Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: What Lies Ahead
- PART I Surprise and the Theory of Narrative
- PART II The Unpredictable and the Future Anterior
- PART III Time Flow and the Process of Reading
- 6 Narrative Modality: Possibility, Probability and the Passage of Time
- 7 Temporal Perspective: Narrative Futurity and the Distribution of Knowledge
- PART IV The Unforeseeable in Fictional Form
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Narrative Modality: Possibility, Probability and the Passage of Time
from PART III - Time Flow and the Process of Reading
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: What Lies Ahead
- PART I Surprise and the Theory of Narrative
- PART II The Unpredictable and the Future Anterior
- PART III Time Flow and the Process of Reading
- 6 Narrative Modality: Possibility, Probability and the Passage of Time
- 7 Temporal Perspective: Narrative Futurity and the Distribution of Knowledge
- PART IV The Unforeseeable in Fictional Form
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the previous two chapters we have encountered, in Mallarmé and Badiou, but also in Nietzsche and Grosz, a thematisation of action as a kind of wager or bet upon what will have happened. The idea of the future as a wager suggests probability as a more obvious mathematics of the future perfect than set theory. There can be no question that our cognitive control of the future must involve us in an assessment of the probability of events that we foresee, and it seems likely that the events that we do not foresee are the lowest probability events. The unexpected event is essentially an improbable event, one which stands out from everyday routine, established reality or the inductive reasoning of common expectation, and is essentially unpredictable in the manner of the black swan. The prediction of a high probability event, we remarked in Chapter 4, is worth little when compared with the prediction of an improbable one, which means that we are seeking refuge from tautology in contradiction, since it suggests that the prediction of the predictable is worthless, whereas predicting the unpredictable is worthwhile. This is the predicament, of course, if we think only in terms of opposition, in terms of the maximal difference between the predictable and the unpredictable, and it is for the deflation of that hyperbole that we value probability.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The UnexpectedNarrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise, pp. 99 - 113Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013