SPORT: A THEORY OF ADJUDICATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Bogdan Ciomaga, M.A. The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor William Morgan, Adviser Professor Donald Hubin ________________________ Adviser Professor Sarah Fields Graduate Program in Education Copyright by Bogdan Ciomaga 2007 ABSTRACT The main issue discussed in this work is the nature and structure of the process of adjudication, that is, the process by which referees make decisions in sport that possess normative import and force. The current dominant theory of adjudication in sport philosophy is interpretivism, which argues that adjudication is not primarily a matter of mechanically applying the rules of the game, but rather of applying rational principles that put the game in its best light. Most interpretivists are also realists, which means that they hold that the normative standing of adjudicative principles is independent of the beliefs and/or arguments of individuals or communities. A closer look at certain examples of sports and referees decisions supports a different approach to adjudication, called conventionalism, which claims that besides the rules of the game, referees are bound to follow certain conventions established by the athletic community. This conclusion is supported, among other things, by considerations concerning the nature of sport, and especially considerations that take into account the mutual beliefs held by the participants in the game. By following Marmor’s argument that conventions are best seen not as solutions to coordination problems but as constitutive features of autonomous practices like sport, I argue that a conventionalist theory of adjudication in sport has more explanatory force than interpretivist theories. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, William Morgan, for his constant support and encouragement, without which this thesis would have not been possible. Also, I would like to thank him for his immense patience in correcting my thesis. I am grateful for the input offered by Donald Hubin and Sarah Fields, as well as by John Russell. I would also like to thank Jon Keppel for his stimulating discussions on the nature of games. iii VITA November 5, 1975…………………………Born – Botosani, Romania 1999………………………………………..MA, Philosophy, University of Bucharest 2002-2003……………………….................Junior Professor, National University of Physical Education and Sport, Bucharest Romania 2004-2007………………………………….Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS “Truth and Absolute Evidence in the Philosophy of E. Husserl” (in Romanian), Revista de Filosofie, (4) 1998, 451-457 FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Education iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iii Vita..................................................................................................................................... iv Chapters 1. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 2. Adjudication in philosophy of sport ............................................................................. 13 2.1. Formalism .............................................................................................................. 14 2.2. Conventionalism .................................................................................................... 22 2.3. Interpretivism......................................................................................................... 28 3. Conventionalism and realism in sport........................................................................... 41 3.1. Conventionalism according to interpretivism........................................................ 47 3.2. Realist commitments in conventional institutions ................................................. 57 3.3. Conventionalism and necessity.............................................................................. 73 3.4. Conventions and conventionalism ......................................................................... 92 4. Rationality and diversity in adjudication .................................................................... 103 4.1. Rationality and adjudication ................................................................................ 111 4.2. Rationality and diversity in sport and adjudication ............................................. 127 4.3. An interpretivist reply and conclusions ............................................................... 145 5. Legitimacy and morality in adjudication .................................................................... 152 5.1. Russell on the legitimacy of referees and their calls............................................ 154 5.2. The legitimacy of the principles of adjudication and morality............................ 162 5.3. The conventionalist theory of legitimacy and its foundation............................... 180 6. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 189 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 197 v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION The project I am presenting here focuses on adjudication in sport. It is meant to be an analysis of refereeing in all its forms. An initial problem with this project is that it cannot rely on a purely descriptive method. One cannot reduce a theory of adjudication to a sociological study of refereeing as some sort of induction that finds the common denominator of various kinds of behavior that are considered instances of refereeing. In other words, a theory of adjudication cannot just be reduced to a process of finding those types of activities that are generally referred to as refereeing and then to an effort to find those characteristics that are common to all these activities. In “The Concept of Call in Baseball,” John Russell has made a somewhat exaggerated point that supports this contention. He presents a case for what he calls the “natural lawyer’s approach to the application of the rules of baseball,” according to which an unjust ruling is no ruling at all, just as a degree from a mail order university is no degree at all. Russell’s justification for this position is that “some concepts require certain functional moral or evaluative standards to be met in order for them to be applied paradigmatically or as genuine instances of the kind represented by the concept” (Russell, 1997, p.26). If adjudication is one of these concepts, then it is conceivable that one could 1 encounter cases of referee behavior that, although regularly described as instances of adjudication, are not in fact authentic instances of it. In fact, Russell’s account of baseball calls has a degree of plausibility, although I think it is exaggerated. And there are some facts about games that make this position credible. It seems that referees are not just meant to apply a set of rules; they also have the responsibility to make games better. Referees have a responsibility to correct behavior that is contrary to the rules or the spirit of the game. As a result of this fact, it is clear that adjudication has a clearly normative dimension. If games were played in a perfect society, where athletes would not and could not break the rules of the game, refereeing would be most likely unnecessary. Referees, then, have a corrective function, trying to restore an adequate functioning of games when certain aberrations occur. These basic considerations seem to support Russell’s comparison between calls in baseball and university degrees. If it is true that adjudication is a normative concept that requires evaluative standards to be met in order to be properly applied, then Russell is right to say that some calls are not really, normatively speaking, calls at all. It follows that a theory of adjudication is right to exclude instances that satisfy certain conventional conditions for being a call (being a decision made by a legitimate referee) based on certain evaluative conditions that need to be met. This approach to adjudication, however, makes it difficult to draw a clear line between those instances of adjudication that should be taken into account when a theory of adjudication is constructed and those that should not. The problem resides in the way the evaluative standards to which Russell refers are determined. Let me clarify this problem by looking at a simpler case, which does not involve the kind of evaluative 2 standards that Russell describes. When one tries to define the general characteristics of a chair, one needs to look at those objects that are called “chair” and then try to find a common denominator to all these instances. In order to find what the concept of “chair” refers to, one needs to know English and then find the common characteristics of the entities that are called “chairs”. However, if one needs more than knowledge of English in order to understand the concept of “baseball call,” then the situation becomes more complicated, and this is the case with refereeing. These evaluative standards cannot