Article in yesterday's NY Times asking that question: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/weekinreview/24sokolove.html An excerpt: There are some who believe that taking physical risks in pursuit of a communal goal — and even watching people take risks — has its benefits. “We learn from dangerous activities,” said W. David Solomon, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame and director of its Center for Ethics and Culture. “In life, there are clearly focused goals, with real threats. The best games mirror that. We don’t need to feel bad about not turning away from a game in which serious injuries occur. There are worse things about me than that I enjoy a game that has violence in it. I don’t celebrate injuries or hope for them to happen. That would be a different issue. That’s moral perversion.” Sean D. Kelly, the chairman of Harvard’s philosophy department, has a book coming out in January, co-authored with the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus of the University of California, Berkeley, that a...