How should we feel about the 'feelgood factor' at the London Olympics?

Just because you feel good

Doesn't make you right

Just because you feel good

Still want you here tonight.

Skunk Anansie, Hedonism

Prime Minister David Cameron thinks that the Olympics will create a legacy for the whole of the UK and not just London.  But, true to his earlier statements about importance of feelings and what-not, he warns that some of this legacy will be “hard to touch”.

The concept of 'hard to touch' is a strange one in an era of evidence-based policy, in which, in the words of one civil servant (presumably in thrall to the early philosophy of Wittgenstein), 'if I can't measure it, it don't exist'.  As you know, Wittgenstein abandoned his early ideas and adopted a broader view, and perhaps Mr Cameron has also been persuaded to take a more inclusive conception of reality.  Or maybe he is just worried that the only legacies of London 2012 will be immaterial.

Cameron's touchy-feeling tones when discussing the Olympics are not without precedent.  Consider this neat piece of verbal gymnastics from New Labour's Game Plan policy document, when it suggests that whilst the quantity of medals won at the Olympics is of great importance, one must not neglect the “quality” of a victory:

“‘Quality’ can be taken to be the extent to which victory produces the feelgood factor and national pride (as these are the main public benefits of high performance sport). If it is accepted that the more popular the sport, the greater the amount of feelgood which follows, then “quality” medals are those obtained in the most popular sports.”

So, according to Game Plan, the feelgood factor is a quality that can be created and changed in amount over time, and although it is admitted that it is “difficult to quantify”, there seems little room for doubting that it can have a powerful causal effect.

So what is the feelgood factor, then?  In case you thought it was something to do with happiness, or satisfaction, or well-being, or other philosophical fluff, the authors of Game Plan tell us it can all be explained with hard science:

“The biological explanation for the feelgood sensation is due to the release of endorphin in the brain. Endorphin has been called the ‘happy hormone’ and is released for different reasons, mainly physical, but also from laughter and joy, experienced by, for example, your team winning a match. Endorphin helps to reduce pain and has even been found to enhance treatment of many illnesses and diseases.”

Remember that this piece of pseudo-scientific woowoo comes from a government document; a document that is primarily concerned with justifying the future of sport in the UK, and the billions of pounds it says are needed to ensure it.

The feelgood factor has been repeatedly cited by governments and other agencies as one of the arguments for investment in elite sport in general, and the London Olympics.  In Game Plan, for example, it is listed as the first of three 'virtuous outcomes' of elite sporting success (the others are economic benefits and increased grass-roots participation).

If the Game Plan account is to be accepted, the feelgood factor really means 'improved mood'.  Perhaps you think that is a rather feeble justification for close-to £10,000,000,000,000 expenditure from London alone.

The weediness of the feelgood defence for investment in elite sport is partly due to the fact that we can easily think of more economical alternatives for generating good feelings and lifting our mood, from old episodes of Dad’s Army to Christmas with family and friends, to a smile from a secret crush.

There is a second, more fatal difficulty with the feelgood defence.  Improved mood following nice experiences is almost always short-lived.  Humans are adaptive creatures (like all creatures, in fact), and we readily adapt to changing environments.  So improved mood or satisfaction eventually results in a ‘hedonic treadmill’ by which the elevated state will not continue, even if the circumstances that promote it are maintained.

In other words, the good mood that we hope will come with the Olympic success will be short-lived, and will certainly last a lot less time than it will take to pay off the debt from the Games.

And let’s not forget that moods – like interest rates and skirt lengths – can go up as well as down.  John Steele, former CEO of UK Sport, spoke of the “the euphoria of a full Lord’s Cricket Ground … when a single Ashes test was won”.  But by the same logic, any of England’s subsequent defeats would seem destined to result in national despair.  What will happen to the feelgood factor if any of our Olympic hopefuls under-performs or is injured?

If success in elite sport (let alone second-hand, spectated success) has a potent positive effect on our mood, presumably failure has the opposite.  And if this is true, then this is a real cause for concern, as the nature of sports competition is that most players lose in the long-run.

These are not new arguments, nor particularly scholarly.  I am sure there are those among the governments and their policy makers who know that the public has been offered some pathetically weak rationale for their investment in the Games.  Personally, I’d prefer an honest explanation like, ‘Hey, it’s the Olympics.  We beat the French!’  I’d even take, ‘Look, I was a bit of a spotty geek at school; if we get the Olympics, I get to hang out with Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendleton!'  I just wish they didn’t treat us like fools.  It doesn't feel good at all.

