Over the past 50 years decision making research in team invasion sport has been dominated by three research perspectives,information processing,ecological dynamics, andnaturalistic decision making. Recently, attempts have been made to integrate perspectives, as conceptual similarities demonstrate the decision making process as an interaction between a players perception of game information and the individual and collective capability to act on it. Despite this, no common ground has been found regarding what connects perception and action during performance. The differences between perspectives rest (...) on the role of stored mental representations, that may, or may not facilitate the retrieval of appropriate responses in time pressured competitive environments. Additionally, in team invasion sports like rugby union, the time available to players to perceive, access memory and act, alters rapidly between specific game situations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine theoretical differences and the mechanisms that underpin them, through the vehicle of rugby union. Sixteen semi-elite rugby union players took part in two post-game procedures to explore the following research objectives; (i) to consider how game situations influence players perception of information; (ii) to consider how game situations influence the application of cognitive mechanisms whilst making decisions; and (iii) to identify the influence of tactics and/or strategy on player decision making. Deductive content analysis and elementary units of meaning derived from self-confrontation elicitation interviews indicate that specific game situations such as; the lineout, scrum or open phases of play or the tackle situation in attack or defence all provide players with varying complexity of perceptual information, formed through game information and time available to make decisions. As time increased, players were more likely to engage with task-specific declarative knowledge-of the game, stored as mental representations. As time diminished, players tended to diagnose and update their knowledge-in the game in a rapid fashion. Occasionally, when players described having no time, they verbalised reacting on instinct through a direct connection between perception and action. From these findings, clear practical implications and directions for future research and dissemination are discussed. (shrink)

Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of actual social events. The topic selected is elite professional rugby union and the principal theme is its emergence as (...) an extreme sport and the risk of serious injury. It is argued that the injurious nature of elite rugby has its causal genesis in the professionalization of the sport and that a critical realist-oriented sociology has an important contribution to make in framing and gasping how and why this is. (shrink)

The current study investigated the adaptations which occur in visual search behaviour as a function of expertise in rugby union players when completing attacking scenarios. Ten experienced players and ten novice players completed 2 vs. 1 attacking game scenarios. Starting with the ball in hand and wearing a mobile eye tracker throughout, participants were required to score a try against a defender. The scenarios allowed for a pass to their supporting player or trying to run past the defender. (...) No between group differences were found in fixating on the supporting attacking player. However, EP increased the length and frequency looking at the area immediately ahead of the supporting player, particularly when executing a spin pass. NP fixated longer and more frequently at the defender, whilst EP fixated more frequently in the space the supporting player would run into in Switch and Dummy Switch scenarios. More successful passes were completed and tries scored by EP compared to NP. Differences in visual search behaviour between experienced and NP suggest that the experts extract information from areas directly related to guiding the motor action; the space immediately ahead of the support player to pass the ball in. Contrastingly, novices use a more allocentric perspective where the actions from the defender are used to guide their motor actions. (shrink)

Officiating and the role of officials in sport is are crucial and often decisive factors in sports contests. Justice and desert of sport contests, in part, rely on officiating truths that arise from an appropriate admixture of epistemic and metaphysical ingredients. This paper provides a rigorous and original philosophical analysis of the problems of obeying and applying the rules of sport. The paper focuses on a the scrum in rugby union. The scrum has become a focus of criticism (...) and bewilderment. Elite rugby is damaged as a spectacle because too much time is wasted setting and re-setting scrums. Furthermore, trust in the fairness of games is eroded because the scrum is a ‘lottery’. In this paper, we identify two fundamental structural problems which contribute to the scrum controversy. First, we argue that officials cannot make reliable judgements about scrums because they cannot see what they need to see. Secondly, we argue that players cannot follow the law... (shrink)

There is a crisis of leadership in sport. Leadership as an athletic excellence is under threat from the deepening influence of coaches on in-game decision- making. To appreciate what is being lost in this shift of responsibility, it is necessary to understand the challenge of athlete leadership. Captaincy is the quintessential on-field leadership role. However, the role of captain, and athlete leadership more widely, remains philosophically untheorized. This paper initiates a discussion of leadership in sport by providing the first normative (...) account of captaincy. Rugby union is used as a case study, as this sport preserves an especially demanding and complex form of captaincy that may provide a rough template for the revival of athlete leadership in other sports. A virtue theoretical analysis of the role is developed based on a functionalist conception of virtue. It is argued that discharging the responsibilities of such captaincy requires two key virtues: ‘sporting judgement’ and ‘responsibility’. (shrink)

