Historically, philosophy has investigated foundational questions about human nature, and a disposition to play plausibly is a deep part of human nature. We play games, but if anything, play itself has been more neglected by philosophers than games.
Moreover, playing games plausibly is an important element in a good life anyone interested in the theory of welfare, a traditional philosophical topic, should be interested in games. This is problematic the appeal to games as a model to clarify philosophically puzzling questions has limited utility if games themselves (and the concept of a game) are poorly understood. On the other hand, there is scant focused discussion of the concept of a game as such. On the one hand, philosophers love using games as model, arguing that phenomena as diverse as linguistic meaning, meta‐ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, law, and aesthetics can be illuminated via an analogy with games. Philosophy has a schizophrenic relationship with games. No team can win in a league that has failed to be completed, but there can still be a champion. This discussion can then inform determining what, if any, end-of-season accolades are relevant, such as championships, relegation, or promotion. Through analogy with a fictional decathlon competition-and with the understanding that sporting seasons are themselves a type of game-we identify three reasons why leading at the moment of cessation is insufficient to be crowned a victor (of an individual event) or a champion (of a season-long competition): doing so fails to respect some valuable skills, fails to allow for luck to play out in an interesting way that affects competitions, and fails to respect competitive strategies. However, things are not as simple as simply handing the championship to whoever was in the lead when a season is prematurely ended. Relevant to the current situation, we argue that Liverpool FC-currently with a 22+ point lead-should be crowned champions of the English Premier League. We argue that although there can be no winners, in certain situations there should be champions.
How should sport deal with prematurely ended seasons? This question is especially relevant to the current COVID-19 interruption that threatens to leave many leagues without champions.
0 kommentar(er)
