TOPIC 3

Developing
a consistent game plan
for moral reasoning
 Developing a consistent game plan
for moral reasoning

• Steps used in thinking through a moral

problem in sports
• Important issues in the development of a
consistent game plan
• Solving a moral problem
• Steps to follow to systematically think through
a moral problem
• Obstacles and fallacies in moral reasoning

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step One: Are Any Moral Principles Violated?

Step Two : Are Any Moral Rules Violated?

Step Three : Is This Case an Exception?

Step Four : Are the Rules Justified?

Step Five : How Can the Rules Be Changed?

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step One : Are Any Moral Principles Violated?

The four moral principles are the basis of most
fundamental obligations to others in sport.
When one agrees to compete,
one agrees to apply these moral principles at all times.
If one violates any of these principles,
then one must decide whether his action is an exception to
the rule,
or whether one action is morally unacceptable.
How one knows when a principle is violated?
The answer lies in knowing what one believes,
what one value, and what principles one has developed.

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Two: Are Any Moral Rules Violated?

Numerous moral day-to-day rules follow directly

from each principle.
These rules govern all behavior in sport settings.
These role-specific rules should guide you as
you participate;
if they do not, you need to address why there
are exceptions.

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Three: Is This Case an Exception?

Rules may have exceptions,

but the exceptions must be justified.
The burden of proof of whether this is an
exception means that you must show that there
is a good, overriding reason for allowing this
exception.
For example, you may have an exception if a
moral rule is in conflict with a moral principle.
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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Three: Is This Case an Exception?

Examine a situation involving the moral principle, “Do not be unfair”.

An athlete has asthma and requires a specific drug to compete at

the minimum level.
The drug, however, is on the “banned drug” list of the governance
body.
The “banned drug “ is a rule, “Do not use this drug,” but the
asthmatic athlete cannot compete in a distributive justice sense.
This case is an exceptions, you may need to change the rule to, “
Do not use this drug, unless authorized by a physician
for medical conditions to meet minimal performance levels.”

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Four: Are the Rules Justified?

Sometimes rules are immoral,

such as a rule that arbitrarily harms or is unjust.
When you apply rules,
you must ask whether the rule is a good rule.
If the rule violates one of your moral principles,
you may truthfully say that it is morally wrong,
even though there appears to be good reason for the
rule.

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Four: Are the Rules Justified?

Instances of this sort of thinking appears in many bureaucratic institutions.

For example, an earlier version of the NCAA Rule Book (1991) stated in
section 16.10.2.7,
‘An institution or its staff member may not provide transportation (e.g.,
a ride home with a coach) to an enrolled student-athlete even if the
student-athlete reimburses the institution or its staff members for the
appropriate amount of the gas expense.”

The purpose of this rule was that a coach or any athletic personnel could
not give an athlete a free or reimbursed ride.
Its original intent and motivate was good to make sure the student-athletes
do not receive special favor.

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 STEPS IN THINKING THROUGH A MORAL PROBLEM

Step Five : How Can the Rule Be Changed?

If the day-to–day rules are your personal rules,

you can readily make a change.
If the changes affect a large social group,
such as rules made by sport-governing bodies,
a change may require
political action, a demonstration, or
a legislation move.
If you cannot morally function within the rules, and
change cannot be effected,
you may even be morally justified in breaking or violating the rule,
as long as it is done consistently,
within the parameters of your moral principles.

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 Developing a consistent game plan
for moral reasoning

• Steps used in thinking through a moral

problem in sports
• Important issues in the development of a
consistent game plan
• Solving a moral problem
• Steps to follow to systematically think through
a moral problem
• Obstacles and fallacies in moral reasoning

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 OBSTACLES AND FALLACIES IN REASONING

1. Skepticism
2. Cultural and Relative Ethics
3. Dogmatism
4. False Obstruction of Theory and Practice
5. Other Obstacles : Fallacies in Reasoning
6. The Fallacy of Authority
7. Ad Hominem Arguments
8. Misplaced and Improperly Placed Authority
9. The Appeal to Force
10. The Appeal to Pity and Ridicule
11. Begging the Question
12. Equivocation
13. Psychological Obstacles
14. A Final Comment on Courage

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 Skepticism
Some people will show extreme skepticism that any reasoning about
moral issues can exist.
Skeptics purport that it is possible to reason about moral
judgments.
They believe that any determination of morality is simply an
expression of feelings or emotion.
For example, these skeptics might say,
‘That act is good only because it is nothing more than a matter of
taste such as,
‘I like that,
‘Well, that’s the way I feel about it and that’s all there is to it,
‘ You are entitled to your feelings and I to mine, ‘ or
‘Well, there really isn’t right answer, is there?’
If you examine these statements, you will notice that the skeptics
use words such as “simply”, “ merely”, or “nothing more”.

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Skepticism – Ragu2
 Cultural and Relative Ethics

Relative ethics is a second challenge to your reasoning.

All of us have heard others say,
“It is all right with me, as long as it does not bother me, “
”Who am I to judge?”
“Everyone has the right to their own beliefs,” or
“They have a different standard that I have no right to
infringe upon.”
These statements impinge on our ability
to address the ethical dilemmas that most of us will face:
that moral judgments with no objective solution are
relative.

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Norm of society
 Dogmatism

Dogmatism have all the answers.

