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Phenomenology and the Question ofInstant Replay: A Crisis of the Sciences?Seth Vannatta aa Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and ReligiousStudies , Morgan State University , 1700 East Cold Spring Lane,Baltimore, MD, 21251, USAPublished online: 11 Oct 2011.
To cite this article: Seth Vannatta (2011) Phenomenology and the Question of InstantReplay: A Crisis of the Sciences?, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 5:3, 331-342, DOI:10.1080/17511321.2011.602587
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2011.602587
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PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE QUESTION
OF INSTANT REPLAY: A CRISIS OF THE
SCIENCES?
Seth Vannatta
In this article, I address the question of whether or not the use of instant replay in sports improves
the ability of officials to make correct calls. I pay special attention to the use of instant reply in
American gridiron football. I first explain the method of static phenomenology, by recourse to
Edmund Husserl’s work and apply a static phenomenological method to the official’s quest for
evidence in the analysis of a still frame of video. Second, I expose Husserl’s genetic method of
phenomenology and apply it to the official’s search for evidence and accuracy when assessing a
play in a frame-by-frame or super-slow-motion analysis. I then look critically at the intersection of
these two methods in instant replay analysis. My conclusion is that in cases calling only for a
static analysis, I think that instant replay is beneficial. In other cases, the application of a static,
frame-by-frame analysis, abstracted from lived experience, to a context of movement, can disrupt
the normality of perception such that it yields problematic evidence. The problems that ensue
from employing a static analysis to a situation calling for a genetic analysis cause me to
recommend a limited use of instant replay in the types of cases which involve a genetic analysis.
Epistemologically, I think that lived-time analysis is the optimal mode of perceiving and judging
certain events. Humanistically, my concern is that the use of instant replay can disrupt the life-
world of sport.
Resumen
En este artıculo trato la cuestion de si bien o no el uso de la repeticion de la jugada en el deporte
mejora la habilidad de los arbitros a la hora de acertar con el abritraje. Presto atencion especial al
uso de la repeticion de la jugada en el futbol Americano. En primer lugar, explico el metodo de la
fenomenologıa estatica, basandome en la obra de Edmund Husserl, y aplico el metodo de la
fenomenologıa estatica a la tarea de los arbitros cuando buscan evidencia en el analisis de un
fotograma de video en pausa. En segundo lugar, expongo el metodo genetico de la
fenomenologıa de Husserl y lo aplico a la busqueda, por parte del arbitro, de evidencia y
precision al asesorar una jugada en un analisis fotograma a fotograma o a camara super lenta.
Despues miro crıticamente a la interseccion de estos dos metodos en el analisis de repeticion de
una jugada. Mi conclusion es que, en casos que requieren solo un analisis estatico, pienso que la
repeticion de la jugada es beneficiosa. En otros casos, la aplicacion de analisis estatico fotograma
a fotograma, abstraıdo de la experiencia en vivo, de un contexto de movimiento, puede perturbar
la normalidad de la percepcion de tal manera que depara en evidencia problematica. Los
problemas que siguen del empleo de un analisis estatico de una situacion que clama por un
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 2011
ISSN 1751-1321 print/1751-133X online/11/030331–12
ª 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2011.602587
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analisis genetico me hacen que recomiende un uso limitado de la repeticion de la jugada en los
tipos de casos que implican un analisis genetico. Epistemologicamente, pienso que el analisis en
directo es el modo optimo de percibir y juzgar ciertos eventos deportivos. Desde un punto de vista
humanista, mi interes aquı es que el uso de la repeticion de la jugada puede afectar
negativamente al mundo del deporte.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Artikel behandele ich die Frage, ob die Verwendung von Videobeweisen im Sport
hilfreich ist, um Schiedsrichterentscheidungen zu verbessern. Ich lege besonderes Augenmerk auf
die Nutzung von Videobeweisen im amerikanischen Gridiron Football. Erstens erklare ich die
Methode der statischen Phanomenologie unter Ruckgriff auf Edmund Husserls Werk und wende
die statisch-phanomenologische Methode auf die Suche der Schiedsrichter nach Beweisen bei der
Analyse von Videostandbildern an. Zweitens stelle ich Husserls genetische Methode der
Phanomenologie vor und wende sie an auf die Suche der Offiziellen nach genauen Beweisen
bei der Beurteilung eines Spielzugs in einer Bild-fur-Bild-Analyse oder Extremzeitlupenanalyse. Ich
werfe dann einen kritischen Blick auf die Gemeinsamkeiten dieser beiden Methoden des
Videobeweises. Meine Schlussfolgerung ist, dass in Fallen, die eine statische Analyse erfordern, der
Videobeweis von Vorteil ist. In anderen Fallen abstrahiert die Anwendung einer statischen Bild-fur-
Bild-Analyse vom Erlebten der Bewegung. Dies stort die normale Wahrnehmung, sodass es
problematisch wird, Beweise zu finden. Die Probleme statischer Analysen in Situation, die
genetische Analysen erfordern, veranlassen mich zu der Empfehlung, Videobeweise nur begrenzt
einzusetzen – wie in Fallen, die auch genetische Analysen involvieren. Erkenntnistheoretisch ist
meiner Meinung nach die Analyse der erlebten Zeit, die optimale Art der Wahrnehmung und
Beurteilung bestimmter Ereignisse. Humanistisch gesehen ist meine Sorge, dass die Nutzung von
Videobeweisen die Lebenswelt des Sports storen kann.