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Books on the Body-Mind Connection

I am really pleased to say that the next blog entry has been written by Dr Jennifer Leigh, an expertise on yoga and somatic education.  I asked Jennifer to recommend five books on a genuinely fascinating topic - and one that is of great relevance to both sport and education - the body mind connection.

When I was asked to recommend five books on mind-body connection I have to say that my brain froze.  I looked at the (shelves and shelves of) books that I own on aspects of this and was completely flummoxed.  I could recommend lots of them.  Others I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.  My main concern though, was who I would be recommending them for.So I have decided to recommend one book from five sections of my bookshelves (bar the really freaky ones) with a little bit of an introduction as to why it may be relevant to the mind-body discourse. 

The idea of a mind-body connection is not exactly universally accepted.  The ascendancy of the mind over the body and its importance in the development of Western philosophy and later medicine, psychology and sport can be traced back to the days of Plato, the Orphic and Socrates: “the body is an endless source of trouble...only the mind can reach existence”.  For example, Descartes’ dualism was firmly anti-organic, built on earlier notions of the physical world, and described in the words of Alan Watts as, “the domain of corruption and evil”.  The division or schism between mind and body can thus be seen to have affected Western society from its earliest days, with the body being seen as inferior to the mind. 

In contrast, in yoga philosophy and practice a mind-body connection is an assumption.  The purely physical aspect of yoga, asana, has been emphasised in recent years, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, turning yoga practice into an exercise form.  Yoga could be a valuable practice for any sports person.  But which book on yoga to recommend? 

I have chosen Dynamic Yoga by Godfrey Devereux (1998).  Devereux’s approach to yoga is physical, strong and active.  His explanations of the poses are clear, and if you can get over the extremely revealing shorts he wears, the photos are helpful.  The book is comprehensive, covering the poses you would encounter in most Hatha, Ashtanga or Iyengar yoga classes.

Eastern philosophy has a different starting point and language when talking of the mind and body, illustrating “the irrelevance of Western theories to non-Western contexts”.  The traditional Eastern view of the body and mind is that they are inseparable aspects of the same human existence.  A book that explores the martial mind-body connection is Peter and Laura Ralston’s Zen-Body Being (2006).  It is a bit of a how-to manual with exercises designed to help the reader experience a greater sense of their body-being.

The importance of the body-mind (or embodied mind) as opposed to a body/mind split in the philosophy of psychotherapy can be traced back through Freud and his discovery of the power of the unconscious over the conscious and his work on the power-relationship between therapist and client.  Linda Hartley’s Somatic Psychology (2004) traces the history of psychology and its sorry relationship with the body, which has tended to either ignore it (in the context of cognitive or social psychology), or treat it as exclusively functional (in biological and neuro-psychologies). 

In a discussion of Eastern philosophies and their resemblance to Western psychotherapy, Alan Watts states that both are concerned “with bringing about changes of consciousness”.  Western psychotherapy has as a primary concern with the study of the mind or psyche as a clinical entitity, whereas “Eastern cultures have not categorized mind and matter, soul and body, in the same way”.  By increasing awareness of the body-mind and its movements, it is possible to increase awareness of that boundary of and relationship with the world (and all others in it).  Alan Fogel’s The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness (2009) explores how the physiology of the body and psychology interact within a therapeutic situation.  He illustrates this with the use of psychology, neuro-biology and the Rosen Method, a form of somatic bodywork. 

My final book is a collection of writings on the principles and techniques of somatics in Don Hanlon Johnson’s Body, Breath and Gesture (1995).  The book forms a history of the field, including how it has fragmented into the disparate approaches and techniques that are found today.  Johnson focuses on Western somatic body awareness disciplines, many of which were developed after the turn of the last century.  Some of the practices outlined may fall into that ‘hippy’ section, however I find it to be a book that gives a very clear sense of the broadness of the somatic field and the scope of work and practice that people are engaging in to increase their sense of a mind-body connection.

__________________________________________

Jennifer Leigh is an accredited Somatic Movement Therapist, a Qualified School Teacher and an experienced Yoga Instructor.  Her doctoral research was a study on children’s perceptions of embodiment. She is currently working as a Research Associate at the University of Kent on a study looking at Costs and Outcomes of Skilled Support for Individuals with Complex Needs and an evaluation of ‘Imagining Autism’, a drama intervention for primary school children with autism.  She also has a killer pair of legs.