Postmortem evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of American National Football League players who suffered concussions while playing have intensified concerns about the risks of concussion in sport.1 Concussions are frequently sustained by amateur and professional players of Australia’s three most popular football codes (Australian football, rugby league, and rugby union) and, to a lesser extent, other contact sports such as soccer. This raises major concerns about possible long-term neurological damage, cognitive impairment and mental (...) health problems in players of these sports. (shrink)

The role of the ‘enforcer’ in elite-level sports contests is a familiar one. Simply, the role involves establishing or restoring a ‘moral balance’ to the sporting encounter when it is absent – usually when match officials are thought to be failing to apply the laws/rules of the game. How the enforcer secures this outcome is more morally contentious as it may involve deliberate violations of the laws/rules of the sport. In this paper we consider the role of the enforcer in (...) rugby union. First we interrogate some of the extant sports ethics literature and explore the notion of ‘fairness’ in the well-played game, including the role of the enforcer. Second, we illustrate conceptually how the ethos of elite sport as a moral discourse creates a theoretical platform from which to assess the intervention of an enforcer. Third, we address the role of match officials as members of the practice community from an institutional sense (what the international governing body for rugby union makes explicit) and from an empirical sense (what actually occurs or might occur) in the circumstances that precipitate the intervention of ‘enforcers’. We conclude that the conceptual tension between the laws and the spirit (ethos) of the game is reflected in the choices facing players when playing the game. (shrink)

Head injuries are an inherent risk of participating in the major collision sports played in Australia. Protocols introduced by the governing bodies of these sports are ostensibly designed to improve player safety but do not prevent players suffering from repeated concussions. There is evidence that repeated traumatic brain injuries increase the risk of developing a number of long term problems but scientific and popular debates have largely focused on whether there is a causal link between concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. (...) We argue that the governing bodies of collision sports played in Australia have used uncertainty about CTE to justify a “wait and see” approach instead of attempting to prevent repeated head injuries. This stance is difficult to defend when these governing bodies claim to give a high priority to protecting player welfare. (shrink)

This book reveals how, when, where and why vitalism and its relationship to new scientific theories, philosophies and concepts of energy became seminal from the fin de siècle until the Second World War for such Modernists as Sophie Tauber-Arp, Hugo Ball, Juliette Bisson, Eva Carrière, Salvador Dalì, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Gino Severini and John Cage. For them Vitalism entailed the conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis impelled by the free flow of (...) energies, imaginings, intuition and memories, unconstrained by mechanistic materialism and chronometric imperatives, to generate what the philosopher Henri Bergson aptly called Creative Evolution. Following the three main dimensions of Vitalist Modernism, the first part of this book reveals how biovitalism at the fin de siècle entailed the pursuit of corporeal regeneration through absorption in raw nature, wholesome environments, aquatic therapies, electromagnetism, heliotherapy, modern sports, particularly rugby; water sports, the Olympic Games and physical culture to energize the human body and vitalize its life force. This is illuminated by artists as geoculturally diverse as Gustave Caillebotte, Thomas Eakins, Munch and Albert Gleizes. The second part illuminates how simultaneously vitalism became aligned with anthroposophy, esotericism, magnetism, occultism, parapsychology, spiritism, theosophy and what Bergson called "psychic states", alongside such new sciences as electromagnetism, radiology and the Fourth Dimension, as captured by such artists as Juliette Bisson, Giacomo Balla, Albert Besnard, Umberto Boccioni, Eva Carrière, John Gerrard Keulemans, László Mohology-Nagy, James Tissot, Albert von Schrenck Notzing and Picasso. During and after the devastation of the First World War, the third part explores how Vitalism, particularly Bergson's theory of becoming, became associated with Dadaist, Neo-Dadaist and Surrealist notions of amorality, atemporality, dysfunctionality, entropy, irrationality, inversion, negation and the nonsensical captured by Hans Arp, Charlie Chaplin, Theo Van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters and Vladimir Tatlin alongside Cage's concept of Nothing. After investigating the widespread engagement with Bergson's philosophies, Vitalism and art by Anarchists, Marxists and Communists during and after the First World War, it concludes with the official rejection of Bergson and any form of Vitalism in the Soviet Union under Stalin. This book will be of vital interest to gallery, exhibition and museum curators and visitors plus readers and scholars working in art history, art theory, cultural studies, modernist studies, occult studies, European art and literature, health, histories of science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sport studies, heritage studies, museum studies and curatorship. (shrink)

