Canadian Figure Skaters, French Judges, and Realism in Sport

Transcription

1 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT, Realism 2003, XXX, in Sport by the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport Canadian Figure Skaters, French Judges, and Realism in Sport Nicholas Dixon Philosophers of sport often discuss controversial incidents on the playing field when it is unclear what decision the rules require referees, umpires, or judges to make. Such cases include a soccer player who ignores the convention that possession should be returned to the team whose player deliberately puts the ball into touch so that an injured player can receive treatment and a base runner in baseball who himself catches the ball in order to prevent a double play. 1 Hard cases that pose problems for popular theories are often a fertile ground for insights in philosophy in general, and hard cases that arise when the rules of a sport fail to provide clear guidance are no exception. In this article, however, I will adopt a very different strategy. I will try to derive some philosophical lessons from a recent incident in sport that, although it generated much controversy, appears amenable to quite simple analysis by reference to the pertinent rules. I refer to the decision by judges in the 2002 winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City to award the gold medal in pairs figure skating to the Russian couple, even though it was widely believed by the skating community, journalists, and spectators that the Canadian pair, Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, had skated better. The IOC made a de facto admission that the judges had made a mistake when it decided several days after the event to enact the unusual remedy of awarding a second pair of gold medals to the Canadians while allowing the Russians to keep theirs. I will examine the implications of this incident for two philosophical questions: (a) the nature of decisions by referees, umpires, and judges in sport and (b) the more general issue of the nature of our judgments about sport (i.e., our views on debates about sport). I will assume for the sake of argument that the Canadians did indeed deserve to be the sole recipients of gold medals. In support of this assumption, even laypersons could see that the Russians stumbled several times during their routine, whereas the Canadians was faultless. Unless the Russians routine was more technically challenging or clearly superior in artistic merit which was patently not the case, in the opinion of nearly all observers the Canadians should have won. Perhaps even more telling than the nearly unanimous verdict of the skating community was the unguarded reaction of Salé when she and Pelletier had finished their routine. N. Dixon <dixon@alma.edu> is with the Philosophy Department at Alma College, Alma, MI This article was delivered as the presidential address at the 2002 meeting of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport and underwent the same blind review process handled by the associate editor to avoid conflict of interest as other submissions to JPS. 103

2 104 DIXON She bent downward in stunned silence and only after a few seconds was she able to regain her composure to tearfully wave to the crowd. She knew that she and Pelletier had skated beautifully, with none of the errors that the Russian pair had committed, and she believed that winning the gold medal was a foregone conclusion. Most publicity surrounding this controversy has concerned allegations of corruption among judges and national skating federations, especially those from France. If it really exists, such corruption is reprehensible and merits the harsh criticism it has received, and the IOC urgently needs to take measures to eradicate it. Although the wrongness of this alleged corruption is so evident that it appears to require little philosophical argument, I propose to address two issues arising from this incident that have significant philosophical relevance: the status of the judges original decision and implications for rival theories on the nature of judgments about sport. The Status of the Judges Original Decision First, the innocuous-looking claim that the original decision to award the gold medal to the Russian skaters, rather than the Canadians, was unjust raises interesting questions about the general nature of decisions by referees, umpires, and judges in sport. The injustice remains, whether the decision was influenced by corruption or whether it was a simple error of judgment. In another article (2), I treated refereeing errors as one cause of unjust results, in which the better, more deserving team or athlete does not win. Some refereeing errors do not necessarily lead to unjust results, in that a superior team will often be able to overcome mistaken calls by the referee and win anyway. In figure skating, however, the judges verdict is the final word that determines the outcome, and the skaters have no opportunity to overcome judges errors. The claim that denying the Canadians the gold medal was unjust presupposes, of course, that we have a standard for judging skating contests independent of the actual decision made by the judges. As John Russell has shown in his illuminating discussion of calls in baseball (10), however, even this modest claim has been disputed by those who assert that the umpire s call creates the reality. If this is the case, no independent criterion exists by reference to which we can deem the umpire s call to be mistaken. As Russell perceptively responds, this view considers only the fact that umpires have the final word (which he calls the verdictive force of their calls) and neglects the fact that baseball calls are simultaneously descriptions, which can be true or false, of the events that the umpires saw (10: pp ). Because baseball calls are descriptions of physical events, we can easily accept that some calls are plain wrong. After all, television replays can conclusively prove that, for instance, contrary to the umpire s decision, the base runner beat the throw to first base. Similarly, replays can provide objective evidence of mistaken calls in other sports such as football, cricket, and tennis. Figure skating is more problematic in that it, like other judged performances, is judged in part on aesthetic criteria. Victory in skating is determined by adding two separate scores, one for technical and one for artistic merit. To show that any aesthetic judgment including the judgment that skater A s performance was more artistically or aesthetically worthy than skater B s is clearly mistaken is notoriously difficult. Even if

