More Football Lotteries

I've long been aware of European Cup matches featuring Liverpool and Celtic that were decided by the toss of a coin. In fact, I mention these cases in a piece I wrote about the difference between penalty shoot outs and lotteries in Soccer and Philosophy. It seems that this tie-breaking method was more widespread than I'd realised though. I was just reading a preview of Liverpool's Europa League clash with Napoli and find (about half-way down) that Napoli "have met English opposition twice in Europe, being eliminated on both occasions. In 1966-67 they were beaten by Burnley 3-0 on aggregate in the Fairs Cup and in the same competition two seasons later Leeds knocked them out on the toss of a coin. Strangely Liverpool suffered the same fate in the same campaign, losing to Athletic Bilbao."

One (or two) to look up I think...

(In other news, Liverpool are being flown out by Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden!)

Blood Bowl

Eloise and I have been working through things to do in the evenings since moving to Scotland. So far, that's included several films and the first series of Yes Minister on DVD. We also have a pile of old board games to get through though, including Blood Bowl - a Games Workshop game that's basically a more violent version of American football set in the Warhammer world. It must be well over ten years since I played and the first time for Eloise, but it was good fun.

For the record, I was orcs and she was humans. I was receiving the ball (and thus attacking) in the first half, but got so stuck into pummelling her team that I forgot to do anything with the ball until too late. The strategy paid dividends though as by half-time I'd ko-d three of her lineman. We'd both had a man sent off for fouls, but I was able to start the second period with a numerical advantage of 11 to 8, which gave me a greater chance to stop her scoring.

As it is, Eloise came pretty close to the opening touchdown, managing to run a catcher into my end zone and get a thrower with the ball dangerously close - only for him to fall over attempting to dodge by blitzer and open up a good scoring opportunity. At this point, one of my orcs was able to scoop up the ball, while I inflicted further damage by pushing two more of her players into the crowd (where they were also ko-d). By the end of the match, she only had four men left on the pitch - who were regularly getting knocked down - though it still required my lineman to 'go for it' (and use my final team re-roll in doing so) in order to score the game's only touchdown in the final turn. A fine example, I think, of the orc strategy (i.e. concentrate on roughing up the opponents first and then use numerical superiority to score a running touchdown).

Want to be my boss?

From January, my department ceases to exist. In fact, all of Stirling's departments will, as they merge into schools. If you fancy being my new boss, we're currently advertising for head of school...

Philosophy of Football Hits the BBC!

This BBC feature on the ethics of supporting footballers who are also convicted criminals (with focus on Marlon King) is quite interesting. There's been discussion of King's case before of course, such as this piece, but the BBC piece is notable because it actually quotes Prof Mike McNamee, editor of the British Philosophy of Sport Association journal, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

It's good to see philosophy getting more mainstream coverage - I hope it counts as impact! Don't forget, if you want to read more philosophy about football, Soccer and Philosophy (including a chapter by yours truly) is available now.

Olympic Ticket Lottery

Want to pay £50-£725 to watch a ten-second race? You may also have to win a lottery to do so! The BBC reports here: "From March, people can register interest in an event and, if it is over-subscribed, they will be entered into a ballot."

Upcoming Talks

I'm going away for a couple of days, during which I'll be visiting Manchester to give this paper in the Mancept visiting speaker series.

It's the start of a busy period for me, as I take advantage of my light probationary teaching load. The next week I have a talk in Stirling's visiting speaker seminar (obviously not as a visitor, but a tradition for new staff apparently) and at the end of the month I'm giving a paper in a colloquium on David Miller's National Responsibility and Global Justice at the University of St Andrews.

Teaching Applied Ethics

I have a piece in the latest Journal of Medical Ethics (36:10) on teaching applied ethics. Abstract here, full text (subscription required) here.

This is my first publication under my University of Stirling affiliation, although they did get my email address wrong (that was partly my fault - I'd told them what I expected it to be, though I did then notify them that it wasn't as expected for some reason). I'm not sure whether I can legitimately count it as a 'research publication' or not though, since while it draws on discipline-specific expertise it's really a piece about teaching. Also it's published in their 'controversy' section, since it's a continuation of a debate between Rob Lawlor and David Benatar.

