In Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines virtue as ‘a purposive disposition, lying in a mean and being determined by the right reason.’[1] This mean of virtue, Aristotle defines as existing as a mid-point situated between the vices of both excess and deficiency, and constituting the foundational building block of one’s moral character. Hence, the virtue of courage, for instance, according to Aristotle, lies as a mid-point between the deficiency and excess of cowardice and recklessness. Friendliness, likewise lies as a mid-point between the deficiency and excess of cantankerousness and obsequiousness. And ambition lies as a mid-point between the deficiency and excess of sloth and greed.[2] Cultivation of a virtuous and moral character, then, according to Aristotle, involves both the recognition of one’s deficiencies and excesses in these various aspects and domains of character, and then actively attempting to correct such imbalances in one’s self through active and repetitive habit. Done over an entire lifetime, such accumulated habit formation and character cultivation, according to Aristotle, lends itself to an individual human being’s overall flourishing.
Within contemporary analytic philosophy, there has been, in recent years, the application of Aristotelian virtue theory to the area of philosophy known as epistemology, or the study of knowledge, generating the sub-field now known as virtue epistemology. Much like with the cultivation of the traditional Aristotelian virtues like courage, prudence, temperance, etc., virtue epistemology focuses on the cultivation of epistemic virtues in particular. These virtues include such aspects and habits of the intellect as; attentiveness, epistemic charity, epistemic humility, curiosity, willingness to revise one’s beliefs, open-mindedness, due-diligence with respect to fact-checking, and intellectual honesty. These virtues are contrasted against the epistemic vices of things like dogmatism, closed-mindedness, poor fact-checking, lack of curiosity, lack of epistemic humility, etc.[3]
Part of having good epistemic virtues then means having a willingness and humility to put our beliefs and mental models to the actual test and to risk having our assumptions and presuppositions; about ourselves, our abilities, our egos, society, people, and the world be smashed to pieces by the sharp and unforgiving edges of objective reality and cold, brute, fact. It is then in the clean-up effort, of sorting through the shattered pieces, discerning what ideas and expectations matched our predictions and assumptions, sorting out what worked and what didn’t, and then re-assembling better models and better versions of ourselves, do we learn and grow, both individually and collectively, both within sport and within society.
Unlike ‘traditional’ martial arts like Kenpo, Kung Fu, Aikido, etc. where ‘live’ sparring is largely replaced by medium-speed, simulated fighting or by pre-choregraphed kata, BJJ and other combat sports like Western Boxing, Wrestling, Muay Thai, and MMA, all provide a reliable epistemic crucible and real-world testing grounds whereby such assumptions about fighting can be actually tested, verified, and falsified at near full-speed and in the closest approximation to an actual real-world fight.
This, after all, was ostensibly the whole reason for the creation of the UFC and of MMA to begin with; to put to the actual test, which martial arts forms actually worked and which ones didn’t.
This is all to say that one of the intrinsic and highly important values of ‘live’ combat sports such as MMA, BJJ, Boxing, etc. is in their capacity to function as vehicles for the fostering and cultivation of epistemic virtues as well as for the mitigation and reduction of epistemic vice.
As epistemologist and BJJ practitioner Peter Boghossian notes; lack of critical thinking in a particular martial art could actually lead to development of a bad character.[4] This is so since a failure to adjust one’s beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence often requires people, over time, to keep doubling down on fallacious reasoning and erecting more and more elaborate layers of excuse-making to fill the gap between reality and expectation.
Indeed, one can only come up with so many ad hoc excuses and rationalizations for so long as to why ‘the secret death ninja touch’ failed to work yet again, or why the set of strict kata patterns practiced in one’s pajamas against imaginary opponents, proved wholly ineffective whilst getting mauled and rag-dolled in an actual cage match or street fight.
“I would have won, but my chi was off that day.”
“I would have won, but the UFC doesn’t allow for precision eye and groin strikes.”
“I would have won, but the secret Dim Mak death touch can’t be revealed to the public.”
And so on…
Or, maybe you could consider that the real reason you lost was simply because you just got precision double-legged and smashed by an Olympic wrestler, KO’d by a seasoned Muay Thai expert, or bent into a human pretzel by a BJJ blackbelt, all of whom have been training and competing in ‘live’ competitive contexts since they could walk. Indeed, one would think that 20+ years now of hard, empirical evidence of thousands of documented MMA matches would have purged by now such ineffectual techniques and fighting systems. Things have markedly improved in the last two decades, no doubt, but bull-shido of various colors and stripes still persists to this very day along with the larger set of epistemic vices underpinning them.[5] One should therefore still be vigilante and on the lookout for such epistemic vices, fallacious reasoning, and cognitive blind-spots in one’s own thinking. That being said, getting arm-barred, choked, or crisply kicked or punched on a regular, consistent basis, is an excellent way of staying epistemically grounded and epistemically humble and ensuring that one’s mental models and expectations of the world are held firmly in check by objective reality.
Indeed, in a world increasingly full of appeals to ‘social constructions’ of this, that, or the other thing, MMA and its constituent sub-disciplines provide us with a firm set epistemic anchors and reliable fixed points by which we can navigate the chaos and uncertainties of both sport and life. To quote sacked Eton professor, Will Knowland,
“Be suspicious of people who don’t lift or do heavy labor. It teaches valuable lessons. ‘Heavy’, is not a social construct. You don’t get gains, you don’t earn. And if you ‘identity’ as ‘strong’… it doesn’t make it true.”[6]
The same, I would argue, applies equally so to Mixed Martial Arts.
[1] https://iep.utm.edu/virtue/#:~:text=Aristotelian%20virtue%20is%20defined%20in,and%20for%20its%20own%20sake.
[2] https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/the-key-to-happiness-according-to-aristotle-7de6b207749e
[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/
(Interviewer’s quote at 3:27)
Few things made me feel more it out place in the academic world than my weight lifting habit.