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The Arts of Storytelling and Learning

I recently came across an interview with the US radio and TV host Ira Glass.  He was talking about the art of storytelling, and his basic message was this:



hard work, grit and stick-to-it-ness are needed if you are going to create great work.

Not a radical idea, I know.  Especially in the era of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.  But Glass introduces another element that I've never seen mentioned in the literature of expert performance, and that is TASTE.




Here is what he says:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit."

This sense of frustration will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to learn something.  Especially something complex.




For example, in the last few years I have tried to learn a number of difficult things including golf, sketching, and Italian. Each of these activities had their own challenges.  My main difficulties with Italian were linked my my apparent inability to hear the differences between many of the sounds and 'phonemes' that made up the language.  In my head I was speaking like a character in a Fellini film, whilst to my teachers I sounded like Phil Mitchell in a pizzeria.  With sketching, I had to learn to overcome my tendency to impose my preconceived ideas rather than what I was observing.  Chairs have four legs; faces have two eyes; those are the facts, whichever way they are facing.


And don't even get me started on golf!


Yet, as expertise theory (and common sense) would predict, the more I did these activities, the better I got, more or less.  And the pace of my improvement seemed ti be strongly associated with the quality of support and feedback I received from my teachers and coachers.


Ira Glass' discussion of storytelling is relevant to those interested in learning and expertise because it hints at a principle behind both practice and feedback: taste, or (if you prefer) AESTHETICS.  In other words, movement towards competence or even expertise in these areas is only possible because the learner and the teacher have their senses of aesthetic judgement - some attempts are better than others; some actions are desirable, not just because of the outcome, but because of an intrinsic value; generally speaking, grace, and fluidity and poise are preferable to their opposites.


Aesthetics are STANDARDS.


It seems to me that taste acts as a powerful motivator for both learners and teachers.  Both are inspired by a sense of the way a skill or technique is supposed to be, and - from time to time - their senses coincide!  If we wish to get better at our chosen activity - if we want to bridge the gap between ability and ambition - we need to be clear that we need to do the work.  There are no short cuts.

It is the responsibility of teachers and coaches to make this clear to the learner from the beginning.  Nothing of value is learned easily.


Glass again:

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

So practice and feedback are vital elements in the development of expertise.  But both of these, I suggest, assume a sense of taste or aesthetics.  Practice, if it is for any purpose, must have some ambition.  And feedback is always with reference to a standard of performance or imitation.


Knowing helps explain our frustrations as we learn AND teach, and it helps explain why practice and feedback are so important in the first place.


To finish off, he is a recording of Ira Glass himself talking about storytelling, accompanied by some beautiful typography.


I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issues raised in this entry.  Criticisms, too!

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

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Aims - what's the point of PE and sports coaching?

‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly … ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’  ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.  ‘I don’t much care where,’ said Alice.  ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.  ‘So long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.  ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ (Lewis Carroll, 1865, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’)

To help understand the importance of aims within sport teaching, consider two encounters.  In the first, the teacher/coach uses her knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare young children for elite competition.  She draws on state-of-the-art scientific knowledge to ensure that her young players develop extraordinary physical and mental skills, and uses her excellent communication and motivational skills to keep the players training and their parents quiet.  By the nature of such training, lots of these players are injured or burnt out, and whilst the teacher/coach is upset for the children, she consoles herself that the situation is probably necessary if she is to achieve her ultimate goal: medals.

On the second encounter another teacher/coach uses her scientific knowledge to help the young people in her charge to have sporting experiences that are enjoyable.  For her, sport should be ‘fun’, whilst she knows that fun for six, sixteen and sixty years olds will take quite different forms.  This teacher plans her sessions with the intention of maximising enjoyment for all, and considers a session a good one if everyone leaves with a smile of their face.

These teachers/coaches are clearly involved in sport pedagogy, but who have markedly different conceptions of the role and value of sport in people’s lives.  The first teacher seems to think of the aims of sport mainly in social terms; for her, the purpose of sport is as a vehicle to win medals and glory, whether for the club or for the country.  The second teacher understands the point of sport in terms of personal satisfaction or enjoyment.  Casual observations in schools and sports clubs reveals that there are many teachers and coaches who assume the latter position, and who feel they have achieve their goal if everyone is ‘busy, happy and good’.  And, it is also not difficult to find evidence of the former approach, too, whether in the form of the brutal training of Chinese infant gymnastics or in the ‘survival of the fittest’ mindset of youth squads in many professional football clubs in the United Kingdom.