For those interested, the debate between Lawlor and Benatar focused on whether or not it was helpful to teach moral theories as part of applied ethics courses (particularly to medical students). The debate between them, as is often the case, seemed to reach an impasse, since both wanted to make weak claims while accusing the other of stronger ones (that is, Lawlor didn't say we should never teach moral theories).

My contribution is to suggest that, rather than focusing on whether - or how much - we teach moral theories (which may in any case be out of the instructor's control), we should focus on how we go about doing it. Specifically, I suggest that rather than starting with a theory-driven approach, we begin by examining particular issues and work from there towards theory-building.

Unfair or Unjust?

I have before wondered about the difference - if there is one - between what's (un)fair and what's (un)just. See, for example, p. 42, fn. 1 of my 'Fairness between Competing Claims' in Res Publica 16:1 earlier this year. I'm not convinced that there is any ordinary language distinction that native speakers recognize (like, say, that between mistakes and accidents).

Whilst reading about Liverpool's draw with Sunderland yesterday, however, I notice that Steve Bruce described the referee's decision to allow Liverpool's opener as "unjust, unfair and wrong". A statement from the Professional Game Match Officials (a body I'd never heard of either) argued that the decision was in fact correct, but I'm not here to debate either its substantive merits nor interesting questions about whether the referee's decision can be both unjust and the correct one for him to have made. Rather, I'm intrigued by Bruce's phrasing.

I guess it suggests that he thinks there is a difference between being unjust and unfair (and a further issue of being wrong). Presumably his distinction between what's unjust and merely unfair can't rest on an appeal to anything like the basic structure of society either, since this decision wouldn't violate Rawls' principles of justice. I wonder what he had in mind?

Challenging Degrees

A graduate from Belfast has taken his former university to court over his 2:2 degree, claiming that if he had better supervision he would have got a 2:1 (reported here). It's hard to know what to say. Firstly, I agree with the defence lawyer that court probably isn't the right place to settle such disputes. More importantly, though, I don't really see that he has a case even if his claim is true.

Let's assume that with sufficiently better supervision he could have got a 2.i. The question is whether he has any right to that level of supervision. Presumably the level (quality and quantity) of supervision is one factor in determining the degree result, but many other factors play a role, in particular the student's own level of effort. Obviously I don't know the student in question, but for most students it's true that they could also have done better had they worked harder.

No student has a right to as much supervision as they can possibly benefit from. The question is whether they get a sufficient amount, both in absolute terms (what they paid for) and relative terms (i.e. in comparison to their peers). If he got as much supervision as others, but failed to make sufficient use of it, then surely some responsibility lies with him...

How Much Are You Worth?

The BBC reports here about the findings of a survey on pay. Predictably, it seems that the public think footballers and executives should be paid less than they are and carers, cashiers and call centre workers more. In other words, it generally looks like the public favour much greater equality in earnings.

Unfortunately, it's not entirely clear exactly what the public questioned were asked. The results are certainly reported as what people should earn rather than what they are in fact paid, but the mini-survey you can take on the site asks both and it's possible that some respondents failed to appreciate these subtleties.

Nonetheless, pretty interesting stuff. Too bad university lecturers weren't included...

Vine: Go From Good to Great

Another in my infrequent series of reviews from Amazon Vine. Usually, I use them to draw attention to things I like, but this time a negative review.

How to Succeed with NLP: Go from Good to Great at Work

I've read a few self-help type books in the past, but was particularly attracted to this one because of the NLP angle (not that I'm a confirmed fan, just because I was curious). Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm really any the wiser about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Of course, this isn't a psychology textbook - the author is upfront about the fact that this isn't an introduction to NLP but rather how to use it to 'go from good to great at work' and thus all you need to know about NLP is that it works (p. 2).

Nonetheless, I found this approach rather unsatisfying, since the reader doesn't get much insight into why particular techniques are supposed to be effective. Ultimately, the author simply reels off instruction after instruction, all justified simply because 'this is what NLP says to do.' Maybe NLP does give good advice, but all the reader gets here is some jargon, which isn't always explained. Moreover, without any insight into the fundamental principles, I have to say that I found the advice confusing at times. Sometimes, for example, you're told that it's not enough to do a great job, you must be seen to be doing so, so you should change your behaviour to stand out (e.g. p. 99), but at other times it seems to suggest that you try to fit in rather than stand out to built rapport with your team (e.g. p. 132).