3 Realism in Sport 105 we can agree on common criteria for aesthetic judgments, two different works of art or athletic performances can qualify as aesthetically pleasing by virtue of different subsets of these criteria, making it difficult to make comparative judgments. In the case of Salé and Pelletier, however, we do not need to engage in arcane debate about the nature of aesthetic judgments to show that the judges made a bad decision. The reason for the widespread condemnation of their decision had nothing to do with the artistic merit of the two couples performance, which was widely viewed as comparable. Awarding the gold medal to the Russians created such controversy because the technical superiority of the Canadians, who did not once stumble, was evident for all to see. Marks for technical merit, in contrast to those for artistic merit, are more akin to the factual reports that baseball umpires make when they call a batter out on strikes or safe at home plate. It is, in other words, a matter of checkable, empirical fact whether skaters perform the required jumps and do so without falling or stumbling. We might go even further than the claim that the judges erred and assert that their decision to give the gold medals to the Russian skaters was so bad as to be null and void, with the Canadians being the real winners. I have elsewhere criticized the idea, which parallels the doctrine of natural law that an unjust law is no law at all, that those who secure victory by means of blatant refereeing errors are not really winners at all. My objection to this view is that we need to distinguish between the existence of a law or victory and, on the other hand, its justice. Moral problems need to be solved by argument, not by stipulation, and we should not try to deny a priori the very possibility of unjust laws and undeserved victories (2: pp ). Russell, however, has offered an ingenious interpretation of natural-law theory that avoids the paradoxical claim that no unjust laws exist. Russell argues, for instance, that the decisions of a corrupt judge, although he might have been duly appointed and although they are on the books, are actually perversions of legal judgments that have no authority. The judgments of a corrupt judge... are judgments in a merely technical and equivocal sense of the term. [I]t does not make sense to say they are genuine or true judicial judgments. We know this because a corrupt judge fails to perform a function that is essential to his role, that of being an impartial arbiter. (10: p. 26) Russell coins the term dismissive judgment to refer to the assertion that a purported instance of a concept is, despite its superficial authenticity, not a genuine one (10: p. 33). We use dismissive judgments not only to dismiss the rulings of corrupt judges but also in many other contexts, for instance to deny the worth of a degree awarded by a mail order university lacking accreditation despite the impressive stationery on which the certificate is printed. Russell argues that some instances of bad calls by baseball umpires such as those resulting from bias or incompetence merit the dismissive judgment That s no call! No doubt we recognize that even excellent umpires occasionally make bad calls without being tempted to regard the calls as lacking in authority. In the case of blatantly biased or incompetent officiating, however, we might justifiably abandon our usual respect for the authority of umpires and pursue various methods of protest to challenge the standing of their mistaken calls. As a practical expedient, Russell quite reasonably proposes that we minimize the need for

