ABSTRACT
In the first conversation, Pat, the purported instigator and leader of the discussion group, helps the other characters begin to understand what it would mean to take a philosophical interest in sport. Why does sport attract so many people? Pat calls this the “attraction question” and suggests that philosophy of sport begins with an attempt to understand the concept of sport and its relation to other concepts, such as play and game. Riley is skeptical about the attempt to analyze the concept of sport, while Logan thinks it’s obvious that sport is simply about competition and winning. Pat explains “classical conceptual analysis,” and the group considers whether various candidate analyses of the concept of sport are successful in terms of the attempt to find necessary and sufficient conditions for being a sport. Pat responds to Riley’s conceptual relativism by showing that the conversation has made progress; it has revealed some strengths and weaknesses of various popular claims about the “definition” of sport. Finally, Pat explains an alternative approach to conceptual analysis,
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblances.” Perhaps games (and sports) share no common property or single essential feature. Games and sports may share typical features or properties, like the resemblances of members of a family. An analysis of the concept of sport in terms of necessary conditions or even typical features of sports may fail as a classical conceptual analysis while being informative and contributing to our understanding of sports.
