Sport, Ethics and Philosophy

Rules, Meaning and Values: The Contextual Understanding of Sport - Reflections on the Work of Graham McFee

Graham McFee was a key contributor to the philosophical literature on sport over a period of forty-one years (1977-2018). By 2018, he felt that he had nothing further he wished to say on the subject. His death on 10^th October 2023 (Culbertson, 2024) brought an end to any hopes anyone might have had that something someone published or said could have prompted him to further reflections on sport. We are left, therefore, with the very thing that was most important to McFee himself, namely, the work and our thoughts on the matters discussed in that work. It is a body of work that both deserves and requires careful reading and subtle reflection, and which provides rich rewards to those who afford it such attention.

For McFee, philosophy was one subject, and what we make of the question of ‘how to do philosophy’ (McFee, 2015a), and a range of matters within philosophy more generally, makes all the difference to how we might proceed and what we might say when doing philosophical work concerning matters related to sport. Understanding this is especially important to appreciating his specific contribution to the field known as ‘the philosophy of sport’ (McFee, 2015: 86-87). That does not mean that sport was incidental or peripheral to his contributions on that subject. Quite the contrary, his contextualism made it essential not to leave a ‘sport-shaped whole’ in one’s reflections on sport (McFee, 2004: 130-132). He even went so far as to recognize that sometimes consideration of sport could help clarify matters in philosophy more generally (McFee, 2015: 223).  

Having made many occasional contributions on matters related to sport, it wasn’t until the publication of Sport, Rules and Values: Philosophical Reflections into the Nature of Sport in 2004 (it was actually first available in late 2003) that McFee made a sustained study of the question of the nature of sport. That work reflected his mature conception of philosophy, which had gradually sharpened in focus for him during the 1990s. It was a view of philosophy McFee found in the later work of Wittgenstein, assisted, as he was always keen to acknowledge, by his reading of the work of his friends Charles Travis and Gordon Baker and his discussions of that work with them.

In Sport, Rules and Values, McFee takes three uses of the notion of a rule as the basis for articulating a contextualist view of the nature of sport. This view is a direct consequence of his contextualism in philosophy as a whole. The three uses of the notion of a rule are: (i) in definitional projects, (ii) in making judgments to evaluate something against criteria, and (iii) in characterizing value. His examination of rules leads him to a contextualist view of formalism and the definitional project concerning sport, working towards a contextualist understanding of the proper characterization of the notion of normativity in relation to our thinking about sport. His stance on definitions and the normativity of sport leads to consideration of judgement in evaluating aesthetic sports, a particularist (contextualist) view of how principles relate to the application of rules, and a contextualist perspective on how we should navigate the nuances of making judgements regarding cheating and spoiling in sport. In the final part of the book, McFee considers the role of rules in relation to value in, and of, sport. He articulates his particularist view of sport as a moral laboratory and employs the distinction between motivating and normative reasons, which is an influence from one of McFee’s former teachers, the particularist, Jonathan Dancy. The result is a mapping of the terrain of a contextualist view of sport.

As a result of his initial considerations outlined in 1998, slightly modified in 2015 (67-81), McFee argues that what applies to philosophy as a whole with regard to philosophical method also applies to philosophical work regarding sport. Calling that work ‘the philosophy of sport’ doesn’t isolate it or seal it off from the rest of philosophy. Indeed, there is a subtle sense in which there is no ‘rest of philosophy’, at least not in the sense in which philosophy can be carved up in ways that affect how we should do philosophy; work in the philosophy of sport, to the extent that it is any good, just is philosophy along with all other good work in the subject.

McFee’s second book-length contribution on sport was Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sports Research: An Epistemology of Sport, which was published in 2010. The book explores the implications of the form of contextualism McFee defended in relation to the erotetic nature of research. It takes seriously the observation that it is not only declarative sentences that should be understood occasion-sensitively, but also other types of utterance, and, most importantly, in relation to the focus of the book, questions. If research is erotetic in nature and questions should be understood occasion-sensitively, then there are far-reaching implications for what conception of knowledge would apply in a specific case, how research to answer the relevant questions—on the appropriate contextual understanding of those questions - should be designed, and what ethical issues would arise. As a consequence, a central theme of the book is the connection between ethical and epistemological issues in research (on sport).

McFee’s final book dealing with matters related to sport was On Sport and the Philosophy of Sport: A Wittgensteinian Approach, published in 2015. That text addressed the interrelationship between the nature of sport (understood occasion-sensitively) and the question of the nature of the philosophy of sport or what someone worthy of being described as ‘a philosopher of sport’ might need to do to warrant such a description. As one should expect from McFee’s work, addressing those matters could not be done without reflecting on the conception of philosophy at play in his approach to answering the question about the nature of the philosophy of sport. McFee defends a broadly institutional account of sport (a ‘weak’ institutionalism) at the beginning of the book. That view is influenced by a particular conception of the various considerations that arose from evaluating the proposal of an institutional account of art. Dickie (1974) provided the (flawed) starting point for such considerations, but in McFee’s hands, an institutional account, whether of art or of sport, is not a contribution to the project of seeking definitions, but rather a view that takes seriously criticisms about something McFee tended to call ‘exceptionlessness’ (McFee, 2010: 177-193; 2015: 1-2). One way of describing his point is to say that the occasion-sensitivity of understanding bears on what we should seek in explanations of meaning, such that we don’t look for a ‘one size fits all’ answer. He explained many of the relevant considerations in the appendix to Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sports Research, which many of us know by its wonderful alternative (sub-) title, Everything Goes with Beer (also see McFee, 2019: 211-234). That piece cautions against the tendency to treat the general as universal, but it should also be understood as emphasizing the generality in question in each specific case as occasion-sensitive. There is no one size to generality that fits all, either. 