4 106 DIXON after-the-fact protests by giving baseball umpires far more opportunity than currently exists for correcting mistaken calls (10: pp ). If awarding the gold medal to the Russian skaters in Salt Lake City were just an innocent, if baffling, error on the part of otherwise competent judges, we would have to regard their judgment as legal positivists view bad laws: as mistaken but nonetheless binding and authoritative. The kind of gross corruption of which various figure-skating judges and federations in Salt Lake City are accused, however agreeing to give high marks for another country s skaters in return for reciprocal favors in future contests clearly falls within the ambit of Russell s argument. Although the judges did indeed have the power to award medals, their corruption, which led them to award medals on the basis of factors other than the skaters merits, invalidates their decision. When the IOC, in response to outrage at the original decision, took the unprecedented step of overruling it and awarding a second set of gold medals to the Canadians, it tacitly admitted that the judges initial verdict was not only mistaken but also invalid and lacking in authority. Implications for Rival Theories on the Nature of Judgments About Sport The second philosophical question on which the Olympic skating debacle sheds light is a far more general issue: the debate between rival theories on the general nature of judgments about sport. By judgments about sport I mean not the decisions made by judges but rather the beliefs that anyone holds on moral or nonmoral debates about sport. We can use the uncontroversial claim that the judges corruption was wrong as a test case for three different theories on the general nature of judgments about sport. Formalists, who believe that questions about sport can be answered by sole reference to the relevant rules, will condemn the judges actions because they brazenly violated the rules that govern the awarding of marks for skating performances. So-called conventionalists, such as adherents of the Rortyinspired belief that there is no deeper foundation to rationality than solidarity (1: p. 61), will condemn the judges actions precisely because of the strong negative reaction they provoked in the practice community of figure skating. And those whom Robert Simon has termed interpretive broad internalists, or just interpretivists (11), who hold that judgments about sport should be based in part on rationally grounded principles about the nature and purpose of sport whether or not the practice community or any other group happens to adhere to those principles will have no trouble in criticizing the judges. An uncontroversial principle underlying all sport is that victory should be determined by the relative merits of the competitors performances, which clearly rules out the kind of corruption alleged at Salt Lake City. So all three approaches pass the minimal test of concurring with the intuitive judgment that a gross injustice was done in Salt Lake City. Nonetheless, a better test of these rival theories on judgments about sport is provided by considering how they would deal with slightly changed circumstances and further questions related to the skating controversy. I hope to use these further considerations to show the inadequacy of formalism and conventionalism and to add my voice in support of interpretivism. What if, for instance, the skating community regarded quid pro quo arrangements among judges as an acceptable practice? (They might regard bias and secret deals as an inevitable fact among judges and hope that true

5 Realism in Sport 107 talent will still rise to the top in spite of these backroom machinations.) It is hard to see how a conventionalist, who regards the assent of the relevant athletic community as the ultimate standard for resolving disputes about sport, could consistently criticize a practice that was widely accepted. Interpretivists, in contrast, owe no such allegiance to the prevailing view and would cite the aforementioned principle that victory should be determined by merit in criticizing the corruption. Consider further the possibility of adopting rule changes that would reduce the likelihood of corruption in future skating contests. We could, for instance, require a more detailed accounting by judges of the specific number of points awarded or deducted for each jump. This expedient alone might have been sufficient to prevent the debacle in Salt Lake City. It was already difficult for the French and other judges to justify giving higher marks for overall technical merit to the Russian skaters, but it would have been practically impossible for them to conceal the corruption at work had they had to award higher points for visibly inferior individual jumps by the Russians. Now this proposed change in judging practices might turn out to be inadvisable. Requiring judges to award separate marks for each jump might make the marking process too time-consuming, and it could hamstring judges by not allowing them to use their discretion to make overall judgments about technical merit, something that might not be reducible to the merit of individual jumps. Nonetheless, we have seen enough to establish that the debate between the current judging system and the proposed reform requires the use of arguments to evaluate the rival systems, and the trouble with both formalism and conventionalism is that they are unable to account for the reasoning process that is necessary when debating not only this proposal but also, more generally, any proposal for any change in sport. I have elsewhere criticized Rorty-inspired conventionalism for its inadequate account of change in sport (3). The problem is that conventionalists can only describe what changes occur and lack the resources to evaluate the desirability of these changes. Thus, conventionalists would support the current judging system if the skating community favors it, but they would equally support the new status quo if the community decided to adopt a new system. What they are unable to do is provide reasons to defend one or the other system as superior. Robert Simon has leveled a similar criticism at formalism (11: p. 4). Formalism describes what actions are permitted and required by existing rules, but it lacks the resources to provide justifications for these rules or, consequently, to defend a position on proposed rule changes. In contrast, interpretivists are well positioned to formulate and defend positions on proposed rule changes. They can, that is, refer to principles about the nature and purpose of sport in order to determine whether a proposed change would constitute an improvement. Another issue arising from the Salt Lake City controversy that is pertinent to the debate between rival approaches to judgments about sport pertains to comparative judgments between sports. Although trying to rank-order sports in terms of their overall purity or desirability would be a futile task, it does make sense to compare different sports with respect to specific features. One scale on which figure skating scores quite badly is the heavy reliance of a just outcome on the competence and integrity of judges. Calls by umpires and referees can often have a significant impact on a contest s outcome, but in figure skating the judges marks are its sole determinant. In most sports, athletes have some opportunity to compensate on the playing field for bad decisions by referees and umpires, but in skating

