Moral Responsibilitly

1. Moral Responsibilitly • Three Kinds of cases for moral • responsibility • 1) X is a responsible person, meaning to say • something morally favorable about his • character. • 2) X is and was responsible for a past action • 3) X is responsible for Y when Y still is to • be done.

2. Case 1: X is responsible • In this case, responsible is known to be • trustworthy or dependable with sound judgment. • Meaning what morally?

3. Case 2: • X is and was responsible for a past action. • Responsible is being the source or cause of something happening

4. Case 3: • X is responsible for Y to be done. • Responsible is the condition of being accountable to act without guidance or personal authority

5. Responsibility • Normative judgment: making a decision based on a norm or standard. In this case, the standard is based on an obligation to a certain principle (to be responsible) from the value: responsibility

6. Free Will and Determinism • Free will: you have choices that you can make based on your values. • Determinism: every event, including human choices and volition, is caused by other events and happens as an effect or result of these other events.

7. Paradox of Responsibility • Do we teach responsibility? Do we expect responsibility? Is the athlete responsible for his/her actions?

8. Responsibility on the field/court: • "Every player is given a job to do and he is ...accountable for his own actions. If he cannot get the job done...he will be replaced by someone else - It doesn't matter who the person is, or how valuable to the team that person might be." Bruce Harris, RB, Idaho Vandals, 1989

9. You are responsible • On the field/court, you either make it or you are gone...Off the field/court, the coach watches you, cares for you, advises you, follows you, provides tutors for you, monitors your progress, ... even mentors you on what subjects to take, what major to study, may even counsel you on personal problems....

10. Teaching/Coaching Responsible action --Frey/Massengale • Coaches primarily educate participants in a "dysfunctional manner". • "Selected actions, behaviors, and traits are often taught, reinforced, and then rewarded, although these actions do not reflect desirable social values.

11. Frey/Massengale • For example, how often is blind obedience taught under the guise of tenacity? How often is manipulation and deliberate rule violation taught as strategy?

12. Responsibility-Frey/Massengale • How often is composure and sportsmanship mistaken for lack of effort? Frey/Massengale University of Las Vegas

13. Sharples Point of View • Coaches are basically here to get the most out of an athlete and to win. It is unrealistic if not naive to view a coach as a role model.

14. Responsibility: • How can we be responsible.... especially in the paternalistic world of athletics? • 1. Be realistic, know what is expected of you on the field. Realize the true purpose of athletics: to win and make money.

15. continued... • 2. Be pragmatic, know where you stand in this commercialized world. If you don't agree, what can you do?

16. Responsibility • a. Accept the status quo, but make your own decisions. • b. Quit • c. Foment a rebellion • d. Work from within to change the status quo...

17. Responsibility • 3. Be a skeptic, evaluate what is occurring. Who is advising you; what is their motivation? What is their intention? • 4. Be idealistic, believe that you can make a difference. Look for what good you can do and what good may come to you.

18. Responsibility • 5. Become responsible for your own destiny...don't let the commercialized world of athletics rule your life. Become focused. • Other choices?

19. Free Will/Determinism • Coercion: compelled by intimidation • Free choice in reality is a reaction to coercive external pressure.

20. A Realistic Athlete... • Whether the coaches ... approve of the use of drugs would be irrelevant to each individual's own decision as to whether they are going to cheat at sport and use drugs... Patsy Sharples, former world class distance runner.

21. Paternalism... • Paternalism violates our status as autonomous moral agents. • The human faculties of perception, judgment, discrimination, feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice... • The mental and the moral, like the muscular, are improved only be being used....He who lets the world....choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. John Stuart Mill

22. Autonomy... • The individual's life is his or her business, as long as, that person's acts do not harm or threaten others, no interference is justified.

23. Against Paternalism.. • The ideal of human development • The right to control our own life must be primary. • Paternalism, by treating us as if we were children, who must be cared for by others, reduces us in moral stature by denying us dignity and respect.

24. Paternalism...acceptable.. • Paternalism is acceptable when its goal is not simply to benefit the persons being interfered with but to safeguard their status as rational autonomous agents.

25. Arthur Ashe.... • The athlete is not responding to an offer: you can better yourself by becoming an athlete. It is really a reaction to a threat, "If you don't become an athlete, you will continue to be a victim of social injustice and neglect."

26. Arthur Ashe... • The problem with this argument: the limitations of athletic success • Perhaps we need eligibility limitations on who may become an athlete: There must be acceptable alternative careers.

27. Arthur Ashe • The greatest harm caused by myth that sports promotes upward mobility is the "opportunity cost" it inflicts on many disadvantaged young athletes: the hours which might productively be devoted to study are spent in gyms, on fields, and courts.

28. Arthur Ashe... • Players are vulnerable, even if they know the "facts" about what is being asked, consent is often not as voluntary as it should be.

29. Ashe.... • The athlete is in a precarious position in making a free-will consent. If s/he questions, s/he is like to be benched or put in less than a positive light by peers, coach, and fans.

30. Ashe.... • The onus is on the athlete to continue playing and to consent to things that s/he would not otherwise consent to.

31. Arthur Ashe... • Coercion, however subtle, makes the athlete vulnerable. It also takes away the athlete's ability to act and choose freely with regard to informed consent.

32. Mandall’s Point of View • Even as high school freshmen, athletes are preoccupied with physical activity and tire from workouts so they develop their own society, free from nonjocks who stereotype them as dummies whether that stereotyping is out of envy or competitiveness, but athletes in their world are also deified, given special favors and then criticized, threatened and made fearful of losing their standing and prerequisites. (Former counselor for the San Diego Chargers)

33. Mandall’s Point of View • The alumni and the fans control athletes much as heroin dealers control junkies. From a very early period in their careers, athletes learn that they must perform and please others or they have no place and no worth. Anger and paranoia thrive under such conditions. all the warmth in the world, the athlete learns, cannot substitute for victory. Mandall, former team psychiatrist of the San Diego Chargers.

34. Education • What type of education? • Informational or moral?