So, we can see two teachers with very different conceptions of the aims of sport, and these aims result in completely different ways of thinking of sport. 

Much like a rudder directs a boat, aims direct the uses to which a teacher’s/coach’s skills, knowledge and understanding are put.

As we have seen, aims can be framed in terms of social or individual outcomes.  This is not to suggest that there are only a small number possible aims!  On the contrary, the list of aims is probably endless  For example, an international review of the stated aims of educational systems from around the world came up with the following composite list (Tabberer, 1997):

• Excellence
•  Individual development
•  Social development
• Personal qualities
•  Equal opportunity
•  National economy
•  Preparation for work
•  Basic skills
•  Foundation for further education
•  Knowledge/skills/understanding
•  Citizenship/community/democracy
•  Cultural heritage/literacy
•  Creativity
•  Environment
•  Health/physical/leisure
•  Lifelong education
•   Parental participation

It would not be difficult to show how each of these can be translated into an aim for sport pedagogy (with a little imagination!).

It is worth noting that the list above was gleaned from curriculum documents.  Philosophically speaking, therefore, they represent what are called explicit aims.  These are aims that are stated for all to hear or published for all to read.  The moment a government or agency publishes the aims of a strategy or scheme they make them explicit, and consequently, open to discussion, criticism and rejection.

If aims are not made explicit they remain implicit, or hidden.  There is nothing sinister about this: implicit aims are not hidden to conceal.  Often, they are just too obvious to discuss.  Take as an example the question of mind-body dualism.  For many people (probably most people) the superiority of the mind over the body is simply taken for granted, and so any educational aims related to the development of the body will be inevitably be affected by this assumption.

One of the most valuable jobs that philosophy can offer is to help make implicit aims and assumptions explicit.  This is important because it is impossible to discuss, criticise and reject ideas until they are out in the open.  Lots of bad ideas grow and thrive only in the dark!

It is worthwhile examining both explicit and implicit aims because both will influence the way people act.  The explicit aims might reflect things like policies and formal guidance, and these are obviously relevant to teachers and coaches.  However, implicit aims are likely to reflect unquestioned assumptions and practices.  Our implicit aims will probably be more powerful precisely because we never question them.

So what?  Why does this talk of matter?

You may have already met Julie Myerson’s memoir ‘Not a Games Person’.  It is a frank account of a young woman who gradually changes from a general distain for sport and exercise to someone who hates them, largely due to her experiences at school.  At one point Myerson describes a lesson that might be familiar to many of us.

“This is me.  Six years old and standing in a sack in the middle of a field somewhere in the middle of England a long time ago.

 I don’t know why I’m here or what I’m doing – I don’t have any idea what the purpose is of standing in this field.  All I know is that they want me to jump – hold the sack as tight as I can and jump jump jump to the finishing line.

 I’m surrounded by people but all alone.  There’s a horrible feeling in my tummy and an itch on my leg, like a fly crawling over it.  I shiver and wait for the whistle to blow.”
(Julie Myerson, 2005, ‘Not a Games Person’)

We have no way of knowing the aims of Myerson’s teacher, but we can guess.  Perhaps the teacher felt that it was important for her pupils to get out of the classroom, to ‘burn off excess energy’.  Or maybe the motivation was competition (it was a sack race, after all).  Or perhaps her planning was inspired by the aim to make her children fitter and healthier.  Or was this lesson just an easy way to fill some time before the real business of school starts again?

Some of the teacher’s aims might be reasonable; others might seem weak or illegitimate.  In other words, different aims are of different value, and such value is only judged by making the aims explicit and by critically discussing them.

Strangers on a train You are on a train occasionally chatting to a charming person sitting opposite. Your new-found friend has just been reading an article in the newspaper that reports research findings that many children around the world have no regular sport or physical education lessons whilst at school. “Oh well”, your companion says innocently, “thank heavens it is only sport they are missing out”. You smile to yourself, and educate the stranger.



What do you say?