6 108 DIXON this is impossible because the judges make their decision only when the performance is over. Furthermore, although judges in all sports have to make judgment calls, these are typically reports of observed events: whether the tennis ball landed out, whether the goal scorer was offside when the ball was passed, and so on. In contrast, even marks for the technical merit of a skating performance are an evaluation rather than a report, and marks for artistic merit are aesthetic judgments that are even further removed from mere reports of physical events. This added role for the discretion of judges in skating greatly increases the chance of unjust results, whether resulting from poor judgment or corruption. Of course, the very same dependence on judges discretion is a necessary consequence of the nature of skating as a graceful, aesthetically pleasing performance, and this prominent artistic component is also one of the strengths of the sport vis-à-vis sports with more functional goals such as advancing a ball over a goal line or hitting a ball into a designated fair playing area. Nonetheless, it still makes sense to say that the dependence of figure skating on the competence and integrity of judges for just outcomes is a prima facie disadvantage of the sport compared with those whose outcome is more immune to refereeing errors or bias. At the very least, we need to recognize that different sports have rival strengths and weaknesses. The problem for formalism and conventionalism is that they are both unable to support such comparative judgments. They are both descriptive theories that do not provide the resources for evaluating the sports that they explain. Formalism simply describes the rules that govern judging in figure skating, without providing a basis for assessing those rules. Conventionalism fares a little better, in that it can support the judgment that figure skating s enormous reliance on judges is a weakness, as long as the sporting community as a whole endorses this view. What conventionalism cannot do, though, is provide arguments to support the view that this is a weakness. According to conventionalism, what makes the status quo right is just that it is the status quo, not that it is supported by defensible reasons. In contrast, interpretivism can easily sustain the judgment that skating s vulnerability to judges errors and corruption is a prima facie weakness. It can do so precisely because it recognizes the role of principles about the value and purpose of sport in our deliberations about sport. The relevant principle here is the innocuous aforementioned claim that victory should be determined by the relative merits of the competitors performances. Sports that are vulnerable to judging errors and corruption in the way that skating is are more likely to have unjust outcomes than are sports that are more immune. Interpretivism and Realism in Sport Interpretivism has emerged as the most defensible theory on the nature of judgments about sport. The remainder of this article is a defense of interpretivism, reconceptualized to bring out its realist foundations. I begin by giving a more detailed analysis of the interpretivist views of Russell and Simon. The most sophisticated expression to date of interpretivism is John Russell s (9). In contrast with my goal in this article of discussing the more general question of how we resolve debates about sport, Russell s concern is more narrow: the nature of calls by baseball umpires. He focuses in particular on how umpires should resolve hard cases in which it is not clear how the rules of baseball apply. He

7 Realism in Sport 109 transposes to sport Ronald Dworkin s theory of judicial decision: The law consists not only of written statutes, constitutions, and precedents but also of moral and political principles. According to Dworkin, judges must use these principles to guide their decisions when the written law is indeterminate and sometimes even to overrule statutes whose literal application would result in injustice. These principles are binding parts of the law not merely personal preferences to which judges can refer, should they so desire that will often leave only one decision legally open to the judge, even though the written law might be inconclusive. Also, judges use of principles should not be random and piecemeal. On the contrary, judges should apply them consistently to like cases and ensure that different principles are applied consistently with each other, so that the end product is a coherent, just system of laws and decisions. 2 Applying Dworkin s analysis to umpires decisions, Russell suggests that umpires and participants in games lie under legal obligations to decide cases a particular way when the rules are significantly indeterminate.... [W]e might try to understand and interpret the rules of a game, say, baseball, using these principles, to generate a coherent and principled account of the point and purposes that underlie the game, attempting to show the game in its best light. (9: p. 35) To complete his account of calls in baseball, Russell proposes four principles to guide umpires when applying rules to borderline cases. Although Russell s four principles of rule interpretation are all intuitively plausible and persuasively defended, what matters for the purposes of this article is not the content of his principles but, rather, the more general interpretivist claim that we should use a coherent, consistent set of rationally defensible principles concerning the nature and purpose of sport to resolve debates about sport. In his 1999 IAPS presidential address (11), Robert L. Simon made the vital theoretical advance of recognizing and naming the general approach ( interpretivism ), of which Russell s work is one application, and proposing that we adopt it to guide our judgments on a variety of issues in sport. The questions on which, according to Simon, interpretivism can shed light include issues of sportspersonship that go beyond mere obedience to the rules of the game; the status of intentional, professional fouls; and debates about rule changes. Simon cites other work in philosophy of sport that falls into the interpretivist camp, and we can add yet more recent examples. For instance, my critique of Rortian antirealist approaches to change in sport, which I discussed briefly in the preceding section, presupposes the existence of criteria by which we can judge whether a proposed change is desirable. I criticize the Rortian approach for its inability to support criticisms of the status quo, despite the attempts of some of its adherents to propose innovation (3: pp ). In accordance with interpretivism, my arguments for some changes and against others are based on principles such as the claim that skill should play a central role in determining victory. Equally, Cesar Torres s recent critique of penalty shootouts in soccer (12) is based on a related principle about the fundamental purpose of sport: namely, that victory should be determined as far as possible by constitutive, not regulative, skills. Also, M. Andrew Holowchak s recent critique of steroid use in sport (5) cites a principle, which he calls aretism, about the nature of ideal athletic competition.

