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The Fields of Philosophy and their Application in the
Philosophy of Sport
From
the Learning and Teaching Support Network's Resource Guide in
Philosophy of Sport (http://www.hlst.ltsn.ac.uk/resources/philosophy.html).
The philosophy of sport is
a conceptual investigation into the nature of sport and related
concepts, areas and professions.
It draws upon and develops many
branches of philosophy and reflects a variety
of theoretical positions and styles.
It
addresses substantive issues in the following
sub-fields of philosophy as exemplified within sport and related human
activities involving the use of the body in social practices and
institutions:
-
aesthetics:
the nature of beauty
(e.g. is sport a form of art? are sports events works of art? can we
objectively evaluate sports actions aesthetically?)
-
epistemology:
the philosophy of knowledge
(e.g. can kinaesthetic awareness properly be called knowledge? what
precisely do we know when we are able to perform skills? must a coach
have performance knowledge at elite level to coach effectively at that
level?)
-
ethics:
the nature of morals and moral choices
(e.g. does sport necessarily develop good character? what do we agree to
when we agree to play a game? is there such a thing as the ethos of
sports?)
-
philosophy of
education (e.g. can we morally educate through sport? is paternalism
in sports coaching and teaching inevitable? what do we mean by the
concept "sport skill"?)
-
philosophy of
law (e.g. can children give consent to engage in elite sports
training? do rules underdetermine conduct?)
-
logic:
a system of reasoning
(e.g. are sports separate from other spheres of logic by their nature?
are the concepts of sport and game logically discrete?)
-
metaphysics:
the ultimate composition of reality, the relationship of mind and matter
(e.g. are humans naturally game playing animals?)
-
philosophy of
mind (e.g. is mental training just a form of imagination? are
athletes simply to be thought of as machines?)
-
philosophy of
rules (Constitutive
rules govern the meaning assigned to act, givean
a specific situation. Regulative rules concern the way
individuals organize the meaning of actions in
a sequence.
Are sports rules regulative
or constitutive ones?)
-
philosophy of
science (e.g. is there such a thing as a singular method for all
sciences? what does a sports scientist mean when they say a given
statistical procedure has explanatory power? why do sports psychologists
ignore the (post) Freudian tradition?)
-
social and
political philosophy (e.g. did a pure conception of sport ever exist
in a given social and political time and order? are sports competition
necessarily capitalistic in nature? do sports institutions always
corrupt pure play?)
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