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Mind in the Meat - further thoughts about philosophy and sport

A Chess-boxing match is a remarkable sight.  Two fighters play alternate rounds of speed-chess and boxing until the end of the competition.  To ensure a fair and worthwhile event, all competitors must be proficient boxers and Masters-level Chess players.  Victory is won  by knockout, checkmate, by judges decision or if time runs out of the speed chess game.

Philosophers, like lawyers and plumbers, are able to find work almost everywhere.  We can take it for granted that Chess-boxing is a sight to behold.  We might also imagine a ‘Super Championship’ in which the world Heavyweight Boxing Champion takes on the top Chess Grandmaster (and imagine the Chess player’s self-talk: ‘if I don’t get checkmate straight away I’m in big trouble!’).  But the real interest of this scenario for a philosopher is that it takes to an extreme the two sides of any sporting activity: the physical and the mental. The body and the mind.

All sports by definition involve the use of physical activity and skills, and although exercise  is sometimes considered a refreshing alternative to intellectual work, it is difficult to envisage any sport that does not involve at least some element of thinking, decision-making, communicating or mental preparation: sports players need to engage in an almost continual process of thinking – about their play and that of their opponent; they must select appropriate skills and techniques and decide when to use them; and, of course, they need to construct and follow a strategy that maximizes the chances of their success and minimizes that of the opponent.

SPORT = PHYSICAL ACTIVITY + PHYSICAL SKILL

This is a common way of characterising the necessary elements of a sport.  For example, physical activity and skills are the features needed of an activity to qualify as a sport in the UK (and benefits from grants, etc..).

What do you think?  Does this definition exclude any activities or games that are often considered to be sports?  Does it include what many would think of as non-sports?

What about …?

- Darts

- Motor-racing

- Ultra-marathon running

- Chess

Sport is a great example of an activity that involves both mental and physical engagement.  As such, it offers insight into one of the oldest questions in philosophy: what is the relationship between the mind and the body?  More specifically, which is the boss?

By far the most influential answer to these sorts of questions is the philosophical positions called dualism, which is made up of two claims:

§  The mind and the body are distinct types of things;

§  The mind is the boss.

Dualist ideas go back at least as far as the Ancient Greeks, and have had a huge influence on religions like Christianity, but the thinker most closely associated with the dualism is the French philosopher René Descartes.  So-called ‘Cartesian Dualism’ suggests that mind and body are distinct and separate, but that they interact with each other.  The mind is indivisible, invisible and immortal unlike the body.  It therefore follows that the mind and body are totally different substances.

This view of human beings is sometimes labelled ‘The Ghost in the Machine’.  We might equally nickname it as the ‘Mind in the Meat’ theory: we are our minds; bodies are mere transporters of those minds.  The mind decides, directs and learns; it thinks and feels and reacts.  The body simply carries the mind around from place to place.  Of course, the body needs to be kept in order, much as a car needs to be fuelled and serviced from time to time.  This image of human beings has dominated ideas of schooling for so long that most people simply take it for granted.  And it has influenced the way that things like sport and physical education are understood and valued.  For example, among the most commonly stated justifications for the inclusion of physical education in the school curriculum by both teachers and parents are: 

• makes children fit and healthy;
•  It help them ‘burn off’ excess energy;
•  It offers a break from the sit-down lessons.

These seem rather flimsy justifications which hardly warrant a place on a broadly and balanced over-crowded curriculum (fortunately, there are more persuasive arguments!), but significantly from the point of view of our present discussion, they reveal the influence of the Mind in the Meat view of persons: physical education and sport help keep the meat moving.

What do you think?  Are there better justifications for PE and sport?

Does it matter?

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Bodies and Minds: even more on philosophy and sport

Philosophers are nothing if not an argumentative bunch, and many different arguments have been offered against Dualism.  One school of philosophy that is particularly relevant in this regard is phenomenology.  This approach is unusual because as opposed to almost every other school of philosophy, it is mainly concerned with describing, rather than the explaining, the things we experience.  Hubert Dreyfus captures the spirit of the phenomenological stance when he wrote:

“In explaining our actions we must always sooner or later fall back on our everyday practices and simply say 'this is what we do' or 'that's what it is to be a human being'.  Thus, in the last analysis, all intelligibility and all intelligent behaviour must be traced back to our sense of what we are.” (cited in Wrathall, 2000, p. 94)

According to Dreyfus, the biggest problem with dualism is that its account of action just does not relate to what it is really like to move.

