Sport, meritocracy, and praise

ABSTRACT

Meritocracy, in which success depends on ability and effort, is a desirable goal for sport, even if sport does not achieve this goal perfectly. However, even in a meritocracy whether athletes deserve praise is questionable, given that a determinant of success, genetic endowments, is beyond their control. From a hard determinist perspective, even the elements of athletes’ actions that appear to be within their control—their diligence in developing their skill and strategy and their good sportsmanship—are themselves a function of other environmental and genetic factors for which they deserve no credit. However, a more plausible approach is the compatibilist view that enables us to combine moral evaluation of athletes’ actions with recognizing the causal influences on human behavior. In contrast with manipulation, which really does negate control over our actions, causation that operates via our rational agency is benign and perfectly consistent with our deserving praise for our achievements.

KEYWORDS:

• sport
• meritocracy
• free will
• praise
• genetic lottery

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Paul Gaffney, the editor of JPS, for his good counsel and encouragement; to two anonymous referees for their invaluable, challenging comments; and to audience members at the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport meeting in Whistler, BC, Canada, for their helpful feedback. All of this input has resulted in a much stronger article.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.