Because they feel strongly about an issue,
they confuse subjective certainty with objective certainty.
Obviously, you need strong convictions,
but dogmatic refuse the possibility of error or
acknowledgement that they may be wrong.
‘reasoning is unnecessary because the answer is known;
I know and I do not care what anyone says.”
The dogmatic has a closed mind, and
refuses to acknowledge any alternative.
One of the aims in moral reasoning is
to help straighten out dogmatic thinking.
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principle..
 False Obstruction of Theory and Practice

Some people believe that ethical theory is after all

only a theory and therefore not factual, realistic, or practical.
Normal to hear, ”The real world is not like that.”
However, do not reject theories simply because they are
theories.
Should only reject theories if evidence shows that they are
inadequate.
A theory is not inadequate just because it is a theory.
All civilized human activity involves theorizing in the sense of
generalizing or hypothesizing, and
nearly all theories are practical to the extent that
they have at least potential applications.
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 Other Obstacles: Fallacies in Reasoning
As a moral reasoner, we must realize that
if we do not follow a standard logical pattern,
we may be duped into using fallacious reasoning.
If you are very observant, you will notice that
most people use psychological,
rather than philosophical reasoning.
Specifically, the way they use the argument
is the strength of their argument.
They are highly convincing
not because of what they say, but how they say it.
Such reasoning appeals
to things people want to believe or
to prejudices they hold.

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 The Fallacy of Authority

‘Coach Azali,
the Commissioner, or
the Official,’
has greater plausibility
in that it was said by someone in authority.
The fallacy of authority is
claiming that something is true simply because
someone in authority says it is,
rather than because it is supported by evidence.

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 Ad Hominem Arguments
“ You cannot believe a word he said,
because he is a jerk.”

An opinion or belief is wrong, solely because

the person saying so in known to be bad or disreputable.
Name-calling is difficult to refute, and
is the most subversive and cowardly method to win a
argument.
The method is quite effective because it is so vicious.
People often try to defeat their opponents by making fun of
them.
Name-calling is also used in other ways:
”Do not believe the coaches’ argues that coaches need more
money; coaches are biased.’
‘Look who is talking” is another variation,
suggesting that one flawed person cannot evaluate another.

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 Misplaced and Improperly Placed Authority

For some reasons,

we tend to trust experts or
people who have professional degrees or
important positions.
We listen
when they say about anything,
even when the supposed expert
has little experience on the subject.
This flawed reasoning is put to capital use
when professional athletes endorse, and
advertise products,
and people buy the product
because of the athlete’s endorsement.
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 The Appeal to Pity and Ridicule

‘Might makes right‘

this position supposes that the
opinion of the bigger, the stronger, the greater number
is the correct opinion, and
probably should determine the morally correct position.
This position is often thought to be
the most realistic conception of ethics because
its standard it not some lofty ideal
but is the real way the world works.
Large numbers of people
may be very wrong about a moral issue;
for example, Nazi Germany was successful
for almost 10 years because of its political and military power.
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 The Appeal to Pity and Ridicule

The appeal to pity threat is typified in,

“Woe is me;
Please help me;
I am always wrong;
Why are you picking on me?
You do not like me, nobody likes me.”

Playing on another person’s emotion to get one’s

intention or to avoid being the attention.

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 Begging the Question

This threat is known as a circular argument.

Often thought to mean the argument is illogical, rather,
it means that the argument is based on
incorrect information or
the same information again and again.
The individual tries
to win the argument simply
by repeating,
insisting, or
shouting
the same information over and over.

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 Equivocation

This threat is using

words incorrectly or
choosing words with the wrong meanings.
It also represents arguments in which
the words change meanings within the argument.
The threat to equivocation is one reason
why it is important that we understand
ethical terminology.

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 Psychological Obstacles

The use of psychological obstacles is

simply poor reasoning.
For various reasons,
individuals never learn how to think.
They express themselves in slogans or clichés,
and mimic what is called “herd behaviors”.

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 A Final Comment on Courage
Even if your moral reasoning
does not yield correct answers,
the process of moral reasoning
may free you from your own prejudices,
lead you to discard beliefs based on false premises, and
help you to better understand the views of others.
If nothing else occurs other than
being able to distinguished that
moral actions are reasonable or unreasonable,
then you have grown in your moral abilities.

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 A Final Comment on Courage
Finally, once we have developed
the ability to reason morally,
we will need the spirit and the courage to speak out
for what we have reasoned is the right thing to do.
Taking a stand for a moral right will not be easy.
In fact, you may find that,
to paraphrase Robert Frost,
it “is the road less travelled.”
Courage, however, to reason morally, and
to stand for what is right is the only solution
to address “ the new morality”.

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 SUMMARY
Critical inquiry is based on
rationality determining moral issues.

A critical, reasoned inquiry demands

accurate, exact, and precise thinking.

A reasoned inquiry also takes into account

all sides of an issue
in its past, present, and future sense.

To reason, then, demands that

you follow the three tenets of moral reasoning,
that is, to be impartial, consistent, and reflective.

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 SUMMARY
In developing our reasoned inquiry,
our personal philosophies also come into play.
What we believe and who we are,
color
how we act.

That is, our values, both moral and non moral,

are the deciding factors in our moral inquiry.
Values, therefore
determine our principles and our obligations.
If we can reason through our values, and
determine a consistent value system,
we will be on our way to a moral standard that
can withstand internal and external scrutiny.
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 SUMMARY
Once we have discovered our values,
we then write our universal principles.

These rules should support us

in developing our personal, and
professional rules, or guides.

We have five (5) steps to follow

in using these rules, and
numerous obstacles and threats to overcome.

Use these tools

to examine critical issues
in sport today.
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