Resume
Dans cet article, je pose la question de savoir si l’utilisation ou non de la repetition immediate
d’une sequence dans le sport ameliore la competence des officiels a prendre des decisions
correctes. Je prete une attention particuliere a l’utilisation de la repetition immediate d’une
sequence dans le dispositif du football americain. J’explique d’abord la methode de la
phenomenologie statique, par le recours au travail d’Edmund Husserl et applique une methode
phenomenologique statique a la quete de la preuve dans l’analyse video chez l’officiel.
Secondement, j’expose la methode de la phenomenologie genetique d’Husserl et l’applique a la
recherche de la preuve et de l’exactitude par l’officiel lors de l’evaluation d’un jeu image par image
ou par une analyse de mouvement extremement lente. Je regarde alors d’une facon critique le
croisement de ces deux methodes dans l’analyse de la repetition immediate d’une sequence. Ma
conclusion est que dans des cas appelant seulement une analyse statique, je pense que la
repetition immediate d’une sequence est avantageuse. Dans d’autres cas, l’application d’une
analyse statique, image par image, abstraite d’une experience vecue vers un contexte de
mouvement, peut perturber la normalite de la perception a un point tel qu’elle en supprime la
preuve. L’usage d’une analyse statique dans une situation appelant des analyses genetiques
m’amene a recommander un usage limite de la repetition immediate d’une sequence dans les cas
qui suppose une analyse genetique. Epistemologiquement, je pense que l’analyse en temps reel est
le mode optimal de perception et de jugement de certains evenements. Humainement, mon
sentiment est que l’usage de la repetition immediate d’une sequence peut perturber le monde
vivant du sport.
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KEYWORDS Husserl; Genetic Phenomenology; instant replay; certainty; evidence; American
football
Technology, Sport, and Ethics: External Perspectives
The nature of the relationship between technology and sports is an ongoing,
complex and philosophically rich question. Scanning the literature on the relationship
between technology and sport produces long lists of investigations, including an entire
journal dedicated to sports and technology (Fuss, Subic and Mehta 2008). Such
contributions include more or less morally neutral reflections on the nature of
improvements in performance produced by technological innovations in equipment,
(Tate, Forster and Mainwaring 2008), as well as others concerned explicitly with questions
of ethics, such as those on the practice of doping, the use of performance-enhancing
drugs in general (Miah 2005) and the moral and legal issues concerning their regulation
(Heisler 2009).
Additionally, the question of technology in sports often falls on the question as to
whether technological innovation can improve officiating in sports. If to achieve fairness in
sports we demand that an official’s call be correct, we ask if the use of technology can
enhance the correctness of an official’s call and consequently improve the fairness of the
contest. If so, should we expand the use of technology and instant replay analysis in
sports? Worthy contributions have been made in the literature arguing in the affirmative
(Hanson 2008). However, most specific questions on the role of technology in officiating
have been from an external perspective, such as the following: Is the technology available
and affordable enough to be used and applied to sports contests equally? Is the use of
technology environmentally conscious? Does the use of technology affect the continuity
of the sport with its own past? Does the use of technology in officiating slow the
customary pace of the game?
