Occasions for Making Sense of Sport: Celebrating Morgan’s View

ABSTRACT

In endorsing a conventionalism about the rules of sport, Morgan fails (according to his critics) to ground the normativity of such rules, especially once the historical specificity of their invention and implementation is granted. But how can normativity be grounded in the contingencies of the sporting practices of particular times and places? In particular, do Morgan’s concerns with dependence on ‘conventions’ flow only from the choice of options apparently on offer: roughly the choice between a realism (to reflect ‘facts of the matter’) and a conventionalism in the ‘norm-based’ version that I urge is misguided. Exploring some of the variety of occasions for the operation of normativity in sporting contexts, and acknowledging their occasion-sensitivity, shows this to be a false dichotomy. In this light, the paper elaborates a Morgan-style conclusion by drawing a parallel with language-use to conclude that rule-following in sport has all the grounding it could get—and that, as with normativity for language-use, this is all the grounding one needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Conventionalism
• normativity
• Wittgenstein
• rule-following
• occasion-sensitivity

Notes

1. But see VoW: 125:

Here, a comparison with the law suggests itself. If I give something as a present or lend something to a person—in accordance with which law did I then act? In accordance with none at all. Only if conflict occurs does the question about the law occur’. Wittgenstein acknowledges that what is rule-governed, or law-governed, might not be so explicitly.

2. I think first of Marion Jones who felt so pressured by the expectation to win medals at the 2000 Olympics that she resorted to performance-enhancing, but illegal, drugs (see McFee 2015, 168).

3. Although in general it is crucial to acknowledge two kinds of sport (purposive/aesthetic: Best 1978; McFee 2015, 205–209), most of our issues are shared between them.

4. Rule-following might be characterized as a practice, under certain circumstances: ones Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001/2009 §202) envisaged can take for granted that an extant activity is under discussion. Equally, under different circumstances (or faced with different questions), one might prefer to emphasize the connection between rule-following and habituated behaviour. On this picture, then, calling rule-following occasions customs would emphasize the primitive nature of actions here, as opposed to thoughts or ‘interpretations’.

5. Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein & Waismann, 2003): ‘We say, as it were, “and so forth”, but we have not determined this “so”’, for ‘and so on’.

6. For helpful discussion of a candidate example (Luis Suárez) of our first and second categories, see Martinková and Parry 2015.

7. As reported: (2014) the Academic Counselllor for the women’s basketball team at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill); as actively colluding with members of the African and Afro-American studies department to secure specific grades for students athletes, as well as to cover-up other academic policy violations—including simply ignoring the glaring deficiencies in papers by a student so as to allow that student-athlete to graduate.

8. Compare Dummett 2010, 5: ‘Mathematics … needs no input from experience: it is the product of thought alone’.

9. See also Russell (2015, 268): ‘… in a prohibited but non-consequential way’.

10. One danger here is to turn ‘may the best man (person) win’ into a self-fulfilling prophecy: he/she/they won, on—on this occasion the/she/they must be the best man! Here, a fuller account would also include consideration of the place of this match or game—its particular weight (say, as a final) in contrast to its place in season (in a league, for instance), as well as the virtue of enjoying the sport as constituted.

11. Thus, for example, if a sport-player with a medical reason (and hence a justification) for taking a particular banned substance was found to have taken it on one occasion when she did not require it medically (that is, taken it solely for its performance enhancing capabilities), it is clear that she behaved inappropriately; and not if she did not act in that way. And if the ‘facts’ of the case are unclear, then they are unclear!

12. To ‘twit the other with inconsistency’ (as Wisdom put it). The expression is from correspondence; but the point is clear in Wisdom 1991, 140.

13. This, I take it, endorses the ‘Spirit of Sport’ idea, understood as an ideal (McNamee 2013, 380), characterized in terms of ‘ethics, fair play and honesty; health; excellence in performance; character and education; fun and joy; teamwork; dedication and commitment; respect for rules and laws; respect for self and other participants; courage; community and solidarity’. As McNamee (2013, 382–383) demonstrates, WADA represents a perplexing case here, given its emphasis on the breaking of its rules.