8 110 DIXON I very much endorse the interpretivist approach to questions about sport. My goal in the remainder of this article is to highlight its most important feature, which is already implicit in Simon s paper: realism in sport, or sporting realism. It is the belief that principles about the nature and purpose of sport (as posited by interpretivists), supplemented where applicable with other factors such as general moral principles and the pertinent rules, dictate the best answer to moral and nonmoral debates about sport. It also includes the belief that these fundamental principles themselves are amenable to rational argument. Realism in sport parallels realism in other areas of philosophy. Moral realists believe in moral truths that lay claim to our assent by virtue of the reasons that support them, not by virtue of being an expression of our personal feelings (subjectivism) or those of any particular group (relativism). Realists in philosophy of science believe that scientific hypotheses purport to give an accurate description of the way the world really is, in contrast to instrumentalists, who regard these hypotheses merely as useful tools for predicting and manipulating the world that make no claim to accurately represent it. Realists in sport believe, in contrast to conventionalists such as adherents of Rorty s approach, that whether a position on a debate about sport be it about a particular issue or about fundamental principles is defensible depends on the quality of the supporting arguments, not on whether it has the assent of the relevant athletic community. Many issues in sport are straightforwardly normative, and in debating them we can use the same moral principles that we apply in other areas of applied ethics, such as medical and business ethics. Issues that fall into this category include questions of gender equity in sport and whether we are justified in paternalistic legislation to protect athletes from danger in sport. Realism in sport includes moral realism, and its proponents believe that the pertinent moral principles often dictate a particular answer on ethical issues in sport. Other issues involve nonmoral value judgments such as whether various rule changes are desirable. Many issues will involve value judgments of both kinds. Consider the debate over the use of performance-enhancing drugs. One aspect of this debate involves purely moral values, in particular the conflict between respect for the autonomy of athletes who wish to use these substances to further their careers and, on the other hand, the paternalistic desire to protect them from harm. Another aspect of the debate, however, moves away from purely moral considerations and turns to questions about the fundamental nature and purpose of sport. This is the status of discussions about the objection that performance-enhancing drugs introduce a determinant of success that is irrelevant to the excellences that athletic competition is designed to measure. Realists in sport believe that relevant moral principles, principles about the nature and purpose of sport, and pertinent background information together determine the most reasonable positions in moral and nonmoral debate about sport. Realism as a Response to Externalism Simon s defense of interpretivism, reflected in his use of the expression interpretive broad internalism, stresses its contrast with externalism. Simon s internalist thesis is that sport has a kind of internal ethic, what might be called an internal morality of sport, that is tightly (some would say conceptually) connected with the idea of athletic competition (11: p. 2). More important, he states that sport has a significant degree of autonomy from the wider society and supports,