When Frank Lampard’s goal was evidently missed by the three-man crew of officials
in the 2010 FIFA World Cup match between England and Germany, much ink was spilled
PHENOMENOLOGY AND INSTANT REPLAY 333
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answering these questions and more. Kevin Garside wrote that the goal highlighted the
‘stupidity of FIFA’.1 Even Peter Singer chimed in on the incident, writing that the prevailing
ethics of football was ‘win at all costs’, because the German goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer,
had lied and cheated by intentionally acting as if the ball had not crossed the goal line.2
Phenomenology of Sport: An Internal Perspective
While I concede that questions such as these above are important to the philosophy
of sport, I want to supplement them with an analysis within the tradition of
phenomenology. One of phenomenology’s unique contributions to philosophical analysis
is its internal perspective. An external perspective often investigates the what of givenness
of any object of experience, including the nature of technological enhancements in sports.
An external perspective can ask the numerous questions at the intersection of this
givenness and other aspects, such as those moral dimensions listed above. However, a
phenomenological perspective looks at the how of that givenness. Instead of taking the
outcomes of scientific inquiry as objectively given antecedent to the inquiry, phenomen-
ology describes – from an internal, experiential perspective – how those objectivities are
constituted. In doing so, a phenomenological description can help ground the evidence of
perception more firmly. If correctness is an official’s normative ideal guiding her perception
of a sports contest, then a turn to phenomenology is warranted. What can the
phenomenology of perception teach us about the use of technology to enhance officiating
in sports? While this is my most general question driving my contribution, I am interested in
a more specific instance of this question. Are there any problems in advocating a more
widespread use of instant replay in sports? My analysis, while conceding the value of
questions posed from an external perspective, will be one internal to the experience of the
official perceiving the contest. I am investigating the phenomenology of the perception of
instant replay. However, I will limit my examples to the use of instant replay in American
football, although such a limitation is not essential to my investigation.
In order to determine if the use of instant replay improves officiating, we need to
distinguish between the types of phenomenological analysis being employed. Interesting
and problematic intersections between static and genetic phenomenology occur when an
official analyses a sporting event by use of instant replay. While phenomenology describes
the essential laws that govern perception, static phenomenology does so in a
methodological abstraction from temporality. Genetic phenomenology does so from the
experience of the lived body and kinaestheses. Since phenomenology examines the
original sense-giving sources of subjectivity which ground and accomplish all scientific
knowledge, it would seem helpful to ground the process by which an official strives for
evidence and verification in a phenomenological description (Husserl 2001, 5).
My article consists of four parts: (1) I will explain the method of static pheno-
menology, by recourse to Edmund Husserl’s work. I will apply a static phenomen-
ological method to the official’s quest for evidence in the analysis of a still frame of
video; (2) I will expose Husserl’s genetic method of phenomenology and apply it to the
official’s search for evidence and accuracy when assessing a play in a frame-by-frame or
super-slow-motion analysis; (3) I will then look critically at the intersection of these two
methods in instant replay analysis. Two questions arise at to the intersection of these
methods: What problems occur when an official analyses the movement of the lived
body in a methodological abstraction from lived time by engaging in static analyses of
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an event which demands a genetic description? What is the most optimal mode of
perceiving and judging an event in lived-time? (4) After answering these questions, I
will end by placing my concern about the use of technology in sports officiating into a
larger context. The failure to heed the warning I offer in my third section may lead to
a larger crisis in sports, which is representative of a more substantial crisis in our
broader lived experience.
The first question to be answered is, to what extent does the use of instant replay
enhance the correctness of officiating in sport? The second question to be answered is, if
instant replay can enhance the correctness of officiating in sports, does this warrant the
increased use of instant replay in sport? My answer is as follows: In cases calling only for a
static analysis, I think that instant replay is beneficial. In other cases, the application of a
static, frame-by-frame, analysis, abstracted from lived experience, to a context of movement,
can at times disrupt the normality of perception such that it yields problematic evidence.
