Embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge

Abstract

This paper develops and introduces the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge into the current sports knowledge philosophical debate. This idea is based on my interpretation of Mark Rowlands’ Rilkean memory theory. Broadly speaking, Rowlands proposed that an embodied Rilkean memory is memory content that is then ‘woven into the body and its neural infrastructure’ resulting in new bodily or behavioral dispositions. I propose that elite-level sports knowledge may become contentless bodily and/or behavioral dispositions and take the form of embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge. This version of sports knowledge enriches the current philosophy of sports debate that has centered on the analytical distinction between procedural knowledge (knowing how) and declarative knowledge (knowing that). After presenting the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge concept and providing empirical evidence that supports its existence, I argue that the current distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ may not be exhaustive.

Keywords:

• Epistemology
• sports knowledge
• embodied knowledge
• knowing how
• knowing that
• Rilkean memory

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Mark Rowlands for his invaluable comments on this paper and Paul Gaffney for his hard work and support. I am grateful to Joseph Signorile for his lectures on neuromuscular plasticity. Finally, I express my gratitude to the reviewers for their suggestions that have meaningfully contributed to the strengthening of this paper.

Notes

1. It is a novel kind of memory because it is (1) not Freudian (2) neither implicit nor explicit, (3) neither procedural nor declarative, (4) neither episodic nor semantic, (5) involuntary, and (6) minimally autobiographical. Please refer to Rowlands (2016, 31–51) for his complete ‘novelty’ argument.

2. Semantic memories, in contrast, can only be strongly autobiographical because the person who remembers is the intentional object (Rowlands 2016, 37), for example, my semantic memory that I was born on 26 July 1970.

3. For simplicity purposes, I will only concentrate on cellular level plasticity. However, numerous studies have identified changes on both a cellular and a molecular level occurring in response to training (i.e. Andersen, Klitgaard, and Saltin 1994; Tsunoda et al. 2000; Williamson et al. 2001). Additionally, I will restrict my CNF analysis to the motor cortex even though it is not the only brain center involved in movement. However, similar sport-specific changes have been reported to occur in other movement brain centers, such as the cerebellum and the basal ganglia (Walz et al. 2015).

4. I must acknowledge that after laying out the intellectualist and anti-intellectualist debate, Breivik also opts to bypass it by offering a phenomenological solution, which is, by all lights, an embodied account as well. This is evident in his remark that ‘[a]t high skill levels the execution of know how is thus an all-embracing activeness involving a person’s cognitive, emotional and motor abilities and resources’ (Breivik 2014, 157).