9 Realism in Sport 111 stands for, or expresses a set of values of its own which may run counter to the values dominant in the culture (11: p. 2). He contrasts this thesis with the externalist view that sport at best reflects and reinforces prevailing values in broader society. Put more simply, the debate between internalists and externalists is primarily over whether sport is an inherently valuable activity that, by its very nature, presupposes and promotes desirable values, whether or not these values are shared by society at large. Simon presents very persuasive arguments in favor of the internalist thesis that athletic competition is inherently valuable (11: pp. 9-11). Nonetheless, it is not clear that autonomy from the broader society is enough to distinguish Simon s interpretivism from conventionalism, an approach that he rejects. Even a conventionalist could allow for an internal morality of sport, independent of society s morality. This internal morality would be based, consistent with conventionalism s relativistic approach, on the prevailing view in the sporting practice community. So, although Simon identifies conventionalism as a form of externalism, it is actually consistent with internalism. Because conventionalism appears to be a paradigm case of externalism, this calls into question the value of the whole internalism versus externalism distinction. The problem is that the only type of internalism that is consistent with conventionalism is unacceptable. Although conventionalism might be able to sustain an athletic community s independence from the values of society at large, it is unable, as we have seen, to account for the possibility that the dominant view in an athletic community might be mistaken. A far better account of the autonomy of sport comes from the more fundamental autonomy of morality itself, which always provides the resources to criticize the status quo, whether that of society at large or that of an athletic (or any other) practice community. But the autonomy to make both kinds of critique can be explained only on the assumption of moral realism. Moral realism best accounts for the ability of any practice including law and medicine, and not only sport to deviate from the broader morality of society. More important, only moral realism can make sense of critiques (which would automatically be mistaken according to conventionalism) of the prevailing view in an athletic community. Moral realism is thus the key tenet of interpretivism s response to externalism. Indeed, my thesis is that the best form of interpretivism is tantamount to sporting realism. Stressing the realism that is central to and even constitutive of interpretivism puts the debate over interpretivism in the context of the broader realism versus antirealism debate. Especially in light of the doubts I have raised about the entire internalism versus externalism distinction, the most pertinent target for Simon s defense of interpretivism is antirealism, not externalism. Just as Simon generalized from Russell s work on baseball to a general approach (interpretivism) to a whole range of questions about sport, one can view this article as continuing the process of generalization by presenting Simon s view as taking a position on the perennial realism versus antirealism debate. 3 Showing the connection between the debate over interpretivism and this general philosophical issue might be particularly pertinent, given the popularity of the antirealist views of Rorty and MacIntyre in philosophy of sport. Dworkin, Moral Realism, and Sporting Realism The centrality of realism to interpretivism is further supported by the fact that moral realism is also fundamental to the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin,

10 112 DIXON whose views are cited extensively by Simon and, especially, by Russell in their defenses of interpretivism. Dworkin s moral realism is most explicit in his theory of constitutional interpretation. He states that U.S. constitutional law requires that judges formulate and apply conceptions of such moral concepts as cruel and unusual punishment, unreasonable search and seizure, and due process of law. These moral concepts are part of the law, and failure to give them due consideration results in mistaken decisions (4: ch. 5). Dworkin s approach, which leads inevitably to judicial activism, would make sense only on the assumption of moral realism. Only if we think that moral judgments can be supported by arguments whose status transcends mere subjective preferences would activism have any plausibility. Its opponents, who instead favor judicial restraint, criticize Dworkin s view precisely because they believe that it gives judges too much discretion in fact, a license to impose their own moral judgments in disregard of the law. One prominent opponent of judicial activism, William Rehnquist, explicitly cites a moral subjectivist view in complaining that moral views are unprovable personal preferences that should play no part in the decisions of an impartial judge (8). A full defense of moral realism is far beyond the scope of this article, but one particular response that Dworkin gives to the skeptical view that moral claims about legal rights are arbitrary is especially relevant for our concerns. Dworkin points out that the entire institution of constitutional law works in a way that appears to presuppose moral realism. High-court justices write detailed opinions to justify their decisions, and legal scholars write elaborate articles defending or criticizing decisions. If these justices and legal scholars believed that moral views are more or less arbitrary statements of individual preferences, why would they take the time to construct such elaborate moral justifications for their positions on issues of constitutional law (4: pp )? A parallel situation exists in philosophy of sport. Philosophers construct careful and detailed arguments to support their views on a variety of moral issues that arise in sport. Why would they bother to do so if they believed that moral judgments were merely subjective feelings? The fact that justices and scholars feel the need to provide arguments to support their positions on constitutional law and ethical issues in sport indicates that they are moral realists who believe that moral judgments, unlike subjective statements of taste, require justifications. Of course, a moral subjectivist could respond that these justices and scholars are, like everyone else who acts as if moral judgments were anything more than reports of subjective feelings, merely mistaken. Although challenging the status quo has been a venerable part of philosophy throughout its history, a heavy burden of proof lies on the shoulders of subjectivists who claim that so many people are victims of such a fundamental delusion. Moral realism is part of realism in sport, but sporting realism applies to all judgments about sport, moral and nonmoral. Just as Dworkin s insistence on the centrality of moral principles to law makes sense only on the assumption of moral realism, so interpretivism is plausible only if we adopt a realist stance toward nonmoral principles about the nature and purpose of sport. That is, those who advance such principles must believe that they are supported by arguments whose force is independent of whether any particular group of persons happens to endorse them. Consequently, they must believe that not all views on debates about sport are on an equal footing. The moral and nonmoral principles that interpretivists advance entail, in at least some cases, a particular position on various issues in sport.