The problems that ensue from employing a static analysis to a situation calling for a genetic
analysis cause me to recommend a limited use of instant replay in the types of cases which
involve a genetic analysis. My claim is both epistemological with regard to the truth of
perceptual judgements and humanistic. Epistemologically, I think that lived-time analysis is
the optimal mode of perceiving and judging certain events. Humanistically, my concern is
that the use of instant replay can disrupt the life-world of sport. Overall, I consider the
overuse of instant replay as a microcosm of the crisis of the sciences, as Husserl conceived it.
Just as the sciences constantly demand a reintegration into the spiritual nexus of humanity,
the means by which officials make judgements in sports needs a similar integration and
animation into the spiritual life of the game.
Static Phenomenology and Instant Replay
Husserl initiated his phenomenological project because he was trying to ground all
future sciences; his search was, on the one hand, for evidence, truth and actuality. On the
other hand, Husserl wanted to bridge what he thought was the unintelligible gap between
ideal theories of the formal logic of signification and various epistemological theories,
including naturalistic psychology and empiricism. Husserl felt that these theories of formal
logic failed to explain the ‘interiority of accomplishing thought’, and that these competing
epistemologies also failed to describe (Husserl 2001, 31). Husserl thought that the unities
inherent in the forms of logical judgement presuppose ‘deeper accomplishments of con-
sciousness’, and investigating these sense-giving accomplishments was his path to giving a
phenomenology of perception. (ibid., 32). While Immanuel Kant had aimed to demonstrate
the a priori structures of subjectivity in his metaphysical and transcendental deductions,
Husserl thought his phenomenology contained the descriptive capacity to show how
subjectivity constitutes every objectivity. Husserl thought that he could ground the nature
of evidence by an examining these structures in a rigorous phenomenological analysis.
The initial question in Husserl’s phenomenology is not ‘What is the world?’ but
rather ‘How is it given?’ Husserl claimed that the world is taken for granted as being ‘real’
in the ‘natural attitude’ (Husserl 1975, 91). This is the attitude we take as we relate to the
world in our everyday lives. Pre-reflectively, I believe the football carried by the running
back exists and has an entire host of properties that I take for granted. My perceptive faith
in this regard is very useful as I am interested and engaged in watching the sport, not
reflecting on it philosophically or scientifically.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND INSTANT REPLAY 335
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Husserl wanted to know how it is we take the world and things like the football for
granted. He begins by employing a static phenomenology, one that is methodologically
abstracted from temporality, to show the essential structures of consciousness which
constitute that which consciousness intends. Borrowing an insight from Franz Brentano,
Husserl began by showing that consciousness is intentional. Every act of consciousness
involves a polarity. Each perception is of a percept; each remembering is of a memory; and
so on. Consciousness contains a dynamic correlation between what gives itself and the
process by which we constitute its meaning.
One of Husserl’s methods in his static phenomenology was a phenomenological
reduction. In it, he brackets all that we take for granted in the natural attitude. He ‘puts out
of play’ all convictions previously accepted including all of the sciences and logic (Husserl
1950, 3). Within the reduction, we do not assume as given any of the findings of geometry,
maths or any natural sciences. Within the reduction, Husserl examines the structures of
consciousness which are deeper and more foundational than these presuppositions and
constructions. He also brackets other egos, culture, any apperceived facts and even the
existence of the world, so that the whole life-world is only a phenomenon of being-for-
consciousness. What remains after this reduction is the ego, its pure subjective processes,
the universe of phenomena (ibid., 8).
Let us recall that Husserl is trying to ground evidence, which he views as an
experiencing of something. Every judgement (including those by officials on American
football fields and in replay booths) must be derived from evidence, from experiences, in
which the states of affairs are evident as things themselves (ibid., 4). Husserl describes the
things themselves, that is, the immanent contents of consciousness in the act of
perceiving. Consider again the ball gripped by the centre in the moments before the snap
in a football game. If we were to pause the camera on this pre-snap posture of the centre
and the football, we would only perceive the object of player and ball from one side.
