I think that externalism best describes the role that sports fills in Western ideology because it seems to be the prevailing way they are conceptualized in most discussions. My understanding of externalism as it pertains to sports is that there are values held by a culture such that one could determine whether or not a society is capitalistic, socialistic, sexist, racist or more, which all can be directly discerned by the way that the sport is played. These values relate to Jan Boxill’s notion of competitive sports as a, “competition in a mutual challenge to achieve excellence (Boxill 2). This excellence therein referred to is generally that which is to be showcased by the sport and is also valued by the larger society in which the sport takes place.
If a society values guys with big muscles or tall men, then one would expect to see both of these present and overly-represented with respect to a normal sample of a population in the most popular sports that society enjoys and plays. This is the case for both basketball and football in the USA. As Boxill writes, “Sport is a microcosm of society, complete with all its conflicts, assets, and defects.” (Boxill 9). What this means is that it’s because these two values originate from the external Western ideology that the more popular sports are expected to have both of these types of people. As cultural values shift over time, one may expect the popularity of the sport to respond commensurately to some factor representative of how much that value is showcased by the sport(s) which for these two is how prevalent those types of people are seen in the sport. Folks may make observations about Western ideology in relation to whether it is sexist, or not, based on these values which are showcased in these sports.
I think externalism better explains the role of sports in Western ideology because people are the source of values and the reason for these values changing over time is that people are intellectually constrained by their changing societal circumstances. I think it was incredibly important that in his discussion of broad internalism, Robert Simon made a point that instead supports externalism when he wrote, “What gives moral force to the virtues and excellences required in sport is their connection within the practice to respect for certain qualities of human beings.” (Simon 10). This statement means that it’s because of inherent values external to sports that comes from people, that folks will showcase in sports the values that one will find in their society which are used to best play the game that is being played. Simon later made another astute insight that, “the best explanation of why some principles, premises, or other justifiers to which we appeal are regarded as deep is because they have at least provisionally passed intellectual tests that confer normative force upon them” (Simon 14). This is because circumstances will dictate the intellectual framework by which people will perform intellectual tests. These circumstances in society will change over time depending on different factors that are external to sports, and so too will the outcome of these tests when applied to different sports.
In conclusion, externalism provides a better description of the role of sports in Western ideology than broad internalism. This is because humans are the main source of values in sports and society, which are external to both. Arguments for broad internalism may actually support externalism as a concept more than an argument for itself.
Works Cited
Boxill, Jan. Sports Ethics: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Simon, Robert L. “Internalism and Internal Values in Sport.” Taylor & Francis Online, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport Volume 27, 2000 – Issue 1 , 19Jan2012, https://www-tandfonline- com.ezproxy.bu.edu/doi/citedby/10.1080/00948705.2000.9714586scroll=top&needAccess=true. Accessed 16Mar2025