Skultety's Categories of Competition – A Competing Conceptualisation?

Abstract

A recent article in this journal attempts to link categories of sport competition to appropriate psychologies of participants in the different sorts of competition. It criticises accounts of competition which understand it in relation to a very restricted range of psychologies because the purposes and psychologies with which people enter and engage in competition vary enormously. So, taking as a starting point a consensus view among sport philosophers of the key conditions governing competition, work is undertaken to identify fundamental distinctions drawing from the conditions, which are said to result in a fourfold typology of competitions. The final step is to suggest psychologies most suited to the components of the typology. My article examines this project and produces reasons to doubt its success.

Un récent article paru dans cette revue tente de relier les catégories de compétition sportive à des psychologies appropriées aux participants dans les différents types d’épreuves. Il critique les interprétations relatives à la compétition qui la comprennent en regard d’une gamme très restreinte de psychologies, parce que les buts et les psychologies avec lesquelles les individus sont organisés varient considérablement. En prenant ainsi comme point de départ le consensus à l’œuvre dans les philosophies du sport sur les conditions essentielles régissant la compétition, les études entreprises identifient les distinctions fondamentales issues de ces conditions et aboutissent à une typologie des compétitions en quatre types. La dernière étape consiste à suggérer les psychologies les plus adaptées aux composantes de la typologie. Mon article examine ce projet et fournit des éléments à même de le remettre en question.

Ein Artikel, der kürzlich in diesem Journal erschienen ist, versucht, Kategorien von Sportwettbewerben mit geeigneten psychologischen Faktoren der Teilnehmer in Bezug zu setzen. Er kritisiert die Darstellung bei Wettbewerben, eine Verbindung zu einer geringen Bandbreite psychologischer Faktoren zu sehen, da die Zwecke und Psychologien, mit denen die Personen am Wettbewerb teilnehmen und agieren, immens variieren. Ausgangspunkt ist die Konsensmeinung unter Sportphilosophen bezogen auf die wichtigsten Rahmenbedingungen, die einen Wettbewerb ausmachen. Ausgehend von diesen Bedingungen wird versucht, die grundlegenden Unterschiede zu bestimmen, die mit einer Vierfachtypologie von Wettbewerben beschrieben werden kann. Mein Artikel untersucht dieses Vorhaben und benennt Gründe dafür, an seinem Erfolg zu zweifeln.

Un artículo reciente en esta revista intenta conectar las categorías de la competición deportiva a psicologías appropiadas de los participantes en los diferentes tipos de competición. El artículo critíca las versiones que entiended la competición en relación a un ámbito de psicologías muy restrictivo porque los propósitos y razones por los que la gente empieza y practica la competición varían enormemente. Así, empezando por el consenso entre los filósofos del deporte de cuales son las condiciones clave que gobiernan la competición, se intentan identificar las distinciones fundamentals en base a las condiciones anteriores, que se dice devienen en una tipología cuaternaria de las competiciones. El paso final es sugerir psicologías más apropiadas a los componentes de la tipología. Mi articulo examina este proyecto y saca a relucir razones para dudar de su éxito.

在本期刊最近的一篇文章中企圖將運動比賽的類別與不同運動比賽參加者的心理學做一聯結。該文批判競爭比賽當中非常受宰制範圍的心理學說, 因為參賽者的目的與心理皆不太一樣。因此, 本文一開始先藉許多運動哲學家對競爭比賽中的重要條件所達成的共識, 然後再將四種競爭比賽分類做一種基本區分。最後指出最適合此一分類的心理學組成。本文檢驗此一計畫並提出對該文研究成果的質疑理由。

Keywords:

• sport
• competition
• categorisation
• psychology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their very detailed scrutiny of an earlier draft of this paper and without which this version would be considerably worse than it is.

Notes

See Skultety's first endnote quoting Delattre.

It is not clear, however, why identification of any essential organising feature of competition must be included in our understanding of an account of differences between, say, why we rank ice skaters one way and footballers another.

This clearly imposes the restriction noted at point 1 above. Of course, that the conditions of competition are drawn from philosophers of sport is not to say they are intended to apply exclusively to sport, though a wider net might have been usefully employed. And to be fair, on a couple of occasions Skultety refers to other competitions – piano playing, and a television game show competition.

The reductionism here seems surprising from Skultety since with respect to purposes of competition he believes 'the list seems endless' (Skultety 2011, 438).

This should surely be 'attempt' since if there need be two or more previous attempts, then competition requires at least three participant actions and not the stated two.

I leave aside the issue of whether my later-self is a different competitor to my earlier-self.

He omits 'competing' from his four conditions of a competitive event, but nevertheless appears to attempt to focus on sports where participants are not 'indifferent to competing'. See again his first endnote to Delattre.

It might be useful to distinguish between dead people being in a competition, and their entering one when dead. The position here is not entirely dissimilar to circumstances under which posthumous military honours and academic awards are conferred on those who earned them when alive. However, conceptualising entry of the dead into competitions they did not join when alive seems to me as misguided as considering for military honours a soldier who, while previously showing bravery, has his name put forward to receive a medal for conduct in a battle from which he was absent because dead.

I assume we have no difficulty with understanding as a competition an event where A tries to achieve x, before B accomplishes y in an attempt to do so faster than A's efforts with x.

On some occasions it is said to be the horse's trainer.

This does not conflict with Skultety's claim (2011, 436) that 'competitors … must at some level grasp that they are in a competitive event'. People can be in a competition in ways other than as competitors, e.g. in the way in which babies can be in a competition.

There are many variations here. For example, tennis has a pre-set winning condition and perfect score, and is not time-regulated, but differs from chess and boxing because tennis requires players to work through stages of the game to its end. In both chess (not time-regulated, no perfect score) and boxing (time-regulated, with perfect score) the activities can end suddenly following particular events.

For sure rugby is not mentioned explicitly, but I know it better than soccer, which could also be used as an example and which is referred to.

And clearly, for Skultety, since he accepts that the indifferent competitor is in a competition, the purposes do not have to be to compete and to win.