Not many years ago ‘Robot Wars’, a TV show that featured robot combat competitions, showed for the first time a technological and steely face of combat sports: no gloves and muscles but hammers, rotating blades, spurs, and flamethrowers. Only a few years later, the speculation on the sporting competition of the future resumed embodied characters but in a form that still tends towards the ‘post-human’: the so-called ‘Enhanced Games’, organised by ‘The Enhanced Movement’ are already a ‘faster, higher, stronger’ alternative to the Olympic Games. What ‘Robot Wars’ and these super athletes have in common is the character of the design of those specifications that make them competitively superior to their opponents. Even if using genetic modification for the purpose of enhancing performance in sports is not currently allowed by the Code of the World Anti-Doping Association that includes in the ‘prohibited methods’ gene editing, gene silencing, gene transfer technologies, and the use of normal or genetically modified cells as forms of ‘gene-doping’, the forthcoming possibility of genetic modification of human embryos will most certainly create a new look for athletes in the future. Does the objection to the use of performance-enhancing modification of athletes as a form of ‘dehumanisation’ of the performance itself make sense when we think of genetically modified super-athletes? Does the protection of natural talent, which equates with ensuring a level playing field, set an agenda of moral education to shape public attitudes towards sportsmanship? To address these questions, in this paper I plan to offer some reflections based on which circumstances would give rise to suspicion and disfavour in the viewing public, suggesting public perception as an important criterion for the revision of sport’s categories such the “extraordinary performances” but also “naturalness and normalcy”.
The 21st Annual Conference of the British Philosophy of Sports Association
Tommaso Ropelato
2024-01-01
Abstract
Not many years ago ‘Robot Wars’, a TV show that featured robot combat competitions, showed for the first time a technological and steely face of combat sports: no gloves and muscles but hammers, rotating blades, spurs, and flamethrowers. Only a few years later, the speculation on the sporting competition of the future resumed embodied characters but in a form that still tends towards the ‘post-human’: the so-called ‘Enhanced Games’, organised by ‘The Enhanced Movement’ are already a ‘faster, higher, stronger’ alternative to the Olympic Games. What ‘Robot Wars’ and these super athletes have in common is the character of the design of those specifications that make them competitively superior to their opponents. Even if using genetic modification for the purpose of enhancing performance in sports is not currently allowed by the Code of the World Anti-Doping Association that includes in the ‘prohibited methods’ gene editing, gene silencing, gene transfer technologies, and the use of normal or genetically modified cells as forms of ‘gene-doping’, the forthcoming possibility of genetic modification of human embryos will most certainly create a new look for athletes in the future. Does the objection to the use of performance-enhancing modification of athletes as a form of ‘dehumanisation’ of the performance itself make sense when we think of genetically modified super-athletes? Does the protection of natural talent, which equates with ensuring a level playing field, set an agenda of moral education to shape public attitudes towards sportsmanship? To address these questions, in this paper I plan to offer some reflections based on which circumstances would give rise to suspicion and disfavour in the viewing public, suggesting public perception as an important criterion for the revision of sport’s categories such the “extraordinary performances” but also “naturalness and normalcy”.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
