SEMINARS

Title: Towards an Account of Consistency in Refereeing​​

Everyone says that referees need to be “consistent”, but players, coaches, pundits, and fans all have different ideas about what this ideal entails. In this talk, I’ll present my current account of what consistency is in soccer refereeing, which centers on the expertise of the referee. I argue that consistency in refereeing has to allow for the wide-ranging differences in context and management styles, as well as nuance in the application and enforcement of the Laws of the Game.

Title:  Sport Perfectionism: Data, Value Capture, and Moral Evaluation.

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Title: Athletes as Political Representatives

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Athletes are often claimed to be representatives of a wider community, whether that be their club, their nation or humanity as a whole (Weiss 1969). But in what sense exactly might athletes be understood to be political representatives? The recent philosophy of sport literature has begun to consider how frameworks from political philosophy may inform our understanding of sport (Abanazir 2023; Meeuwsen and Kreft 2022; Sorger 2025). Up to now, though, there has yet to be a detailed investigation of the sense in which athletes may be considered political representatives that draws on philosophical work on political representation. This paper will take up this task by exploring various ways in which athletes can be considered political representatives. I will start by outlining two standard ways in which athletes might act as political representatives: as formal or informal representatives. While athletes can and do fulfil both kinds of representative roles, I will argue that in these cases the role of an athlete and the role of a representative are distinct. I will then outline a third way in which athletes can function as political representatives that involves a closer connection between these two roles: by representing the political to a community. I will finish by exploring the implications of accepting that athletes can function as political representatives in this sense.

Title: When Sport Mirrors Life: the Phenomenology of Long-distance Running

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Long-distance racing is ostensibly paradoxical: from one perspective, it is a needless and dated pursuit that involves gruelling training and hours of repetitive movement, all of which is at odds with the instant gratification, technological permeation, rapidity and relative comfort of modern life. On closer inspection, this inherent paradoxicality unearths deeper contradictions from the entwined perspectives of embodiment, temporality, sociality and existentialism. From the first of these perspectives, when running long distances, one is simultaneously keenly attuned to the power and pains of one’s body, whilst necessitating a degree of alienation from one’s felt movements in order to achieve apposite flow of performance. Temporally, long-distance running requires both forward-planning and, ultimately, immersion in the present. Socially, competitive drive (e.g. achieving a certain time/position) is counteracted with altruistic outlook (e.g. camaraderie and charity), as well as the public nature of achievement contrasting with embodying a private place of visceral baseness to attain said achievement. Lastly, from an existential perspective, the drawn-out nature of long-distance running forces authenticity upon one; that is, no matter how one has trained according to conventions of "das man", there reaches a point of self-determination of which one must take ownership. The phenomenological appeal of long-distance running therefore inheres in its chiasmic nature: embedded in social norms and future-oriented outlook, yet dependent on visceral ownership of one’s present bodily being. As such, it mirrors the full biosocial spectrum of human existence.​​​

Title: Equality, Fairness and inclusion, and their place in meaningful Paralympic competition

 

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(1) Title: Athlete autonomy at the Enhanced Games

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(2) Title: A Sport of Their Own: Rethinking Deaf Sport Beyond Disability

Title: On Generosity and Determination in Competition: Why Descartes Matters for the Philosophy of Sport

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In sports philosophy circles, René Descartes' name is often avoided. The seventeenth-century thinker is often associated solely with the phrase “cogito ergo sum” and the idea of a radical dualism between body and mind. However, this one-sided interpretation does not do justice to Descartes’ later work, in which he actually starts from the union of body and mind, union de l’âme et du corps. Building on this alternative conception of the human being, Descartes develops a moral philosophy in which freedom and the passions occupy a central place, themes that are particularly pertinent to sport and competition.

In my presentation, I demonstrate that Descartes' morality offers a valuable perspective on competitive sport. How should an athlete deal with his passions? Can an athlete be happy despite a disappointing performance?  Central to my argument are Descartes' virtues of determination (résolution) and generosity (générosité), both of which spring from Descartes radical conception of free will. I will show how these Cartesian virtues can help athletes maintain their self-esteem and moral autonomy when sporting outcomes are beyond their control.​​

Title: Submission, Moral Tragedy, and the Perversion of Autonomy in Combat Sports

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In his “A Moral Critique of Mixed Martial Arts,” Nicholas Dixon argues that professional MMA is morally impermissible on the grounds that it violates inalienable rights to dignity and respect. In their reply to Dixon, Kershnar and Kelly argue that all rights are alienable through consent, on the following grounds: “rights rest on autonomy...[so] all rights [are] alienable because autonomy applies to itself. That is, an autonomous person has the ability to end his life or end his being autonomous...all rights are alienable” (111-12). While there is room for a Dixonian reply to Kershnar and Kelly’s arguments, the aim of this essay is to argue that, even if professional combat sports like MMA are morally permissible, there might be other features worthy of reflection and analysis besides permissibility. By rough analogy, even if both murder and torture are morally impermissible, their internal structures differ in important ways, which are worthy of reflection. The same goes for the two forms of self-alienation offered by Kershnar and Kelly, that is, suicide and selling oneself into slavery. In order to take account of such complexity, I begin by introducing the notion of a moral tragedy, which I take to be a series of events which result from autonomous choices, and which therefore are prima facie morally permissible, but are still, in some important sense, of serious negative value. I then apply the concept of a moral tragedy to professional combat sports, and argue that, aside from Dixonian worries about disrespect and affronts to dignity, submissions present a distinct concern: namely the perversion, or forced turning back on itself, of autonomy. This structural peculiarity of submissions as forced heteronomy means that submissions produce a distinct kind of negative value in the moral tragedy of professional combat sports which allow submissions.