concerning the danger of bodily violence in adulthood are considered in section three.
5. Indeed, in this regard, Dixon (2015) has likened MMA to a ‘street fight’ (Dixon Citation2015, 367). Various jurisdictions and private clubs observe different rules in MMA, however, an influential basic framework can be found in the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts (Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports Citation2018). For basic definitions of the major positions, holds, throws, and so on, see Mobley (Citation2008). I will discuss the issues of moves prohibited in MMA, as well as the use of weapons, in section four.
6. It should be noted that the WHO figures include data for ages going down to fifteen, suggesting that a further case based on this kind of data could be made for extending the commonsense justification for MMA training to apply to preparation for interpersonal violence amongst teens. For the sake of simplicity and length considerations, I will continue to focus on the case of preparation for adulthood. But insofar as the basic points would also apply to preparing children to confront interpersonal violence from those in their own age cohort, this lends additional support for the conclusion that MMA training for children is morally permissible.
7. See, for instance, McCrary and Sanga (Citation2021).
8. Morgan and Thompson (Citation2021).
9. Akiyama, Nolan, and Weiss (Citation2015) provide a sophisticated projection of figures for risks of lifetime victimization for aggravated assault in the United States. Their model uses data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which does not include unreported assaults, and presents data disaggregated by sex and race, for whites and blacks. Proportionally combining sexes and races gives a figure of roughly 22% for lifetime victimization, and Morgan and Thompson (2022) estimate that when unreported instances in the period 2011–2020 are included, the total has been at least double the reported rates in each year. For an earlier effort at lifetime victimization assault projections see Lynch (Citation1989).
10. In addition to the studies cited above, which give some data on costs of interpersonal violence, see also Institute for Economics & Peace (Citation2021).
11. Morgan and Thompson (Citation2022).
12. Unfortunately, there is very little large-scale quality empirical data on the impact of various kinds of sports-related head trauma on youth, and on adults who were active in sports as youth, particularly if one is hoping to isolate the effects of head trauma from other confounding factors. Moreover, and also unfortunately, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) remains conclusively diagnosable only post-mortem.
13. I will discuss the possibility of allowing a wider range of head strikes, as well as reduced protective gear, in section six.
14. In making his argument, Dixon draws on the work of Nussbaum (1995).
15. I consider allowing more potentially injurious and painful acts in the next section. There is an extensive literature about whether or not, and in what potential ways, everyday morality might be suspended in play and sport, in which both Dixon and Russell have participated. While Dixon has suggested that acts like trash talking in games and sport ‘are just as subject to moral evaluation as those performed in the outside world’ (Citation2007, 103), Russell has argued that there is a certain degree of ‘suspension of morality in play’ (Citation2018, 210) and sport. However, the critical issue for Dixon with respect to the moral problematicity of MMA specifically is intentional harming, not trash talking, and not the kinds of phenomena focused on my Russell, such as ‘deceiving umpires, gamesmanship … partisan fan behavior [and] strategic fouling’ (Citation2018, 210).
16. For the sake of convenience and brevity I will refer to any kind of MMA which lifts one or more of these restrictions ‘full-contact MMA.’
17. This sort of model is treated in more depth in section seven.
18. The question of just when a young person can be said to be capable of informed consent, while important and interesting, is beyond the scope of this paper. The great variety of techniques available in MMA is discussed further anon.
19. In trying to match abilities and skills, in many cases of comparison the effectiveness of a given move in MMA will be closely tied to the weights (and ages) of the participants.
20. Insofar as this kind of concern can appear even at intermediate levels of MMA training, it would seem wise to make this requirement a general one, although it is of paramount importance in full-contact MMA.
21. This account of other-affirmation shares much in common with the notion of mutualism discussed by Simon, Torres, and Hagar (Citation2018), including the mutualist condemnation of ‘viewing opponents as enemies or reducing them to obstacles to success’ (Citation2018, 50), although Simon, Torres, and Hagar do not deal with the specific issue of combat sports, and do not directly tie mutualism to self-affirmation. In addition, their account is specifically designed for zero-sum competitive sports in which ‘one wins the contest and the other loses’ (Citation2018, 46), but MMA also has the possibility of various draw outcomes.
22. The specific moral problem that Simon, Torres, and Hagar’s mutualism is designed to assuage is that of selfishness.