However, I have an ‘empty intention’ of the hidden side of the ball and that concealed by
the centre’s hand. I intend beyond the object actually seen in order to constitute that
which I do not actually perceive because ‘external perception is in a constant pretension to
do what it by its very nature it cannot’ (Husserl 2001, 39). Our perception is always spatially
partial, but that which we intend through perception is whole. In external perception, the
spatial object only presents itself from one side, and the pretension of external perception
is to transcend my limited perspective on it by constituting it as an objective unity (ibid.,
39; Vannatta 2008, 67). Husserl clarified how we constitute the whole by revealing that
synthesis is the fundamental, primordial structure of consciousness. By a free variation of
the subjective side of the process of seeing the object, we arrive at a unity of the infinite
possible perspectives on the object. I spontaneously imagine myself perceiving the ball
from under it, from the perspective of the defenders, of those in the audience, and so on
to infinity. This imaginative variation is the fundamental process by which we constitute
the objective sense of the object as a whole.
Why might this somewhat abstruse language of phenomenology be relevant to
instant replay? While there are seven officials on the field in an American football field to
make a decision, only one, two or three might perceive the play concerned. Some might
be watching the blocking, some might be watching the formations, and some might have
their views impaired. Even if three perspectives see the play, there are an infinite number
of possible perspectives on the play. All instant replay does, so far in this part of our
examination, is increase the number of perspectives on the play, and allow a replay official
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to synthesise them or to choose the most optimal perspective from which to find evidence
enabling him to make the correct decision. Consider the question of determining whether
a ball carrier or eligible receiver stepped out of bounds or not. If the line judge’s view is
impaired, a back judge might have to make the call from a less-than-optimal perspective.
The replay official, if needed, can pause the video on a single frame and analyse whether
there is any grass between the player’s shoe and the boundary from an optimal
perspective. So far, so good. If there is a camera angle more optimal than those of the
seven officials, and from that angle we can find evidence refuting a decision by the less-
than-optimal perspective of any of the on-field officials, we can justify changing the on-
field call by recourse to instant replay of this sort. But before we allow this kind of analysis
to serve as support for a wholesale endorsement of the use of instant replay, let us take
more complex and temporally distended cases into consideration. Such cases demand
what Husserl called genetic phenomenology.
Genetic Phenomenology and Frame-by-frame Analysis
The analysis above was entirely static, abstracted from time, for the sake of
simplicity. Things get more complicated when we include the temporal dimension in
perception. Husserl turned to the question of self-temporalisation within themes of a
genetic analysis. These deal not just with consciousness in spatial perception, but with the
lived body, kinaestheses and the normality and abnormality of perspective.
As I already mentioned, in every perception the object is given within a horizon of
empty intentions, the unperceived sides whose fulfilment we anticipate. As I perceive the
front of a player’s jersey, I intend that it has a back, a number and name on it and so forth,
even if I have not yet fulfilled these intentions. My perception of its front points to its
unseen back side, and I protend the continuity of colour, shape and composition of
lettering and numbering with the front (Husserl 2001, 41–3). These empty intentions are
indeterminate, yet in the course of perception I can determine them as fulfilled. In the
course of the movements of my body or of the movement of the player’s body, I move
relative to the player and look around to his back side. In doing so, ‘I retain my just-past,
the ‘‘comet’s tail’’ of perception, and I fashion a unified objectivity, again synthetically,
which persists through the course of my unfolding perceptions’ (Vannatta 2008, 67). In the
course of these temporally distended acts of external perception, empty intentions and
anticipations register as pre-understandings. We pre-understand empty perceptions as
continuous and concordant.
Consider other modalisations of perception. Husserl describes the constitution of
objective sense through perceptions which unfold concordantly, as when our protentions
are fulfilled by perceptual experience. However, other modes of perception include
disappointment (where my expectations fail to be confirmed), doubt (where I perceive an
object only vaguely and two or more objective senses emerge from the same ‘stock of data’)
and possibility (where unfulfilled intentions are merely prefigured) (Husserl 2001, 73). Husserl
gives the context for a discussion of possibility by claiming: ‘What is intentionally prefigured
in the apperceptive horizon is not possible, but certain. And yet, possibilities, indeed a whole
range of manifold possibilities, are always included in such prefigurings’ (ibid., 79). Thus,
when I move around my object of perception or when it moves around me, I prefigure my
empty intention in a range of open possibilities, some general and formal, some more
specific. Exploring the contours of these modalisations allows Husserl to approach the
PHENOMENOLOGY AND INSTANT REPLAY 337
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concept of certainty. Thus, certainty itself can be modalised by passing over into enticement
and inclination, but not resolving in decision. The certainty achieved is one which has passed
through questioning and resolved as ‘being certain’ or ‘not-being’ (ibid., 88).