Indicative areas of investigation: 

This special issue aims to reflect on the central preoccupation of McFee’s work, namely, the contextual understanding of sport and the implications of that for our ability to dissolve philosophical puzzlement as it arises in relation to matters in sport, or perhaps even sometimes elsewhere in philosophy. We encourage submissions that reflect on, and elaborate on, McFee’s work in relation to sport, or investigations of matters not considered by McFee that apply his methods in new contexts. The contributions may address one of the following matters, but these are indicative. We encourage submissions that employ insights and methods from McFee’s work in new contexts:

• The role of rules in our thinking about sport. Relevant considerations here may be the role of rules in definitional projects, McFee’s critique of Suits’ project, or formalism after McFee.
• The role of judgement against criteria in rule-governed sporting contexts, or the role of rules in the characterization of value in sporting context.
• The significance of the notion of a ‘sport-shaped hole’ in one’s reflections on sport, whether such a thing is best avoided, and, if so, how we might avoid it. What was McFee’s worry in identifying the notion? How is that worry connected to his wider conception of philosophy?
• McFee’s contextualist view of the proper characterization of the notion of normativity in relation to our thinking about sport.
• Contextualism in relation to the subtleties of making judgements regarding cheating and spoiling in sport, or contextual judgement in aesthetic sports.
• McFee’s employment of the notion of a moral laboratory in relation to sport, his treatment of the notion of intrinsic value, and/or his views in relation to Olympism.
• McFee’s moral particularism and its application in sporting contexts.
• McFee’s views on the thought that sport is a practice.
• McFee’s ‘weak’ institutionalism about sport.
• Does the philosophy of sport have questions of its own (other than ethical ones) that are not simply matters from elsewhere in philosophy considered in sporting contexts? The relationship between McFee’s view on that matter, his contextualism, and his desire to avoid a sport-shaped hole.
• The significance of McFee’s work for our thinking about officiating in sport.
• McFee’s epistemology for sport.
• Consideration of any of a range of matters raised by McFee’s reflections on research in the social sciences and humanities of sport, such as the relationship between epistemology and ethics in sport research, or the relationship between sensitivity to the erotetic nature of research and the importance of contextual factors in researching sport.
• Applications of elements of McFee’s work outside sport to philosophical confusions in relation to sport. For example, do McFee’s reflections on dance (e.g., McFee, 2011; 2018), neuroscience (McFee, 2018: 82-107 and 206-62; 2011: 185-205), free will, action, and/or persons (McFee, 2000; 2015: 311-42; 2018: 27-57), aesthetics and artistic judgement (McFee 2011a; 2021) or the natural sciences (McFee, 2019) have the potential assist in our thinking about matters in relation to sport? Proposals for contributions on such matters without suitable application to issues in relation to sport will not be considered, including proposals for papers solely on dance.

References:

Culbertson, L. (2024) ‘Obituary: Professor Graham McFee 22^nd February 1951 – 10^th October 2023’, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 18 (5): 588-90.

Dickie, G. (1974) Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

McFee, G. (1998) ‘Are There Philosophical Issues in Respect of Sport (Other Than Ethical Ones)?’, in McNamee, M. J. and Parry, S. J. (eds.), Ethics in Sport, London: Routledge, pp. 1-18.

McFee, G (2000) Free Will, Teddington: Acumen.

McFee, G. (2004) Sport, Rules and Values: Philosophical Investigations into the Nature of Sport, London: Routledge.

McFee, G. (2010) Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sports Research: An Epistemology of Sport, Abingdon: Routledge.

McFee, G. (2011) The Philosophical Aesthetics of Dance: Identity, Performance and Understanding, Binsted: Dance Books.

McFee, G. (2011a) Artistic Judgement: A Framework for Philosophical Aesthetics, Dordrecht: Springer. 

McFee, G. (2015) On Sport and the Philosophy of Sport: A Wittgensteinian Approach, Abingdon: Routledge.

McFee, G. (2015a) How to do Philosophy: A Wittgensteinian Reading of Wittgenstein, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

McFee, G. (2018) Dance and the Philosophy of Action: A Framework for the Aesthetics of Dance, Binsted: Dance Books. 

McFee, G. (2019) Philosophy and the ‘Dazzling Ideal’ of Science, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

McFee, G. (2021) On Aesthetics: Collected Essays, Eastbourne: Pageantry Press.