PHIL205: Are Sports Ethical?

Harjit Bhogal

 

Course Summary

Think of the last time you watched a sports game: perhaps it was a Baltimore Ravens game, a Terps basketball game, or the USA competing in the World Cup. Whatever it was, it is likely that lots of the things that you saw would seem morally unacceptable if they were outside the context of a sports game. There might have been violence between the participants, even violence that’s not allowed by the rules. Some of the participants might have been attempting to trick or mislead the referee. The people watching might have been hoping that some of the participants performances were an embarrassing failure. And they might have verbally abused the participants in hopes of increasing the likelihood that they would fail. And sometimes, especially when the participants represent countries, the people watching might feel anger and resentment towards whole nations. All of this seems much more reasonable, and perhaps even justifiable, when we consider these actions within a sporting context.

So, the ethical nature of sport is very different from that of ordinary life. In this course we will investigate the ethical structure of sports, and what it tells us about the ethics of everyday life.

We will start out by getting a grip on the preliminary question -- what are sports? Then we will look the interaction of rules in sports and morality -- looking at issues such as the nature of sportsmanship, what types of violence in sports is acceptable and drug use in sports. After that we will consider being a fan -- why, for example, is loyalty to your team valuable? And finally we will consider how our view of sports interacts with our view of gender and of nations. Is it appropriately patriotic to support athletes from your country? Or is it inappropriately nationalistic? Is it wrong to separate men's and women's sport?

By the end of the class you should have gained familiarity with a variety of ethical concepts. And you should have gained a sensitivity to the ethical issues in sports, being able to identify them as they arise, and being able to use philosophical reasoning to analyze them. Further, you should be able to clearly express this reasoning in writing and verbally.

Course Information

Instructor Harjit Bhogal TA Arundhati Chakraborty Class Room SQH 1120 Lecture Time Mon/Wed 11-11:50

HB Office Hours Friday 9-11am on Zoom, or by appointment HB Zoom ID 663 599 6109 HB Email bhogal@umd.edu

AC Office Hours Wednesday 1-3pm, or by appointment AC Office and Zoom Link SKN 1107A; Zoom Link AC Email aru4chak@umd.edu

Texts

Most readings with be posted on ELMS/linked to from here. We will also be reading a few chapters from "Knowing the Score" by David Papineau. But there is no reason to buy that book immediately.

Assignments

  1. 4 in-class writing assignments: 12.5% each, (50% total)

  2. (Almost) weekly discussion board posts: 15%

  3. Participation: 15%

  4. Final Exam: 20%

  5. One optional in-class presentation. If you choose to do this you can replace your lowest in-class assignment grade with this grade.

In-class writing assignments

The writing assignments will be on 2/28, 3/13, 4/8, and 4/29. We will have one practice writing assignment (which does not count towards your grade) on 2/12 followed by a review session about that practice assignment on 2/14.

Discussion Board Posts

Each week you should post on the discussion board about one of the readings for that week. You should either explain one objection to the arguments made in one of the readings, or explain a place where you were confused about the argument.

You should post those by Thursday at midnight.

Participation

Class participation is designed to measure evidence that you have done, and thought about, the reading and the topic more generally. Coming to discussion sections ready to engage with the material is most relevant for the participation grade. To be clear, you don't need to be loud, or constantly talking in class to get an A on class participation, but some contribution and engagement is required.

Other forms of engagement with me or the TA about the material, e.g. in office hours, can count towards participation.

Final Exam

The final exam is Tuesday, May 14 8am-10am. It will be a short answer exam. There are 10 questions but you'll only have to answer 5. You should write around 2 medium paras for each question.

Optional in-class presentation

The presentations will be 4/15 and 4/24 (and possibly in our overrun session on 5/8). The first presentation will be about college sports. You will have to explain the recent changes in the rules around paying college athletes and whether they have improved the ethics of college sports or not. The second presentation will be about nationality and eligibility for the Olympics. You will have to suggest and defend a set of rules for deciding who is eligible to compete for which country in the Olympics.