11 Realism in Sport 113 Clarifications About Sporting Realism It is also important to understand what realists in sport do not claim. First, they do not propose that we clumsily impose a single, universal, unchanging view on sporting issues that ignores vital differences between different places and different eras. The analogy with moral realism is again instructive. Moral realists can quite consistently condone the same action in some circumstances while condemning it in others, because the same general moral principles can require different actions in different circumstances. 4 For instance, an austerity program that imposes considerable hardships on people who are dependent on government programs might be justified in times of national emergency such as wars but would be cruel and unjust during times of prosperity. Likewise, strict population controls, with each couple being restricted to one child, might possibly be a justified response to China s population problem, but it would be an unjust restriction of reproductive freedom in countries with sustainable, stable populations. Similarly, sporting realists can take into account relevant differences between countries and periods of history when making moral and nonmoral judgments about sport. Adhering to general moral principles and general principles about the nature and purpose of sport does not prevent sporting realists from judging the same practice differently when the circumstances are significantly different. Second, sporting realists do not believe in the fiction that applying the relevant moral principles and principles about the nature and purpose of sport will produce a clearly correct answer to all debates about sport. Doing justice to all the competing principles, which sometimes pull us in opposite directions, can be an enormously complex task. Yet again, the analogy with moral realism is helpful. Philosophers are only too familiar with perennial moral dilemmas in which compelling moral arguments lead to contradictory conclusions. Think of the abortion debate, in which we must try to simultaneously do justice to respect for reproductive freedom and respect for potential persons. Moral realists do not react to moral dilemmas by throwing up their hands, renouncing the need for principled arguments to support their views, and arbitrarily choosing their positions based on a whim. On the contrary, they realize that it is unsurprising that complex moral debates that have long taxed our limited human understanding continue to resist easy resolution. This complexity, if anything, magnifies the need for carefully constructed arguments, all the while recognizing that strong and persuasive arguments are available to support opposing positions. Realists hope that continuing the dialectic of debate at a high level of argumentation will permit the emergence of increasingly defensible views, ideally (though in practice rarely) culminating in arguments so cogent that they win almost universal allegiance. Similarly, sporting realists are well aware of persistent dilemmas that tax our intellectual resources. A familiar example is the debate over the use of performance-enhancing drugs: Many philosophers have a persistent intuition that it subverts the purpose of athletic competition, but specifying how it differs from other, widely accepted training methods has proven enormously tricky. Like moral realists, though, sporting realists, although they are sanguine about the possibility of ever coming up with solutions to such dilemmas so plausible that they will persuade everyone, react to these dilemmas by trying even harder to construct cogent, principled arguments. They see the dialectic of debate as resulting in increasingly informed, principled, and defensible positions.