For our purposes, let us expand our football example to one where the player is
making a catch and running towards the boundary. The job of the official is to determine if
the player caught the ball (by having control of it) and was in bounds when he had control
of it. In American college football, the player only needs to have one foot in bounds to be
ruled in bounds. This decision entails multiple factors. Control of the ball and in-bounds and
at the same time. What is the optimal condition of perception? What ordinarily happens in
the use of instant replay in American college football is that the officiating crew first uses
slow-motion analysis, then a freeze-frame analysis. The frame is frozen at the point where
the player’s foot is in bounds, and then the player’s relationship to the ball, in terms of
control or lack of control, is determined.
What is the problem? It is my position that when the frame is frozen, the official has
begun a static analysis on the object. But what is being determined is control, and control
is a temporal phenomenon. Therefore, the phenomenon of control involves self-
temporalisation, as in the case of jogging around the player in order to fulfil or disappoint
my protentions of his jersey, or as in the case of perceiving a play to ascertain certainty
amid doubt or possibility. In the same way that certainty cannot be had statically in the
case of these perceptions, certainty is obscured by applying a static method to a
kinaesthetic process. If the ball is afloat in the cradle of the player’s arms or hand at the
instant of the frozen frame, can we analyse with certainty a lack of control? I think not. In
fact, I think we can (and officials have) imposed a lack of control on what was, if viewed
from an optimal perspective of movement in time, control.
Consider the case of the 2007 football game between Temple University and
Connecticut University at Connecticut. Temple ran a wild sweep reverse pass into the back
of the end zone, which resulted in a tipped ball and a near? catch. It was ruled incomplete
from by an official who could not see the ball. Once the replay was shown, the announcers
thought that it would be overruled and called a touchdown. The player did get his left foot
in bounds, and the question became, while his left foot was in bounds, did he have control
of the ball? The ruling was, by recourse to instant replay using super slow motion and
frame-by-frame analysis, not overturned. This particular play contains both the potential
virtues of instant replay using static analysis and the vices of instant replay applying static
analysis to a dynamic movement (which demands a genetic analysis). The perspective,
which the on-field official lacked, was gained by the camera in order to perceive the ball in
the player’s hands while his foot was in bounds. So why was the call not overturned?
Answering that question demands that we turn to a discussion of normality, typicality and
optimality in the phenomenology of perception.
Normality as Optimality of Perception
What is the nature of optimality in perception? To make a judgement that is actual,
true and certain (which is the job of the official), we need to do so within the most optimal
conditions. What are the optimal conditions for an official to make this judgement? My
answer to this question concerns another bit of Husserlian phenomenology, his concept of
passive synthesis. Genetic phenomenology is applicable to activities of perception which
involve movement and the lived body. Such an application involves an entire
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phenomenological analysis of how we constitute normality in and through our retentions
and protentions. The ways these unfold, both concordantly and discordantly, become
sedimented and constitute our future comportment. We can see in a naıve way how the
concordance of an official’s lived experience through repeated actions can habituate itself
to constitute what is typical and optimal for him in a given situation. He has seen a player
catch the ball close to the boundary before. He has experienced the need to measure
control of the ball with the foot in bounds. He can make a judgement in the future without
it being ‘too fast for him’, which I think is the mundane way of considering the need for
instant replay.
Synthesis, as the primordial structure of consciousness, taken temporally, unites
consciousness with consciousness. The fundamental form of synthesis is the continuous
consciousness of time (Husserl 1950, 18). And these manners of appearance follow one
another in continuous, synthetically unified sequence. In time consciousness, the present is a
synthesis of retentions and protentions. Husserl shows that objects constituted in active
synthesis can serve methodologically as leading clues to their foundations in passive
genesis. Intentional objects point to an origin as effects of a passive synthesis. Husserl begins
with that which has been constituted in active syntheses and uses those intentional objects
as leading clues in order to regress to the constituting, passive and kinaesthetic syntheses
(Husserl 2001, xxii). We make active judgements whose products remain available in
consciousness for future ones; but this presupposes a synthesis at a level of passivity. The
history of sense formations operating at this level of passivity gives us the essential laws
governing the passive forming of new syntheses. These laws operate to form the objects
which motivate activities (Husserl 1950, 79). In this way, Husserl’s static approach is
methodologically prior to his genetic approach (as the objects formed in active synthesis are
the leading clues to those formed in passive synthesis). But his genetic approach is
ontologically prior (as the laws of passive synthesis are the conditions for the possibility of all
sorts of motivations) to static phenomenology (Husserl 2001, xxxi). Passive synthesis is the
pre-predicative and pre-judicative experience, referred to by Merleau-Ponty as antepredi-
cative.3 These passive judgements are ontologically prior to active judgements.
