Unwritten Rules and the Press of Social Conventions

ABSTRACT

The long-standing argument between what has become known as formalism, broad internalism and conventionalism in the philosophical study of sport has to a great degree focused on the role of rules in creating and adjudicating sport. This discussion has centered on what might be called formal rules, the constitutive and regulative rules that are presented to the public as defining and regulating play in the sport. In the past, William Morgan has stated that those rules make up a ‘gratuitous logic’ that is unique to the sport. More recently, Morgan has amended that notion to say that the logic of sport is created by the press of social conventions onto sport (2016). I argue that the unwritten rules of sport illustrate the persistent press of moral conventions on the process, outcome and meaning of sport and, as such, exemplify the impact of social conventions that Morgan studies. In order to do this, I offer an account of unwritten rules and how they function in the process of sport. That explanation also accounts for the peculiar power of unwritten rules and demonstrates why those rules show the force of moral conventions in shaping the process of sport and, as I assert, demonstrate them more clearly and directly than written rules. My explanation focuses on sport as a social process worked out in the public sphere and, hence, a discursive process in which the meaning and application of rules evolve within human interaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Social conventions
• ethics
• public discourse
• unwritten rules
• rhetoric

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrew Edgar for opening the pages of the Sports, Ethics and Philosophy journal for this special edition and for overseeing the project. I would also like to thank Mike McNamee and Sigmund Loland for their hard work throughout this project and for their guidance and insight. Thanks are also due to John Russell for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Finally, I would like to thank all the participants in the conference and this journal celebrating the important contributions of William Morgan to the discussion of the philosophy of sports.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The African-American Experience in Major League Baseball is a funded research program created and directed by Daniel Durbin in the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society. The research program has currently recorded the majority of remaining African-American Major League ballplayers who played in the 25 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line. The oral histories created in this project are currently being indexed and preserved for use by scholars and historians of the game.

2. John Madden’s 1986 book, One Knee Equals Two Feet offered a humorous series of stories and reflections on the sometimes seemingly nonsensical rules in NFL football. The title refers to the catch rule which, even 40 years ago, was considered a convoluted and confusing rule. The rule has been modified several times since then. For an extensive discussion of the current modifications of the catch rule, see Mark Maske’s Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/03/20/nfl-sets-new-definitions-for-controversial-catch-rule/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.97abbe23b5bb.

3. For the most famous illustration of this principle, check out the story of Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich. Washington punched Tomjanovich during a struggle in a 1977 NBA game. Tomjanovich was seriously injured, hospitalized and, ultimately, had to wear protective gear on his face for the rest of his career. The violence of that one punch haunted Washington’s career after that point and remains perhaps the single most well remembered part of his otherwise successful career.