Philosophy on steroids: a reply

Abstract

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally 'clear', while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally 'clear', namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one's argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter.

Dispelling a few false-positives: A reply to MacGregor and McNamee on doping

“…Oskar MacGregor and Mike McNamee have recently, in this journal [1], offered several criticisms of an earlier article [2] where I argued that there is no clear reason for thinking that doping in sport is morally wrong. They have one overarching criticism of my article that floats on three more particular complaints.…”

“…Briefly, MacGregor and McNamee’s overarching criticism is that my article “oversimplifies ... a complex issue to an extent that renders [my] attack on the anti-doping arguments unconvincing ... [T]he vast field referred to by the catch-all term ‘sports’ has such internal disparity as to render any attempts to turn the issue into a simple ‘yes to doping’ or ‘no to doping’ problematic” [1, p. 402].…”

“…Their substantive criticism concerns my views about safety and has two arms. First, they suggest that my arguments assumed that doping’s opponents are bent on eliminating all risks to athletes rather than simply managing them [1]. To that extent, they suggest, I was attacking a straw man.…”

“…It may therefore be that limiting or eliminating doping is reasonable in the same way. The second arm is their aforementioned suggestion that because sports involve different risks, there may be more reason to limit doping in some sports than in others, so that one cannot say generally that doping is permissible or wrong [1]. …”

“…The argument was that since many sports tolerate substantial levels of risk related to usual practice and competition, and since many sports—or their characteristics that engender risk—are morally permissible, the fact that doping involves risks does not by itself show that it is morally wrong. I did suggest that if safety were of overriding concern, this would commit us to abandoning all risky sports; but this was obviously a reductio of the notion that risk necessitates wrongness and not, as MacGregor and McNamee think, a “description of a philosophically refined anti-doping position” [1, p. 404].…”