Basketball as a Moral Laboratory

Background: Basketball receives considerable attention in the philosophy of sport. Clearly, it includes several features that attract attention, among others being a ʻconstructedʼ game rather than one that evolved. As such, it might be expected that the rules would be consistent, but a case can be made to the contrary. Drawing on DʼAgostinoʼs celebrated account of ethos, there seems to be a conflict between the rules-as-written and the rules-as-played, especially around the contact/non-contact nature of basketball. The latter brings forth ethical considerations about rule-observance, thus setting the stage for what McFee calls moral laboratory.

Aims: To consider the reasons for including basketball in the moral laboratory: do the rules of competition permit one to behave fairly (or justly)? What accommodation is made for a fair starting point (to level the playing field)? How much is being risked? The moral benefits require attention to the rules, and hence acting in that way for that reason. Thus, we would like to examine if this can indeed teach us something about the character of the rules: roughly, that you cannot simply distinguish regulative rules from constitutive ones.

Methods: Philosophical analysis.

Results: Looking to history, we see how the standard reading of those rules in, say, the NBA was modified when umpires came up against cases where the rules were silent or the standard ʻreadingʼ was counter-intuitive. For instance, ʻdrawing the foulʼ must have started with umpires deciding what to call faced with a player contacted while standing still – the contact makes it a foul, but what were the attacking player`s options? In addition, basketball has several more specific connections to moral matters, namely to how one should behave. Woodbine discusses an interesting case about what ʻthe rulesʼ of basketball are, and about where ʻthe realʼ basketball is played (not in the NBA?).

Discussion: These considerations lead to the question about the definition of ʻbasketballʼ: What would it include, and what would it achieve? Obviously one starts form the rules, but which rules does one include? And understood how, in terms of playing? Wittgenstein (2005: 200e) famously asked about the rules of tennis, just which are and which are not included (completeness). Where would it leave the rules in the tournaments described by Woodbine? And what would we say if we concluded there was no definition of ʻbasketballʼ adequate to deal with all the cases?

Conclusion: It is becoming much more difficult to relate sporting rules and moral ʻrulesʼ. The latter are not really rules and the former do not circumscribe behavior in sport in the way we had hoped.

*Wittgenstein, L. (2005) The big typescript: TS 213 (tras. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue). Blackwell.