Admittedly, it's difficult to give general advice in books like this, so there's always some tendency for authors to hedge their bets ('do X - a little, but not too much'), but I have to say that I didn't find the advice very useful. Often you're told what to do but not how to do it or told that you can achieve it through visualization techniques, which sound rather far-fetched to me (I didn't really try the exercises).

It's hard to give a verdict on whether the techniques work - no doubt they will for some people and not for others. The most damning indictment, in my view, though must be how badly written the book is, given the regular refrain about the importance of communication and clarity. The repetition I can forgive, since the reader is invited to pick and choose the chapters most relevant to them rather than working through the whole book, but the material didn't seem to have any coherent organization and chapters tended to jump around haphazardly.

Even at the micro-level, a number of sentences didn't clearly communicate what the author meant, for instance: "recognize what it is that you are not doing that could be holding you back" (p. 189) and, on the importance of being seen, "Picture how useful this will be when decisions are being made about redundancies, promotions, transfers and salary increases. If people don't know who you are, you will never be on the list" (p. 211).

I can't really comment on the merits of NLP, but there must be better books out there.

My review, first published here.

Another Potential Real-Life Trolley Problem

Last month I posted on this story of a runaway train on London Underground. Now it seems that something almost happened again, with one train being sent the wrong way into the path of another during rush hour yesterday. Maybe London Underground do need to employ a moral philosopher...

Do School Lotteries Work?

I've been following the Brighton & Hove school lottery case for a while (see here) and, indeed, written about it in print (see here, subscription required).

It's interesting to see this BBC headline, suggesting that the lottery failed to achieve equal access for students from poorer backgrounds. On reading the accompanying piece, however, it seems that the basis for the story is as follows: "Research presented to the British Educational Research Association on Friday says the system does not give equal chances to all pupils because catchment areas are still the main determinants of access to particular schools."

In other words, the reason it failed is not because it's a lottery (though of course equal chances don't guarantee equal success) but because it wasn't a lottery. It's important to realize that restrictions on who can enter a lottery, for example, can go a long way to 'fixing' the outcomes and therefore cancel out the benefits.

For more on these issues, see the books by my friend Olly Dowlen and Conall Boyle's recent book specifically on school lotteries.

Oxford PPE

Sorry for the lack of recent posts - today is my first day in my new job, so I've been rather busy with moving house (and country!).

My only connection to the University of Oxford now is as an alumnus, but this BBC article on the many Oxford PPEists involved in government caught my eye. Too bad they didn't research things a bit better though: the two Ps stand for Philosophy and Politics in that order...

This Situation Calls For A Philosopher!

It's often said that moral philosophers are divorced from real ethical concerns, spending their time discussing pointless issues such as trolley problems (bibliography here). In fact, it seems that these cases aren't that far from real life... Last week a runaway train travelled four miles through London's underground network, causing passenger trains to be diverted. Thankfully no one was stuck on the track and, obviously, a fat man on a bridge was unlikely, given that the train was underground. Nonetheless, I hope someone had a philosopher's phone number in case.

No Draws = Lotteries?

Long-time readers will no doubt be aware of my on-going interest in all forms of lotteries and (in connection) penalty shoot outs - though not because penalty shoot outs are lotteries as such. In fact, I wrote a chapter on the difference in Soccer & Philosophy, so won't go into that again here. Nonetheless, the gist of my argument was that penalties aren't lotteries - we could simply toss a coin to decide drawn matches, but at least penalties test some relevant skills - but either penalties or lotteries would be an appropriate way to settle a tied contest, the choice between them ultimately resting on what makes for the more entertaining spectacle.

It's interesting to see that Sepp Blatter is apparently considering doing away with draws in the World Cup group stages. Personally, I see no need to do away with draws; it seems a particularly American thing. His reasoning is that defensive teams are encouraged to play for a draw, but I'm unconvinced that introducing the 'lottery' of penalties to resolve the tie will make things any better. This way I'd have thought underdogs (with any confidence in their penalty-taking ability) will have an incentive to play for a draw knowing that they might actually win all of the points!

Who Needs Pupils?

Apparently this school is staying open despite having no pupils. I mentioned it before, but now the decision has been made. Not much more to add to what I said before really, but good to know that in a time of savage cuts to education this is something that won't be cut...

