- book
and dvd reviews
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- dictionary
of wrestlingese
-
- links
-
- member
bios
-
- moves
defined and symbolized
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- (bring
it on) home
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- who's
who of wrestling
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- Traditionally, philosophy has been divided into three overlapping
concerns: Metaphysics (the study
of what exists), Epistemology (the
study of knowledge), Ethics (the
study of what we should do), and Logic (the study of correct
argumentation). Corresponding to each of these fields are characteristic
questions that crop up when we turn our attention to anything.
Project Brain Trust would like to begin to answer questions such
as those given below. As members write papers adressing these
issues we will include abstracts, contact information of authors,
and status of manuscripts.
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- Metaphysics &
Epistemology
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- What distinguishes professional wrestling from other arts
and from non-art?
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- What are the identity criteria of a match? What does this
tell us about the ontological status of professional wrestling?
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- In professional wrestling matches many rules are honored
more in their breach than in their being enforced. This runs
counter to arguments one can abstract from Kant, Grice, and Davidson
to the conclusion that widespread failure of rules is impossible.
Is there a dilamma here? Solving this issue will help solve the
primary philosophical issue that arises from Kahneman and Taversky's
empirical data that seems to show that people are in
fact routinely irrational, pace Davidson's a priori
arguments that people must be largely rational.
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- What does Sports Entertainment tell us about the nature of
aesthetic distance? For example, arguably following the complex
story-lines of contemporary World Wrestling Entertainment rquires
not just suspension of disbelief but also suspension of suspension
of disbelief. Does this epistemic state iterate non-trivially?
Is professional wrestling sui generis in this regard?
Or does this merely instantiate something universal to art?
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- What do the story-line characters tell us about the nature
of personal identity, or that which makes us who we are? This
can be fruitfully considered both from a Foucaultian perspective,
and from the perspective of the debates inagurated by Parfitt
in analytical philosophy.
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- What do the institution of professional wrestling (considered
outside of story-line) as well as story-lines tell us about the
nature of autonomy? Conversely, what does a theory of autonomy
tell us about wrestling both out an in story-line?
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- In what manner does Baudrillard's theory of the hyperreal
shed light on professional wrestling?
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- Ethics
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- What connections are there between classical ethical theories
such as virtue theory, utilitarianism, deontology, and social
contract theory shed light on the moral universe of "face"
versus "heel" upon which classical professional wresting
storylines rest?
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- What are the moral implications of the blurring of the classical
face/heel distinction in contemporary professional wrestling?
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- Is the eternal appeal of "working-class" populist
faces and "upper class" elitist heels of political
import, e.g. does professional wrestling present prospects for
the re-emergence of what might be considered a Hobbesian Left
in American politics?
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- What can we learn about the prominent role of masked luchadores
in Mexican, Japenese, and American professional wrestling? For
example, if as Levinasians claim, the face of the other exerts
a singular moral pull, why are masked wrestlers such as Ray Misterio
Jr. so beloved by children? Why do they tend to be faces rather
than heels? Why do heels attempt to remove the faces' masks?
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