There’s more to sports than the ethos of competition, entertainment, and commercialism expressed in popular media and discourse. Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives discusses sport in the context of several traditional philosophical questions, including: What is a good human life and how does sport factor into it? To whom do we look for ethical guidance? What makes human activities or projects meaningful? Randolph Feezell examines these questions along with other relevant topics in the philosophy of sport such as (...) the contribution of play to a meaningful life, the various reasons for pessimistic views of sport, the various claims that celebrated athletes are role models, and the seldom-questioned view that coaches are in a position to offer advice to athletes on how to live or on leadership skills. He also discusses the way that non-Western attitudes found in Buddhism, Taoism, and the Bhagavad Gita might be used to address the vulnerabilities of sports participants. Feezell draws from current sports issues, popular literature, and contemporary sports figures to shed light on the attraction and value of sports and examine the accompanying ethical issues. (shrink)

* A philosophical analysis of the nature, attraction, and limits of sport.

A series of eight fictional conversations offer an introduction to ethics, providing critical discussion of the definition and value of ethics and of ethical theories.

What is sport? Why does sport matter? How can we use philosophy to understand what sport means today? This engaging and highly original introduction to the philosophy of sport uses dialogue a form of philosophical investigation to address the fundamental questions in sport studies and to explore key contemporary issues such as fair play, gender, drug use, cheating, entertainment and identity. Providing a clear, informative and accessible introduction to the philosophy of sport, every chapter includes current sporting examples as well (...) as review questions and guides to further reading. The dialogue form enables students to engage in debate and raise questions, while encouraging them to think from the perspectives of athlete, coach, spectator and philosopher. The issues raised present real and complex ethical dilemmas that relate to a variety of sports from around the world such as soccer, athletics, baseball, basketball, hockey and tennis. No other book brings this rich subject to life through the use of dialogue, making this an indispensable companion to any course on the philosophy or ethics of sport. ". (shrink)

Pascal’s famous pragmatic argument for belief in God is plagued by a number of well-known problems, not the least of which is related to the claim that significant benefits may arise when we acquire a certain set of religious beliefs. But it is reasonable to hold a wide range of conflicting beliefs about the existence of God, the nature and supposed purposes of divine reality, and other related metaphysical claims. If it is not clear what claims are true about God, (...) then the world is religiously ambiguous. If the world is characterized by religious ambiguity, then the punishment-reward structure that underlies Pascalian wagering should be rejected in favor of what I call the agnostic wager. Given our bewildering epistemic situation in relation to questions about divine reality, if theism is true it is unlikely that it matters whether we believe theism is true. (shrink)

Emotions can be explained as specialized states, shaped by natural selection, that increase fitness in specific situations. The physiological, psychological, and behavioral characteristics of a specific emotion can be analyzed as possible design features that increase the ability to cope with the threats and opportunities present in the corresponding situation. This approach to understanding the evolutionary functions of emotions is illustrated by the correspondence between (a) the subtypes of fear and the different kinds of threat; (b) the attributes of happiness (...) and sadness and the changes that would be advantageous in propitious and unpropitious situations; and (c) the social emotions and the adaptive challenges of reciprocity relationships. In addition to addressing a core theoretical problem shared by evolutionary and cognitive psychology, explicit formulations of the evolutionary functions of specific emotions are of practical importance for understanding and treating emotional disorders. (shrink)

Runaway social selection resulting from partner choice may have shaped aspects of human cooperation and complex sociality that are otherwise hard to account for. Social selection is the subtype of natural selection that results from the social behaviors of other individuals. Competition to be chosen as a social partner can, like competition to be chosen as a mate, result in runaway selection that shapes extreme traits. People prefer partners who display valuable resources and bestow them selectively on close partners. The (...) resulting phenotypic covariance between displays and preferences gives fitness advantages to both, creating runaway selection that could shape a whole suite of prosocial traits including altruism, moral capacities, empathy, and theory of mind. Even though they give a net fitness benefit, traits at the endpoint of runaway social selection can have substantial deleterious effects on other traits such as viability, ability to accumulate resources, or vulnerability to mental disorders. Social selection forces arising from self-interested partner choices may be an invisible hand that shaped capacities for commitment, altruism, and other prosocial capacities of the human social brain. (shrink)

The first ever description of how evolutionary principles can be applied to questions of health and sickness.

Progress in emotions research requires understanding why debate about the general nature of emotions remains intractable. Much confusion arises from proposals that offer one of the four different kinds of biological explanation, without recognizing the need for other three. More arises from tacitly thinking of emotions as products of design, when they are actually organically complex products of natural selection. Finally, debate persists because of categorizing emotions by functions, instead of recognizing that each emotion was shaped by the adaptive challenges (...) posed by a recurring situation. No general explanation of the kind usually sought for emotions exists, however progress is possible if we study emotions as organically complex partially differentiated constellations of changes that have been useful in certain situations. (shrink)

Game theory has progressed from analysis of one-move games between two rational agents, to iterated n-person games in which strategies evolve, and actors use prior experience to coordinate their moves. The next step in this direction is to analyse commitment strategies. An individual can influence others by announcing his or her commitment to a future act that would not be in his or her best interests. Spiteful threats can coerce others. Promises to aid someone when nothing can be reciprocated can (...) create deep relationships. Such strategies are inherently paradoxical because the maximum payoff comes from not having to follow through on the commitment, and this is made more likely by expensive signalling of commitments to outlandish threats and promises whose plausibility declines with their magnitude. Nonetheless, the fitness benefits of subjective commitment are substantial and may well have shaped human capacities for revenge and spite, as well as deep attachment and genuine morality. (shrink)