Vine: Superfreakonomics

Another of my Amazon Vine reviews; this time Superfreakonomics:

I only did a year of economics at university, because I found it rather too mathematical. Levitt and Dubner, however, do a good job of applying the insights and assumption of microeconomics to explaining everyday (and some not so everyday) decision making. They show, for example, that the laws of supply and demand apply to prostitutes, with the prices rising around public holidays and more 'seasonal workers' temporarily entering the profession.

As you may gather, the focus isn't on behaviour typically regarded as economic – in many ways, this is more of a sociology text than an economics one. Nonetheless, if you're interested in learning more about people's behaviour it provides some interesting observations and anecdotes. I haven't read the earlier book, Freakonomics, but it's quite clear that this is more of the same. You can certainly read this without having read that one – indeed, you might find it rather too similar if you have already read the first.

The writing is more like newspaper journalism than an academic text, so fairly approachable for the lay person, while all the references are hidden away at the back, to suggest that they've done their research rather than making things up without being overly off-putting for the reader. It's accessible, but I must say I found the attempts to add in some personal background about some of the people in the book rather uninteresting and also that the chapters weren't as logically structured as they might have been: often the authors go on surprising tangents that have little to do with the main subject of a given discussion, which can detract somewhat from the overall flow and make it hard to remember where you read a particularly interesting fact.

Despite my minor quibbles, I certainly found this book eye-opening. It's not unputdownable – in fact, it took me quite a long time to get round to finishing it – but I do feel that I learned something from it and would go back to it for some of the surprising findings and anecdotes.

Revise and Resubmits

A new thread up on Leiter discussing whether journals should abolish 'revise and resubmit' decisions. It promises to be an interesting one...

Here's my comment:

I think I agree with Bill Rapaport, that the R&R system is not necessarily a bad one, it's just that it doesn't always work as well as it should. I certainly know that I've had plenty of papers improve substantially as a result of a R&R verdict, whether or not subsequently accepted.

On the other hand, journal editors need to exercise discretion. I think that there can be value in sending the revised paper to a totally new referee (ideally along with the original ones), to get a fresh look at it. Problems arise when there's a long time lag involved (though unavoidable at times), when the referees give conflicting recommendations/advice, and when some of their comments are idiosyncratic. A good editor should of course be willing to accept a paper even if the author doesn't do everything the referees suggest.

There is one other problem with the system, which probably affects me more as a referee than an author, and that is that I probably do tend to give to many R&R verdicts. It's a safe 'middle ground' for the many papers that show some promise but also have some flaws. Again, though, the editor's role is important here, since there's a difference between the verdict given by each of two or three referees and the overall verdict given by the journal. The editor needs to make the call when, say, an accept and an R&R verdict ought to be an acceptance (or conditional acceptance), rather than R&R.

That the defects aren't necessary to the system doesn't, however, mean that the system ought not to be abolished. It might be that the chances of having a well functioning R&R process are so slim that we would be better off abolishing it. But I don't think that's so. I think that - while there will occasionally be cases where things go wrong - most journals can manage the system reasonably well (and it is of course open for any given journal to decide how many R&Rs, if any, to give).

One possible improvement would be to have more distinction within R&Rs. Some journals/editors do seem to distinguish minor and major revisions, but it seems to me that R&R can sometimes basically be a conditional acceptance and other times is no more than a vague willingness to look at the paper again if you completely re-write it (rather than permanently rejecting it). Perhaps it would be useful if these were always clearly distinguished.

Not For Profit: Online Reading Group

The folks over at In Socrates' Wake are hosting an online reading group on Nussbaum's Not For Profit, starting 25th August. To be honest, I'm not that big a fan of online reading groups, though I have participated in one before.

The book sounded quite interesting, so I took a look this afternoon while in the Bod for something else. To be honest, most of it is fairly predictable stuff about how the humanities foster critical thinking which is necessary for democracy and that we shouldn't neglect them in favour of a focus on the sciences and economic growth. There's a rather critical review of it here. Some of it drew on her previous work on virtue ethics and capabilities though and it was on the whole quite interesting and well written. It might even come in use for the 'Philosophy and Life' lectures that I have to give next semester in Stirling, so I think I'll keep an eye on ISW for discussion.

Amazon (UK) link: