Intertextual Precision Expectations

In the chapters that follow, the third-order probability design is developed. The third-order probability design revolves around how expectations about second- and first-order predictions are developed through structural patterns yielded by genre (III.1), textual gaps and shadow stories (III.2), and intertextual references to unfamiliar texts (III.3). The final chapter of the section, then, traces the tension between flexibility and constraint in probability designs.

Metafictional Nudging

The chapter makes the argument that the moments when the narrative refers to itself do not necessarily disrupt readers’ immersion and sense of flow. Movement between different diegetic levels in mise-en-abyme can unfold fluently, and the joint attention is usually maintained. Instances of metafiction and metanarration rather serve as ‘nudges’ in the second-order probability designs that redirect readers’ attention while maintaining it. Novels as distant in time from each other as Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Adventures and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin deploy metafictional nudges in their second-order probability design, provoking readers without relinquishing sense of flow.

The Height of Drop

The chapter details how probability designs build the perception of coincidence and surprise by creating a ‘height of drop’ before plot events. It investigates more closely the role of the reader. The perception of the probability of a certain prediction is manipulated along a range of textual devices, which are discussed on the example of Jane Austen’s Pemberley scene in Pride and Prejudice. These manipulations of precision (that is, the perceived reliability of prediction errors), it is argued, also contribute to readers’ (illusory) sense of agency and their explorative mental moves. While readers follow the probability design, they are actively configuring the predictions of the narrative, which is related to phenomena like anomalous suspense and the paradox of tragedy.

Plots and Probability Transformations

In the chapters that follow, the first-order probability design around narrative plot is developed. I.1: Plot and Probability Transformations concerns itself with plot events and prediction errors. I.2: Probability Designs discusses the links between design, the creative process, and the author’s intentionality. Finally, I.3: The Height of Drop addresses how readers’ perception of probabilities is manipulated.

Otto’s Novel

The chapters that follow propose that probability designs enable a reconceptualisation of literature’s relationship to the world. The specific role of literature in extended cognition (IV.1: Otto’s novel) and in co-evolution of culture and cognition (IV.2) are addressed, and the particular importance of literary form is highlighted (IV.3).

Pleasures and Precision Shifts

The chapter completes previous discussions of readers’ sense of agency (I.3) and sense of presence (II.2) by introducing the sense of flow. Readers’ sense of flow is modelled on Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of the ‘flow channel’, where a trade-off between challenges and enabling factors develops dynamically. The second-order probability design, with its embodied cues, provides a similar environment for readers, creating a sense of flow and readerly pleasure while reading. Through examples from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Spufford’s Golden Hill, and Austen’s Persuasion, the chapter outlines different ways in which the sense of flow can be eased, complicated, and disrupted. It also links to traditional formalist arguments about defamiliarisation in literary texts.

Probability Designs

The chapter discusses the assumptions behind the notion of ‘design’ in greater detail. It draws on arguments around intentionality, manuscript genetics, and the extended mind. Design is understood as the author’s engagement with the materials of pen and paper, but also the language and the characters that emerge in the creative process. The conceptualisation of design, then, unfolds between improvisation and planning, between intentions and the resistance that comes from the materials. The chapter concludes by developing a distinction between reading for intentionality and reading for design, which relates to recent discussions in cognitive narratology and literary studies.

The Cognitive Work of Form

The chapter unfolds an alternative to simulation-based accounts of literature’s place in the world. Form, conceptualised as probability designs, it is argued, enables the particularity of literature as a designer environment (see IV.2). The chapter redraws the links between probability designs and the world through a double tilt enabled by the lifting of sensory attenuation in reading (see II.1) and through an enhanced exploration in interoception rather than exteroception. The probability design then enables readers to realise the potential of this double tilt to the full through the thought loops of epistemic active inference and remindings. These deliberations lead to the conclusion that literary form is fundamental to freedom of thought.

Literature as a Designer Environment

The chapter asks in what sense literature can be considered a designer environment. It discusses in particular the role that language, narrative, and fiction play in extending cognitive capacities along the model of a co-evolution between culture and cognition. Foundational accounts of co-evolution are reevaluated from the point of view of cultural critique, as the chapter addresses limitations and proposes adjustments for the case of literature. Probability designs are linked to the argument that fiction emerges as texts give form to the imaginary and release the real from referential constraints. Rather than problem solving and parsing of information, cases that are usually discussed for literary designer environments, it is argued, extend thought beyond the everyday in terms of flexibility and reflexiveness.

The Dynamics of Presence

The chapter discusses the phenomenon of readers’ sense of presence in the narrative. It argues that readers develop a sense of ‘being there’ predominantly through the integration of textual cues that evoke exteroceptive and interoceptive embodiment. The perception of bodily states from the outside (exteroception) and from the inside (interoception) is joined by the counterfactual richness of these embodied cues, enabling multiple engagements, as a second feature of ‘presence’. These features lead to a reconsideration of how cognitive narratology has conceived of presence, immersion, and absorption. Rather than the space of the fictional world, here the dynamic of designed sensory flow is foregrounded.