The idea behind many sporting competitions is to equalize the physical attributes of the competitors as much as possible, so that skill can be the deciding factor. This is why there are weight classes in wrestling and boxing, and handicapping in horse racing and in golf. Since women are, on average, physically different from men in lots of ways that are relevant to lots of sports -- e.g, tennis, basketball, track & field events -- it has seemed reasonable to separate men and women into separate competition classes for those sports. Automobile racing doesn't implicate physical skills that vary systematically between men and women, so there are no gender divisions there.

There are also some fairness considerations: using classes within sports gives more people the opportunity to play. If there were no classes, then men who currently box in lightweight divisions would nearly always lose, and sports like basketball and track & field, even at the high school level, would be virtually devoid of women.

But of course the main priniciple -- achieving physical parity among the competitors -- is very imperfectly implemented. Some sports have only male and female classes, but make no allowances for large physical differences within those classes. So -- women are, on average, shorter than men, but there are no "height classes" within basketball. This leads to a new problem about fairness. A man who is "only" 5'8" would be at a serious competitive disadvantage on a college men's basketball team (if he even made the team), but could possibly excel on a women's basketball team.Theoretically speaking, the ideal solution would be to come up with a larger number of classes, based on detailed physical characteristics -- Body Mass Indices, location of muscles, flexibility, pelvic characteristics (this affects gait, and so has implications for how fast women can run relative to men), etc. -- and then assign individuals to these categories regardless of their sex. There might still be significant gender segregation on this plan, but it would be a consequence of a more principled classification. Practically speaking, though, such a system is unlikely to happen, both because of the difficulty of constructing such a system, and because of historical and cultural inertia.

You're right to observe that the evaluative word "best" as applied to a chess move appears to be used in many different ways. In some circumstances, the best move will be the one that ineluctably leads to checkmate of one's opponent. (Though if that move demands subsequent overwhelming calculations, there is another sense in which it's not the best. It's the best move from God's point of view -- or Deep Blue's -- but not from ours.) Often, we can't find tactical maneuvers that will promote a win and so must make a strategic move, and now the best move will be one that clearly satisfies a range of strategic goals (e.g., developing one's pieces, controlling the center, etc.). One cannot even say that "best" always involves a move that promotes a win: for instance, if one is on the ropes, the best move will be the one that increases one's prospects for a draw.

A philosophical issue is broached if one asks whether there is something in common to all these uses of the word "best". Some philosophers have held that there is, indeed that there must be; it is easy to read Socrates as insisting on this. Others have held that there isn't, that there is simply an overlapping family of uses of the word; Wittgenstein famously suggested this.

That's a very good question, John, and one without a better answer, I suspect, than the limits of practicality. So many topics for philosophical reflection, so little time! As a matter of practicality, many philosophers feel the pressure of researching and publishing in the more traditional philosophical categories, in the interest of a respectable and marketable curriculum vitae.

But like other "philosophies of" areas of ordinary human life, like food and wine, philosophy of sport seems to be gathering a number of citations in recent years. The Philosopher's Index returns 189 hits for abstracts published since 2001 with "sport" in the title (a better indicator of topic than if "sport" appears anywhere in the text), and there is a semi-annual Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, which also began publication in 2001.

You might also look at the answers to Question 906.

I think this is a fascinating question, one which will probably bounce around in my mind for a while. I can well imagine music companies, for example, writing recording contracts only for musicians who pass drug tests. But I do think there are a couple of relevant differences between musicians and athletes concerning performance enhancing drugs. (1) The nature of the competition in music is not as exclusive. And (2) the extent to which drugs enhance rather than undermine performance is clearer in sports than in music. You see in a running race or playing a match, there can be only one winner. The victory of one implies the defeat of another. In music, by contrast, many musicians can be successful, and it's not clear that the success of one prevents the success of others. Many records can go gold. Now, I'll grant you, in music sometimes success is exclusive. Only one person can be first violin of the New York Philharmonic. Only one performer can win the Grammy in a given year. It's in cases like that that this question is so intersting. Grammy Awards could easily be conferred only on those who passed drug tests? But there is, on the other hand the second disanalogy I raise. While it's clear that anabolic steroids increase muscle mass, is it really clear that canabis or LSD helps musicians perform better? Anecdotally, I'm not at all convinced that this is so. I suspect that drugs and alcohol have wrecked more musical performances than they've magnified. This difference, however, also points to a third disanalogy. Alcohol and perhaps canabis and other mind-altering drugs can be used in moderate ways with few pathologies. That's less true for most performance enhancing drugs in sport. I'll grant you, however, that what separates performance enhancing drugs in sport from vitamins and sophisticated nutrition is a rather difficult (I suspect impossible) line to draw clearly.