Existe gran consenso dentro de la academia en relación a la necesidad de tener en cuenta un gran número de variables para poder conceptualizar y medir la inclusión o, por ende, la exclusión social que viven ciertos colectivos. A través de un estudio en profundidad de la bibliografía, casos piloto y proyectos similares, se ha creado un sistema de indicadores con la finalidad de medir el impacto socioeconómico de una actividad sociodeportiva vinculada a la inclusión de personas con diversidad funcional. (...) El sistema resultante, se aplicarán en el caso piloto VARIED, un proyecto europeo realizado en cinco países de la propia Unión Europea. (shrink)

Brian Leftow has replied to the objections I raised against his trinitarian views in “A Leftovian Trinity?.” I explain why I don’t find his replies persuasive, and add some additional points based on his recent response.

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach. This is a reply to Burke.

In this highly original and accessible book, one of our leading philosophers of religion seeks to answer this question by analyzing the several states of mystic union as they are described and explained in the classical primary literature ...

In this paper, I link philosophical discussion of policies for trans inclusion or exclusion, to a method of policy making. I address the relationship between concerns about safety, fairness, and inclusion in policy making about the inclusion of transwomen athletes into women’s sport. I argue for an approach based on lexical priority rather than simple ‘balancing’, considering the different values in a specific order. I present justifying reasons for this approach and this lexical order, based on the special obligations of (...) International Federations such as World Rugby. As a result, I provide a justificatory framework for the WR Guidelines that exclude transwomen from the women’s game in WR competitions. Finally, I give an account of a maximally safe, maximally fair and maximally inclusive form of sex categorisation in sport. (shrink)

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach.

De unione Verbi incarnati est sans doute celle des Questions disputees qui a suscite parmi les disciples de saint Thomas d'Aquin les plus apres controverses. Seule en effet, elle mentionne, a cote de l'unique esse personnel du Christ, un autre etre de ce suppot, correspondant a la nature humaine. Comment concilier cette affirmation avec la doctrine thomasienne de l'unite d'etre substantiel? Et ne risque-t-elle pas de remettre en cause l'unite ontologique du Christ, et par la de detruire Jesus? Mais au-dela (...) de ces controverses, notre QuAestio revele l'emerveillement d'un contemplatif fascine par la nouveaute ineffable de l'Incarnation. 2000 ans apres la naissance du Christ, cette oeuvre puissante, publiee pour la premiere fois en edition latin-francais, ne pourra manquer de susciter un ardent interet. (shrink)

While unionization is usually evaluated as an aspect of freedom of association—the idea being that workers have the right to associate and form unions if they want and have an equal right not to do so if they don't, I argue that this is a mistake. Instead of merely allowing unions to form or not depending on the preferences of workers, I argue that unions are a basic and therefore necessary institution of a just society. After analyzing and criticizing the (...) schema developed by John Rawls for evaluating what constitutes a basic institution, I introduce a new principle that allows us to determine what should be considered a basic institution in the context of our existing social institutions and practices. I then apply this principle to unionization, and argue that while unions are subject to post-institutional regulation, just like firms are, their existence is demanded by pre-institutional principles of equality and liberty and therefore not optional. Not only are union shops consistent with our deepest moral principles, including our commitment to liberty, that commitment, when properly understood, actually requires that unionization be universal. (shrink)

Unionization in the Academy presents an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive treatment of academic unions—their history, purpose, and the conflicts they cause.

‘The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle : Physics III 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 32, pp. 205-232, May 2007.: I argue that Aristotle introduced a unique realist account of causation, which has not hitherto been appreciated in the history of philosophy: causal realism without a causal relation. In his account, cause and effect are unified by the ectopic actualization of the agent’s potentiality in the patient. His solution consists in the introduction of a property that belongs (...) to one subject but is realized in another subject on whose state this realization depends. I identify and analyze the multiple ontological dependencies between the causal state of the agent and that of the patient during their causal activity. (shrink)

In 1972 the Socialist Party and the Communist French Party signed the Programme Commune du Gouvenement d'Union de la Gauche. Six years marked the electoral agenda of the two “historical enemies” in search of political convergence that remained an open debate, also animated by the current of antitotalitarian thought that increased public disrepute towards the pro-Soviet left and the PCF. Political and ideological differences between alternative government guidelines were amplified by the publication of Alexander Solgenitsin’s Gulag Archipelago which will (...) significantly influence the philosophical discourse and French political dynamics of that historical ridge. (shrink)