You can do the presentation on your own or in groups of up to 3. If you do it in a group you will all get the same grade.

If you choose to do the presentation you will have to email me by 4/1 saying which presentation you want to do and who will be in your group.

Grading

Here are the grade ranges: A+: 100-96.67, A: 96.66-93.34, A-: 93.33-90

B+: 90-86.67, B: 86.66-83.34, B-: 83.33-80

C+: 80-76.67, C: 76.66-73.34, C-: 73.33-70

D+: 70-66.67, D: 66.66-63.34, D-: 63.33-60

Written assignments/presentations/the final exam will be graded along 4 dimensions

  1. Clarity This is clarity both in the small-scale -- It's clear what your sentences mean and how they fit together -- and on the large-scale, it's clear what the point of your paper is how you argue for that point.

  2. Accuracy The paper should be accurate in its discussion of the relevant philosophical topics, the terminology, the relevant literature, etc.

  3. Reasoning The paper should provide plausible reasons for its conclusion, avoiding logical errors and avoiding mere rhetoric.

  4. Originality This doesn't mean that you have to develop a view that no one else has ever thought of -- in fact, it will probably be a bad idea to do that. Rather, it's to do with there being some evidence that you've developed ideas about the issues independently. Giving a new, improved version of an objection we considered counts as originality, as does setting up and presenting the issues in a new way. Of course, though, originality doesn't count for much if you don't also do well on the earlier dimensions -- an original, but inaccurate paper is not good. You can get an A with very little originality, as long as you do very well on the previous dimensions.

Policies

Policies relevant to Undergraduate Courses are found here. Topics that are addressed in these various policies include academic integrity, student and instructor conduct, accessibility and accommodations, attendance and excused absences, grades and appeals, copyright and intellectual property.

Late assignments will be penalized a third of a letter grade, that's 3.33 points, for each day late, starting as soon as the deadline passes. Weekend days count.

The use of AI writing tools like ChatGPT is not allowed.

Schedule

1/24 No Reading

Unit 1: Rules

1/29 Suits, Tricky Triad: Games, Play, and Sport

1/31 Lehman, Can Cheaters Play the Game?

2/5 Papineau, Chapter 4, Professional Fouls and Political Obligation

2/7 Papineau, Chapter 5, Morality, Convention and Soccer Fakery

2/12 Practice in-class written assignment

2/14 Writing assignment review session

Unit 2: Drugs

2/19 Simon, Good Competition and Drug-Enhanced Performance

2/21 Oxford Debate: Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport

2/26 Movie: Icarus

2/28 In-class written assignment

Unit 3: Sportsmanship

3/4 Dixon, On Sportsmanship and "Running Up the Score"

3/6 Johnson and Taylor, More than Bullshit: Trash Talk and Other Psychological Tests of Sporting Excellence

3/11 McAleer, The Ethics of Pitcher’s Retaliation in Baseball

3/13 In-class written assignment

3/18 Spring Break

3/20 Spring Break

Unit 4: Danger

3/25 Russell, The Value of Dangerous Sports

3/27 No class, Movie: Free Solo

4/1 Sailors, Personal Foul: an evaluation of moral status of football

4/1 Deadline for choosing to do the in-class presentation

4/3 Findler, Should kids play (American) football?

4/8 In-class written assignment

Unit 5: College Sports

4/10 Brand, The Role and Value of Intercollegiate Athletics in Universities

4/15 Podcast: It's only a game. In-class presentations

Unit 6: Gender and Nationality

4/17 Tannsjo, Against Sexual Discrimination in Sports

4/22 Boxill, Football and Feminism

4/24 Papineau, Chapter 11, Civil Society and Sporting Eligibility. In-class presentations

4/29 In-class written assignment

Unit 7: Fans

5/1 Senor, Should Cubs Fans Be Committed?

5/6 Wojtowicz, Fans, Identity, and Punishment

5/8 Overrun/Review

Final Exam

5/14 8am-10am Final Exam