I went to an all-girls high school. Girls from that school outperformed girls from the nearby coeducational school in both athletics and academics. Same-sex physical education can be good for girls, challenging them against the highest standards of female athleticism. But of course sometimes it isn’t, especially if girls-only athletics is not as well supported as boys-only athletics, or if girls are held to less demanding standards than boys (relative to those achievable by top female and male athletes). The best solution here may be complex: some activities in some age-groupings are best pursued within a single-sex framework (e.g. rugby once in high school); others can be pursued in mixed groups (e.g. swimming, orienteering, and soccer, where players are grouped by skill level). Another important part of overcoming gender-bias in sport is recognizing the genuine athletic achievement in those sports that are predominantly pursued by women and girls. This is starting to happen in New Zealand where netball (a female-only sport, somewhat like basketball) is beginning to receive the level of recognition previously given only to rugby (an overwhelmingly male-only sport). Just putting girls and boys in the same physical education classes by itself is unlikely to change these entrenched attitudes and may even risk reinforcing them.

Yes, I think so. I may be prejudiced as a former wrestler, but it strikes me that damaging one's opponent is far too much an intrinsic property of boxing. There is indeed a purity to unarmed, hand-to-hand, struggle between two unarmed human beings with no ball, no team, few pads, and no objective other than subduing one's opponent. There is a kind of grace and beauty to boxing's movements. There is sublimity in its power. But there is also--intrinsically--violence. Too much of it, I think. I say other sports (like wrestling) possess boxing's virtues without its vices, or anyway far less of its vices.

Before I begin, let me issue a quick reminder: Not all college sports is big business. Some of it is, to be sure: Big-time college football, basketball, and the like. But college golf, tennis, swimming, and gymnastics don't generate much revenue, except perhaps at the most elite programs, and college sports don't generate much revenue at all at institutions like, say, MIT. So when I talk about college sports and "student athletes" below, I'm talking about only some college sports programs.

So, that said, I used to be a huge fan of college basketball. (I went to Duke. Go figure.) Now I hardly watch at all, and the reason you mention is perhaps the most significant. The rules governing (that is, prohibiting) the compensation of "student athletes" were put in place many years ago to protect the interests of such students. For example, there was concern that a student might decide to go to school X rather than school Y, not because school X would better serve that student's long-term interests---which probably have little to do with sports---but rather because school X is offering certain kinds of financial incentives. That made a certain amount of sense.

But that was a long time ago, when the term "student athlete" didn't need scare quotes. Now, as you say, colleges and universities make large sums of money from their sports programs, and their "student athletes" are essentially prohibited from receiving any compensation. Of course, the "student athletes" do receive scholarships and limited amounts of subsidy, but the real value of these forms of compensation are trivial compared to what the coaches, atheltic directors, and the like make. (Compare professional sports, where the players typically make more money than the coaches and front office staff.) That's all the more worrying when so few "student athletes" graduate, and it's even more worrying when the graduation rate for black "student athletes" is so far below that of white "student athletes" at most programs. (Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson publishes such statistics every year as regards football and basketball.) The simple reason for this is that "student athletes" are admitted to colleges and universities absolutely all the time who have, and are known to have, absolutely no chance whatsoever of receiving a degree. Some of them, indeed, cannot even read.

One might well reach the conclusion that "student athletes" are being exploited for four years and that the fruits of their labor are going to enrich the colleges and universities that claim to be protecting their interests.

Boxing is an even more obvious example of a rule-governed sport that involves what would otherwise be immoral actions. The answer usually given lies in the notion of consent. By agreeing to be a part of the game, one consents to be subjected to such actions; and, equally, is given the right to commit them. There are some actions in sport that are not part of the rules. Players have been subject to criminal prosecution for particularly violent tackles during a professional game.

The notion of consent, however, is not universally accepted. For example, suppose it is the case that forms of violence in sport feeds a culture of the acceptance of violence outside the sport (among viewers or participants). This is a question for empirical sociology or psychology, but the implications of the answer are ethical. In that case, consent within the sport may mean that one is consenting to more than one has the right to consent to; one is consenting on another's behalf, or even that consent takes away the possibility of the consent of another. Then there may be good reasons for claiming that such violence is morally wrong. A similar argument is often employed concerning the morality of pornography.

A knife may be used by one person for farming and another person for killing. There is no contradiction here, it's just that the same thing may serve different purposes at different times. Moreover, you may play a game both for the purpose of trying to win and as a social affair, at the same time. You can badly want to beat your opponent without disliking him. When I play squash with my regular partners, I try very hard to win (with more enthusiasm than skill, as it happens); at the same time, I find the match a bonding experience.