Philosophical Reflection on Constitutive Rules and Regulative Rules in Sport

Abstract

In the field of sport philosophy, there is a concept of making a distinction regarding sport rules between constitutive rules and regulative rules. This distinction is borrowed from the categorization by Searle, J.R., known for his work in the philosophy of language. In most cases, however, these terms are not used in a consistent manner in discussions of sport philosophy. Scholars give different definitions to the same terms or create new terms or categories to meet their own needs.

While the categorical distinction has a certain significance, it represents only a part of the function of rules. The categorical distinction, therefore, does little to capture the relationship between the reality of games and rules.

Carlson and Gleaves suggest that the categories and terms should be transformed to contextual descriptions. They state that the “functions” of the terms used in previous studies should be re-described according to the various contexts. No matter how the rules are interpreted in the specific context of a game, however, it is difficult to address the shortcomings and inadequacies of rules that emerge in actual games. It may be necessary for sport philosophers to go beyond categorization and interpretation of the “existing” rules and go deeper into designing “optimal” rules in the future.