So, phenomenologists reject the Cartesian splitting of the mind and body in favour of an integrated view that emphasises the notion of embodiment, or the central importance of human experience as lived through a body.  In other words, while dualism generally regarded the mind as the driver and degraded the body to a mere machine or vehicle, phenomenology countered that the body was the bridge to the world:  “Our senses are the portals that lead from inner to outer space.  Robbed of them, we become an island unto ourselves, lacking the ability to interact with the world” (Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 8).

At the heart of phenomenology is the view that to be in the world is to have a body or be a body.  It is only through being a body that I am what and who I am.  And it is only though my body that I can experience and learn about the things that make up my world.

This might seem a rather abstract idea, but some writers have suggested that a lot of what goes on when people actually play sport does not seem to fit the dualist idea of a mind working a mechanical body, no matter how fit and efficient.  The psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who we have just met above, suggested that there were certain experiences that were common to many sports players in which thought and action seem inseparable.  He used the word ‘flow’ to refer to experiences in which a person feels on top of the world, in total command of the situation and feeling that his/her limits are being pushed to the limits.  He quotes the words of an elite skater:

“Everything else goes away. It almost happens in slow motion, even though you're doing things at the correct time with the music and everything.  Nothing else matters; it is just such an eerie, eerie feeling. The audience fades away, except for the brief moment when they were clapping so loudly - actually that was just a part of us. It was all a part of our experience; it never took us out of our focus”. (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999, p. 73)

Numerous sports players have spoken about these types of experiences: of ‘being in the zone’; of ‘going with the flow’; and of ‘playing out of my mind’.  Together, they point to an experience in which the body and the mind are inseparable.

“Basketball is a complex dance. To excel, you need to act with a clear mind and be totally focused on what everyone on the floor is doing. Some athletes describe this quality of mind as a "cocoon of concentration." But that implies shutting out the world when what you really need to do is become more acutely aware of what's happening right now, this very moment.” (Great basketball coach Phil Jackson; 1995, p. 116)

So, what do you think?

Is this just an illusion or a trick of the mind?

Or is it just the consequence of highly trained athletes just thinking that they are not thinking?

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Where Am I? a little more about philosophy and sport

Imagine that you are approached by scientists  to go on a secret mission to disarm a nuclear devise.  The mission is very risky to your brain, but not your body.  So the clever/ mad scientists have figured out a way of sending your body on the mission whilst leaving your brain behind in the laboratory.  You are a heroic sort of person, and agree to go on the mission.  Your brain is surgically removed from your body and placed in a vat, although the brain and body are still linked together via implants, transmitters and antennae.  Before you go to disarm the bomb your body sits down and stares at your brain in the vat.

Where are you?

Are you the brain in the vat?

Or the body in the chair?

Or wherever you think you are?

This story is the start of a thought experiment (an imaginative devise to test philosophical ideas) from Daniel Dennett (1978).  The full story becomes more complex as various twists and turns are introduced.  The whole time, Dennett is trying to work out where he really is.

Try reading the full account, either in his book ‘Brainstorms’, or on one of the many websites that reproduces it (such as: http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html).

Dennett’s experiment offers a particularly vivid example of one of the most persistent questions in philosophy: what does it mean to be human?  Are we primarily minds or bodies?  Where are we?

Why does this matter to those involved with sport pedagogy?  According to Margaret Talbot (2001, p. 40) it “is the only educational experience where the focus is on the body, physical activity and physical development”.  In other words, we who work in sport pedagogy need to think about our own understandings of the body because the body is the focus of our professional interest.  More importantly, as we will see shortly, we need to reflect on our assumptions about bodies because they will heavily influence the ways we approach the teaching and care of them.


So, where are you?

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Thinking About Thinking About Sports Coaching. Or: Philosophy is less boring than might think

This entry, and the next few, will focus on some of the philosophical issues that relate to sports coaching, PE teaching and so on.


The material was originally written for a book, but that did not materialise.  So I thought this blog might be a useful forum for publishing it.  Feel free to circulate to those who might find such things interesting.  And please do comment with ideas and suggestions for extending the debate.




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I want to think about sport.  To think about why it is important for life, and for me.  In sport, as in life, we spend a lot of time mindlessly following the views and practices handed down to us, and there are some benefits from operating in this way.  For a start, it takes a lot less effort.  But since when is effort objectionable in sport?  Thinking about thinking – what is sometimes grandly called philosophy – does not present facts but suggestions, explanations, and, most importantly, questions.  What is sport?  Why does it matter?  Does it matter enough to force all young people to learn something about it?  Can a life without sport be complete?  Does it matters if some people cheat?  Questions like these require something more than reflective practice.  They lead us to examine and discuss complex ideas and come to see sport anew in light of our endeavours.