Husserl’s methodology looks at judgements as we actually make them, reveals what
active syntheses take place, and asks ‘What are the conditions for the possibility of these
syntheses?’ His answer is that we passively constitute a unity, which must be presupposed
to make the judgement which served as our leading clue towards this regression. Active
judgement presupposes a motivational unity so that the empiricist and scientist and
official can know what they are looking for in order to find it. Their judgement rests on this
pre-understood unity, constituted in passive synthesis and internally related to the
question of normality.
These basic analyses are crucial to illustrate what passivity means to Husserl and to
my application to the optimality of perceiving and judging a lived body moving in lived
time. Husserl usually invokes examples of daylight or nearness to give examples of optimal
perception (Steinbock 1995, 138). And as far as nearness is concerned, we would usually
agree that the official closer to the play has a better chance of making the correct
judgement than one farther away. Lighting is not usually a problem when perception of a
football play is concerned, but we could imagine a case in which the lighting, within or
outside of technological filters, is less than optimal and therefore abnormal. However, I
think it is important to add that the conditions of habituation, which are a function of
passive synthesis, correspond to the conditions of optimality. The conditions of
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habituation involve not only spatial features of nearness and lighting, but temporal
features of lived time. And the claim I am making is that lived time represents the optimal
and normal conditions for judgement, especially when the judgement entails kinaesthetic
features, such as control of the ball through the process of getting one foot down inside
the boundary.
If we return to the case of Temple’s nearly? completed pass, we can reflect on
whether or not the official viewing the frame-by-frame analysis was doing so from an
optimal, in the characteristic of normal, perspective. Because control of the ball is temporal
process of movement, the process of judging control of the ball from a perspective
abstracted from lived time amounts to a disruption and distortion of the normality of
perception. A static analysis applied to a kinaesthetic phenomenon is what needs to be
avoided in the application of instant replay. The complexity of this example deserves
further discussion. While the added camera angle does provide the additional
perspective – the imaginative variation needed to synthesise and constitute the object –
on the ball, the judgement was wrong because the chosen mode of perception was static
and thus abnormal. Interestingly, had the replay been viewed in lived time, the chances of
making the right call, I hold, would have increased, not diminished.
The Crisis of the Sciences and the Life-world of Sport
I would like to end by putting this application of phenomenological insights into a
larger context. Husserl’s motivation was the crisis of the sciences. This crisis, which is always
potentially or actually with us, involves taking the second-order knowledge claims of science,
especially those that are the product of the filter of a technological lens, and treating them as
first-order experience. Instances of the crisis ‘misplace concreteness’ (Whitehead 1967, 51).
They treat the abstract conclusions of scientific inquiry as concrete and forget that the
concrete is lived experience – in the lived time of self-temporalisation. Husserl’s attempt to
ground the sciences on a more certain foundation led him to undertake the
phenomenological reduction. However, this reduction culminated in a transcendental
ego. Such a phenomenologically reduced ego – resembling a Cartesian cogito or a Leibnizian
monad – was, however, highly abstract, and Husserl himself realised this. Such was his
motivation to undertake genetic phenomenology, which situated the active and passive
syntheses constituting our objectivities and evidences in a dynamic and temporal modality.
But even this genetic phenomenology was in the service of Husserl’s larger project.