12 114 DIXON Third, and finally, sporting realists, although they believe that debate about sport aims at the truth, or at least the most reasonable position, do not claim that they have privileged access to this truth. On the contrary, realism in sport, just like moral realism, is often motivated in part by a painful awareness of the fallibility of our views. It is precisely the realist view that morality is based on principles that are independent of the status quo in any given society that permits moral realists to condemn such practices as slavery, even though during its heyday it quite likely was supported by a majority of people in countries in which it was practiced. Sporting realists are also quite willing to retroactively condemn practices, such as the long exclusion of African American players from Major League Baseball, that at the time were very likely condoned by the majority of the sporting community. Awareness of our past errors tends to instill a sense of humility and the realization that further reflection on moral principles and principles about the nature and purpose of sport might reveal some of our current practices to be unjust or imprudent and some of our current views to be mistaken. In fact, realism, which makes us appeal to external standards to support our views, provides the best possible defense against arrogance, because we cannot retreat to our own incorrigible feelings (subjectivism) or the uncontestable prevailing view in our community or society (relativism). Realism in sport is a theory about the general nature of truth in judgments about sport. It is not a theory about the content of true judgments about sport. Just as two moral realists might support very different normative principles for instance Kantianism and utilitarianism two fellow sporting realists might defend different views on particular issues in sport and even different principles on the nature and purpose of sport. What makes them both realists is their belief that some views and principles are more defensible than others and that what makes some views and principles more defensible than others is the quality of the supporting arguments, not whether they happen to be endorsed by the athletic community, society at large, or any other group of people. Conclusion This article began with a discussion of the judging controversy in the Salt Lake City Olympic figure skating contest. The first philosophical lesson that we derived pertains to the nature of decisions by judges in sport. Drawing on Russell s analogy with judicial decision in law, we saw that we do indeed have good reason to criticize bad decisions, even to the point of considering them null and void in extreme cases. Second, we used the scandal as a test case for deciding among three different theories on our judgments about sport: formalism, conventionalism, and interpretivism. All three easily support the view that the judges decision was unjust, but consideration of two hypothetical extensions of the Salt Lake City controversy and related features the approval of the skating community of the judges decision, proposed changes in the way that scores are awarded, and comparative judgments about different sports revealed the inadequacy of formalism and conventionalism. Only interpretivism provides the resources to challenge the status quo and evaluate proposed changes in sport and comparative judgments about sports. The remainder of this article consisted of the articulation and defense of realism in sport, which is the vital tenet and even the essence of interpretivism.

13 Realism in Sport 115 Only on the assumption of realism can we give our moral and nonmoral judgments about sport the warrant that is lacking in formalism and conventionalism. Indeed, interpretivism, like Dworkin s jurisprudence, lacks any plausibility unless we adopt a realist approach to its moral and nonmoral principles and the judgments we base on them. Whereas Simon presents his defense of interpretivism as a response to externalism, I suggest that interpretivists would do better to regard themselves as realists lined up in opposition to antirealists in sport influenced by Rorty and MacIntyre. Sporting realists must have the courage of their convictions and be prepared to assert that the positions entailed by the most defensible moral principles and principles about the nature and purpose of sport are indeed, to the best of their knowledge, the correct ones, whether or not the majority of the relevant sporting community shares these views. Notes 1 These examples are discussed, respectively, in Loland and McNamee (6: p. 63) and Russell (9: pp ). 2 Dworkin has offered increasingly sophisticated defenses of his theory of judicial decision in several books and numerous articles, but the best source for a succinct account of his position can be found in two chapters ( The Model of Rules and Hard Cases ) of his seminal book Taking Rights Seriously (4). 3 Simon himself is clearly a realist, as evidenced by the following passage: We agree to [principles, premises, or other justifiers] because of the intellectual considerations in their favor rather than find them intellectually favored because we agree. The alternative is simply to privilege the belief of existing communities because they are believed (11: p. 14). My approach differs only in the far greater emphasis I place on realism, which I consider to be fundamental to and even constitutive of interpretivism. 4 See Rachels (7: pp ) for more detail on this defense of moral realism against relativism. As Rachels argues, very different practices in different cultures might result from different factual beliefs or vastly different circumstances, not from different basic moral principles. References 1. Burke, M.D. Drugs in Sport: Have They Practiced Too Hard? A Response to Schneider and Butcher. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXIV, 1997, Dixon, N. On Winning and Athletic Superiority. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVI, 1999, Dixon, N. Rorty, Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and Change in Sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVIII (1), 2001, Dworkin, R. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, Holowchak, M.A. Aretism and Pharmacological Ergogenic Aids in Sport: Taking a Shot at the Use of Steroids. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVII, 2000, Loland, S., and McNamee, M. Fair Play and the Ethos of Sports: An Eclectic Philosophical Framework. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. 27, 2000, Rachels, J. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College, 1999.

14 116 DIXON 8. Rehnquist, W. The Notion of a Living Constitution. Texas Law Review. 54, 1976, Russell, J.S. Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With? Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVI, 1999, Russell, J.S. The Concept of a Call in Baseball. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXIV, 1997, Simon, R.L. Internalism and Internal Values in Sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVII, Torres, C. What Counts as Part of a Game? A Look at Skill. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. XXVII, 2000,