The treaty of Lisbon makes European Union (EU) accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) an obligation of result. The issue has been intensely discussed for more than thirty years, arguing that such accession is necessary in view of the need to ensure the ECHR standard of fundamental rights protection in Europe. This question again gains prominence as the EU member states and the institutions seek to agree on the negotiation directives of EU accession to the ECHR. (...) The process brings up the difficulties involved in creating a mechanism which would both facilitate the autonomy of the EU legal order and enable individuals to bring claims against the EU to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This involves the questions how it would be possible to ensure quick access to justice, and whether the ECtHR would continue to apply the doctrine of equivalent protection in relation to EU even after the latter becomes bound by the ECHR. The article argues that EU accession to the Convention is a prominent political step ensuring coherence of human rights protection mechanism in Europe. (shrink)

In the article, some problems of organization attempts of ‘spring campaign‘ to the USSR, which have been conducted by members of ‘first wave‘ monarchist emigration, are studied. A special place is given to the efforts in this trend of monarchist-legitimist members who relied on growth of monarchist sentiments in emigration and inside of USSR. On the example of activities and plans of ‘Union of Russian Royal People‘ named in honor the Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna in Bulgaria under the leadership (...) of colonel G. I. Dementjev, attempts of search financial resources in USA, involvement into antibolshevik activities emigrant-officers in European countries are attentively examined. Undisputed interest is about project of parachute landing into USSR by aircraft designer I. I. Sikorsky that submitted to legitimist emigrant’s leaders in 1927. There is a brief review of I. I. Sikorsky biography, of his way as a constructor in Russia before the Revolution in 1917 and of period of his emigration in USA when he invented the helicopter in 1939. In conclusion the analysis of failures by organization of military resistance against of Soviet Russia as result of absence of financial resources and the decline of interest by ordinary emigrants to activities of their leaders is given. (shrink)

This volume contains the first publication in book form of an English translation of Thomas Aquinas's controversial disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati. This disputed question is a remarkable portal into the Angelic Doctor's theology of the hypostatic union, which is recognized as an area in which Aquinas forged some of his most original and penetrating articulations of the Christian faith. In the De unione Verbi incarnati Aquinas presents in five articles material that occupies more than eighteen questions in (...) the third part of the Summa theologiae. The attribution of an esse secundarium to Christ, in the fourth article of the De unione, has been the object of intense debate, for it seems to contradict the account of the Summa. In addition to Professor Nutt's English translation, the volume includes the critical Latin text published by Barbara Bartocci, Klaus Obenauer, and Walter Senner, as well as a substantial introduction. Professor Nutt's introduction carefully unfolds the historical background, technical concepts, sources, and speculative claims needed for understanding the breadth of the biblical and metaphysical contemplation represented in this work; it also includes a detailed exploration of the debate over the fourth article. (shrink)

In Uncivil Unions, Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely ...

Context: Neurophenomenology is a relatively new field, with scope for novel and informative approaches to empirical questions about what structural parallels there are between neural activity and phenomenal experience. Problem: The overall aim is to present a method for examining possible correlations of neurodynamic and phenodynamic structures within the structurally-coupled work of Alexander Technique practitioners with their pupils. Method: This paper includes the development of an enkinaesthetic explanatory framework, an overview of the salient aspects of the Alexander Technique, and the (...) presentation of an elicitation interview technique as part of a neurophenomenological method. It will propose a way of testing the hypothesis that if, in the effective practice of Alexander Technique, there is a union between the nervous systems of teacher and pupil, it should be visible neurologically and affective phenomenologically, and thus it should be possible to investigate both its neural and phenomenal signatures. Results: The proposed means of testing the hypothesis is to use the elicitation interview technique alongside neural monitoring during the teaching of the Alexander Technique in four paired sets of subjects. Constructivist content: At the heart of this paper is the claim that all activity is co-activity. I make no assumption of an ontological primacy of mental or physical, or explanatory primacy of any methodology. Implications: This has important ramifications for somatic education and therapies, for establishing frameworks of co-engagement and care in health-care situations, and for understanding empathy. (shrink)