He wanted to show that the bifurcation of the world into common life experiences and
objective scientific knowledge is problematic. The life-world is, for Husserl, ‘[the] realm of
original self-evidences’, which grounds truth-claims, all of which result from ‘mediate
cognitions’ (Omrani 2006, 39). The ‘objective’ of scientific judgement is not experienced in
itself; rather, for Husserl, the optimal experience within the life-world is the in-itself. The
natural sciences are based on experience of objective nature only so far as this experience
yields self-evidence within the life-world, which is the source of self-evidence for objects
established by the sciences (Husserl 2001, 39). But just as external perception pretends to
do what it cannot, the sciences do not deliver an actual experience of the objective. In so
far as they pretend to do so, we are already in crisis. If we pretend that a frame-by-frame
analysis of a kinaesthetically thick process in lived time provides the actual experience of
the objective sought, we are surely in crisis. And certain failures in the application of
instant replay in sport demonstrate the costs of such a crisis.
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William James called this crisis the butchering of aesthetic and moral life by the
sciences. The instance of superimposing a static analysis onto a kinaesthetic
phenomenon is a sort of butchery of lived experience. In this article I make only a
humble claim: that we should allow the application of instant replay in cases calling for
static analyses and resist the employment of the static method to kinaesthetic
phenomena in sport. However, we could imagine the consequences of failing to see
the error I am identifying. For instance, in American football, offensive linemen are not
allowed to hold defensive players by either wrapping their arms around them or
grabbing their jerseys. However, skilled offensive linemen hold on almost every play. So
how many holding calls are missed by officials in each football play? Why not review
each play in instant replay and call each holding play retroactively as it reveals itself
when presented from a multiplicity of perspectives abstracted from the lived pace of
the game? Speculations such as this could go on ad infinitum, and we could see that
the quantification of the game, its dissection into frame-by-frame analysis, is not only
an error in judgement but an unwieldy dissection of lived experience itself. Just as
Husserl wanted to integrate the sciences into the spiritual nexus of humanity by
reordering its claims founded on that which is given within the life-world, I want to
reintegrate the official’s judgement into the spiritual nexus of the game by exposing
the disruption which can ensue from the overuse of instant replay.
Conclusion
Husserl’s static phenomenology makes relevant and clarifies the official’s quest for
evidence in the analysis of an event, making use of an instant replay video frame. Husserl’s
genetic phenomenology reveals problems in applying a static analysis in order to judge
the lived body in movement through lived time. Frame-by-frame analysis, abstracted from
lived experience, can disrupt the optimality of perception such that it yields evidence
which can confound coaches, fans, commentators and common sense itself. Perception of
movement in lived time is optimally perceived in lived time. Based on my case study in
phenomenology, I recommend a limited use of instant replay in cases similar to the one
presented here. The consequences of failing to see the error I identify can lead us to inflate
the crisis of the sciences. The result of heeding the warning I offer can help us limit this
crisis and reintegrate the official’s search for evidence in making a call into the life-world of
the game and beyond.
NOTES
1. Kevin Garside, ‘England v Germany: Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal highlights stupidity
of Fifa’. Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2010. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/
football/teams/england/7857382/England-v-Germany-Frank-Lampards-disallowed-goal-
highlights-stupidity-of-Fifas-ruling.html
2. Peter Singer, ‘Why is cheating OK in football?’ Guardian, 29 June 2010. Available at http://
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/29/cheating-football-germany-goalkeeper?
3. The insights Husserl provided in his lectures on transcendental logic with regard to the
pre-givenness of objects (Vorgegebenheit) contribute to many branches of twentieth-
century phenomenology. Because readers of this article may be more familiar with
Husserl’s students than with Husserl, I will make a few of those connections for the
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reader. Building on Husserl’s lectures in passive synthesis, Maurice Merleau-Ponty referred
to these pre-predicative and pre-judicative experiences as ‘ante-predicative’ (Merleau-
Ponty, 2003, 82). Heidegger, building upon Husserl’s phenomenology of internal time
consciousness, referred to the Vor-structure of the understanding (Heidegger, 1962, H.150).
Gadamer, building on both Husserl’s notion of passive synthesis and Heidegger’s insight
regarding the nature of the understanding as interpretation, made use of the internally
related concept of prejudice (Vorteilung) (Gadamer, 2004, 27). John Dewey, not a reader of
Husserl, but influenced by the radical empiricism of William James, whose psychology
Husserl was familiar with, would refer to this phenomenon as ‘habit’ (Dewey, 1986, 146).
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Seth Vannatta, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies,
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E-mail: [email protected]
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