Šport kot predmet refleksije in osebna izkušnja

Abstract

The philosophy of sport is traditionally concerned with three topics: the problem of finding appropriate definitions of the main concepts (e.g. sport, game, play and rules), ethical problems (e.g. values, fair-play and performance enhancement), and the aesthetic characteristics of sport. The author briefly presents the influential Suits’ analysis of the notion of game, but her main interest lies in connecting sport with cognitive science, particularly cognitive philosophy. She contrasts classical cognitivism with the so-called embodied and situated cognition approach. She argues that sport is a good laboratory for testing different approaches and ideas in cognitive science, and stresses two major points. First, sport is an activity where skills are of the utmost importance which helps to shed light on the weaknesses of classical cognitivism. Second, the personal experiences and feelings of athletes play an important role and cannot be dismissed. Both features emphasize the need to treat mental processes as embodied and situated in the environment. The author concludes that we have to broaden the philosophy of sport with topics borrowed from the philosophy of cognitive science and phenomenology of sport.