Philosophers, on the whole, have not taken sport very seriously.  They have tended to consider it a trivial escape from the real business of living.  Philosophers’ distain for sport is often an expression of a more fundamental ignorance of the body.  For them we are primarily minds; our bodies merely move us around and help keep us alive.  Lovers of sport suspect this misses the point – both of sport and of life.  Even the most intellectual of activities takes place thanks to our senses and our feelings.  Our bodies give shape to our thinking.  We can more think without our bodies than we can move without our minds.  Sport is one expression of this knowledge writ large.

The understanding that comes from thinking philosophically about sport will probably not improve my game.  But to examine sport in this way changes the way I engage with the game.  Not in the moment-by-moment experiences that give me pleasure, but as a way of life that gives my life meaning and happiness.

Teachers and coaches are practical people.  In my experience at least, they tend to be intolerant of too much talk.  I don’t think Elvis Presley was ever a PE teacher, but his demand for ‘a little less conversation, a little more action’ captures the shared feeling nicely.  Philosophy seems to be the supreme example of ‘too much talk’, and not surprisingly, many people are wary of its never-ending series of discussions and arguments.  They are, as Bertrand Russell put it, “inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible” (Russell, 1959, p. 153).

My goal in this and subsequent entries is to show that this image of philosophy is mistaken.  More than merely arguing that teachers and coaches canthink philosophically, I will suggest that they must think philosophically.  By this, I do not mean that they need to immerse themselves in the endless debates of academic philosophy.  All I mean to suggest is that a philosophical approach to one’s work is the mark of an intelligent and professional practitioner.

“Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

“Philosophy is a wonderful subject, but it is necessarily unfinished and infinishable … At the end of my life I want to know more than I did at the beginning ..” (Isaiah Berlin)

“Nothing so absurd can be said that some philosopher has not said it.” (Cicero)(All quotations from Lloyd and Mitchinson, 2008)

Philosophy (from the Greek for the love of knowledge or wisdom) requires thinkers to think for themselves.  This is why the great philosopher Immanuel Kant asserted that it is not possible to learn philosophy; it is only possible to learn how to philosophise.  This does not mean that the philosopher ought to live a life of solitary contemplation (although some have done just that).  But it does mean that the philosopher is compelled to think for him or herself.  This is perhaps why philosophical conversations often seem characterised by ambiguity and perplexity.  Important questions are rarely resolved with simple answers unless, of course, we choose to borrow uncritically the dogmas and doctrines of others.  For Russell, the person who does decide to live so uncritically “goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason".

Let’s pause for a moment to consider Bertrand Russell’s use of masculine pronouns (‘he’ and ‘his’) as general terms referring to all humans.  This was common usage when he wrote, but has increasingly become replaced by gender-neutral language (his/her, abandoning pronouns, pluralising, etc.) following claims that gendered language is misleading, inappropriate or simply sexist.  Is this a reasonable evolution of language use or ‘political correctness gone mad’?    As soon as we start to reflect on these questions we are engaging in philosophy.

It ispossible to think and act without philosophising.  It is certainly possible to teach without giving a moment’s thought to philosophy.  But it is not possible to think for ourselves, especially to think about matters of value, without philosophising in some way.  Sports teaching is a subject rich in philosophical issues:

• ·      What should I teach?
• ·      What experiences are most valuable / relevant / necessary for my students?
• ·      Are some ways of organising or presenting the curriculum inappropriate?
• ·      Should sport be compulsory for all young people?
• ·      Should all students be taught together, or grouped according to their ability / gender / interest?
• ·      Should teachers and coaches prepare their students for the world of competitive sport?
• ·      What type of person should sports teachers aim to develop?

We might turn to sociology or psychology to help us gather evidence for our enquiries.  For example, psychology might help us understand how children’s minds develop.  But psychology can never tell the psychologist which forms of development are worth supporting.  Sociologists can help us understand about the influences of gender, class, ability or ethnicity on young people’s experiences of learning, but as soon as they start to talk about why it matters, they shift to philosophy.

NEXT ENTRY: WHERE AM I?

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