Solidarity is commonly invoked in the justification of public health care. This is understandable, as calls for and appeals to solidarity are effective in the mobilization of unison action and the willing- ness to incur sacrifices for others. However, the reference to solidarity as a moral notion requires caution, as there is no agreement on the meaning of solidarity. The article argues that the refer- ence to solidarity as a normative notion is relevant to health-related moral claims, but that it (...) does not provide a convincing foundation of claims to universal health care. References to universal soli- darity obliterate an important distinction between those moral demands that are founded on principles like justice, recognition, or humanity, and those demands that stem from partisan rela- tions in communities. While there is no ‘separate essence’ of solidarity that could be referred to in order to argue for the conceptual necessity of solidarity’s partiality, some features may reasonably be stipulated as being essential to solidarity with a view to its systematic function within moral phi- losophy. The normative and motivational force of the ties invoked by solidarity is particularly relevant when basic moral demands are not met, and societies are in need of significant forms of communal relatedness. (shrink)

At a time when trade union activity is becoming more global, the article provides a theoretical framework that places a moral obligation on unions towards work migrants from the time they take a first step in the direction of movement, and continuing after they enter the receiving country and throughout the period of their work. The argument is based on theories of global justice and offers a three-axis framework that enables a complex analysis of union responsibility: direct and (...) political responsibility, labour connectedness and solidarity. The moral obligation of unions stemming from global justice differs from the citizenship-based model or that of human rights. Its basis is global. Such an obligation should be recognized by various institutions, including the courts, thereby adding a global dimension to rights relating to collective action, such as the right to unionize, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. The article analyses the ECJ’s decisions in the Viking and Laval cases, showing how the court failed to recognize this global dimension, and claiming that if such recognition were to be extended, a more accurate balance could be achieved between rights relating to collective action and economic interests in an era of globalization. (shrink)

For twenty years, the European Union has qualified as a supranational actor more and more present on the educational scene. Through the European strategies - Lisbon 2010 and Europe 2020 - but also the open method of coordination, an essential mutation has been occurring at the level of Member States. In this article, I intend to analyse in which manner the European Union manages to become a genuine educational actor. Thematic analysis of forty semi-structured interviews conducted with European (...) and international officials demonstrate that the European leaders prepared the European “suitcase” for the first “flight” of 2010 and the second one in 2020. Mainly, this briefcase regroups benchmarks, core competencies, mobility programs and the European qualifications framework. If the European Union is able to “boast” with a national or international political visibility through educational proposals however, an unknown factor remains in this geopolitical equation. (shrink)

Many political and legal philosophers compare the EU to a federal union and believe its basic laws should be subject to the standards of constitutional law, and thus find it lacking or incomplete. This book proposes a rival theory: that the substance of EU law is not constitutional, but international, and provides a close examination of the treaties and the precedents of the European courts to explore this concept further. -/- Just like international law, EU law applies primarily to (...) the relations between member states, who have democratically chosen to adapt their constitutional arrangements in order to share legislative and executive powers with their partners. The legal architecture of the European Union is thus best understood under a theory of dualism and not pluralism. -/- According to this 'internationalist' view, EU law is part of the law of nations and its distinction from domestic law is a matter of substance, not form. This arrangement is supported by a cosmopolitan theory of international justice, which we may call progressive internationalism. The EU is a union of democratic peoples, freely organizing their interdependence on the basis of principles of equality and reciprocity. Its central principles are not the principles of a constitution, but cosmopolitan principles of accountability, liberty, and fairness. -/- Presenting an 'internationalist' reading, this book proposes that the EU is a creation of the law of nations, and argues for a dualist account of its legal architecture, with EU law and domestic law allocated different institutional roles. (shrink)

We contend in this paper that the trade union role in social policy is expanding due to the debate on women's issues. The Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec is seen as a forerunner of this trend, with its policy positions on questions previously seen as personal. The method of promotion of these interests is also new, with caucusing and networking. The significance of these changes goes beyond unionized women workers and affects all women.

We study statements about countable and well-ordered unions and their relation to each other and to countable and well-ordered forms of the axiom of choice. Using WO as an abbreviation for “well-orderable”, here are two typical results: The assertion that every WO family of countable sets has a WO union does not imply that every countable family of WO sets has a WO union; the axiom of choice for WO families of WO sets does not imply that the (...) countable union of countable sets is WO. (shrink)

We find properties of topological spaces which are not shared by disjoint unions in the absence of some form of the Axiom of Choice.