"Fictional Selves: On the (im)Probability of Character"

Agency in Henry James: From Positivism to Probabilism

Panel for Narrative: An International Conference East Lansing, Michigan,

11-14 April 2002. "Fictional Selves: On the (im)Probability of Character."

Victoria N. Alexander

In his autobiography, A Small Boy and Others, Henry James insists that he was "meant" to be a writer, that he was a writer even before he began considering writing as a career. He claims it's his destiny. At the same time, as a pragmatist, he seems aware that he helps create his own destiny.

Although this may seem like a contradiction, it may not necessarily be so if we believe that James had a view of teleology (and of character) that was truly end-directed, that is, emergent rather than predetermined.

During the latter half of the 19^th century, when James wrote, the notion of causality went through many interesting changes. Positivism was giving way to Probabilism. The classical deterministic model had reached its height and was beginning to fall apart. You might say that the mechanistic worldview was being traded for an organic one, where things were not so rigidly predetermined but were a little sloppily self-creating. I argue that these new ways of thinking about causality influenced James' notion of character -- of a teleological self.

Was James meant to be a writer? What did James as a writer mean to say? These questions do indeed invoke teleology: the study of final causes. The purposes of things, of events in nature, of texts, of narrative, and of human lives. Authorial intention, like character, depends upon the notion that some essential qualities persist through change and various interpretations. In exploration of this issue, I will be looking at James' short stories "The Figure in the Carpet" and "The Middle Years." I will argue that James' teleology was influenced by his brother William's pragmatism and by C. S. Peirce's theory of self-organization, which describes how relatively objective order can arise from disorder.

Deconstructionists have claimed character and intention do not originate from a stable Platonic sort of metaphysical idea to which all models, variations, and signs of it would refer. I completely agree. And I think James would too. I disagree with the further claim that, therefore, character and intention must consist merely as a play of signifiers because there is no originary signified. Although J. Hillis Miller, in his reading of "The Figure in the Carpet" has argued otherwise, I think that James' work disagrees with Derrida's.

Before continuing I would like to point out a common mistaken assumption about teleology. It should not be associated, as it so often is these days, with linear causality, classical determinism, and an anthropomorphic designer. All these things have to do with a Newtonian version of Christianity, not teleology as such. Derrida made a mistake in supposing that it is paradoxical to say that telos is the "very thing within a structure which governs the structure, while escaping structurality."[i] This made perfect sense to teleologists throughout history, who argued that telos is known as the universal laws that govern systems as wholes. Such laws have no a priori existence, except perhaps in so much as mathematical laws might exist as concepts prior to their expression in dynamical systems. Furthermore, teleologists thought these laws were given in cyclical feedback processes. Thus, the concept of structure, as far as teleologists were concerned, did not depend, as Derrida has argued, on the existence of "a linked chain of determinations of the center." Quite the opposite. In fact, contemporary physics has demonstrated that telic structures, that is, emergent dynamically stable structures or structural archetypes, emerge from nonlinear processes. These structures are governed by principles that are given in the dynamics of the system itself and do not exist outside of it.

I realize I'm probably contradicting everything you've been told about teleology. So let's back up a bit and define telos. We will want to think of the purpose of a thing as the effect that a thing seems to have been designed for. So a thing's purpose would be the effect that its structure produces. Notice that I've described final cause as an effect. Telos is something that comes after. It is a later cause that feeds back into the system. It is an emergent organizational property that, in turn, affects the future behavior of the parts that compose it. You might say telos is a coherent determining context.

It's also important to know that teleologists tried to distinguish between accidental functions, which are singular (for example, a rock drops on my desk and functions as a paperweight) and functions that are repeatable because they have been determined by universal laws. For example, an animal in an ecosystem functions as a part in relation to a whole.

There have been several different kinds of teleology throughout history. I will go over this briefly because the Jameses were much more familiar with this stuff than we are. There was Aristotle's original version, which described the universe as an organic machine in which all the parts naturally and spontaneously interacted with and were determined by the whole. Then there was the Christianized Aristotle that added the Divine Designer as First Cause. This was known as Providence and went with a belief in miracles. Accidental functions were taken as seriously, if not more seriously, than repeatable functions were. This was a very different kind of teleology than the one Aristotle hand in mind.

When classical determinism was established during the age of Newton, Immanuel Kant pretty much returned to Aristotle's original position, dropping the Deus ex Machina idea so important to the notion of Providence. The teleologists who followed Kant reluctantly accepted the idea of a strict mechanistically determined universe. However, they not reductionists. They also believed there was something more. They believed that, to repeat a favorite phrase, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

What the 19^th century teleologists added to the strictly mechanistic view of the cosmos was a notion of telic fortuity. They thought that while each event, each separate causal chain, may be mechanistically determined, various causal chains interrelate fortuitously. For instance, inherited and environmental factors determine one's height. Telos is what actively and continuously causes the various factors to be present in the right proportions so that the correct state, say five foot four, will result. According to this type of teleology, the common cause of two coincidental events, a gene for femur length and a diet containing a certain amount of calcium, would have been uniquely given in the initial conditions of the universe. Though the "decision" at each fork along the causal chains, might have involved some degree of chance, the odds were actually biased in favor of the original plan. The laws of this design might be understood by studying systems holistically. As Kant argued, what appear to be the elements left to chance combine with mechanistic laws to result in "perfect coordination," a "harmony," and things "with different natures" working in "cooperation."[ii]

To summarize, according to Kantian teleology, then, there are universal laws that govern random interactions and consequently nature is more constrained--or you might say--more directed than reductive linear analysis would imply.

Now some background on contemporary science so that we can compare teleology to new research. The focus of nonlinear dynamics and the complexity sciences is, to put it very simply, the question: Where does order come from? The short answer is: disorder. Nonlinear dynamics has discovered emergent universal laws that limit the kinds of behaviors that can arise from random interactions in a system whose elements are correlated. Consequently, it is now believed that the universe might have begun with any number of initial configurations and we would still have wound up with a universe similar to ours. These stable behaviors or end products are referred to as structural archetypes, attractors, and target structures, recalling the kinds of terms used by teleologists. Furthermore, these structures are emergent, that is, they cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts; thus, they elude purely reductive mechanistic explanations. Linear descriptions. This also as the teleologists claimed.

Teleology is not at all concerned with the kinds of linearity or originary causes that Derrida imagined. Therefore to defend teleology, the way I am, is not to bring back essentialism. In fact, I fault deconstruction because it makes use of the idea of a metaphysical presence in its description of reality as a play of signifiers. Why talk about it if it doesn't exist? Henry James, his friend C. S. Peirce and, and his brother William had notions of a teleological pragmatism that is much more sophisticated than deconstruction.

William James and Peirce modified Kantian teleology such that it was remarkably close to what nonlinear dynamics theorists believe today. Peirce's philosophy of science departed dramatically from classical determinism. He believed, for example, that the universe began in a state of chaos or "absolute chance." With this idea, which he describes in an essay called "A Guess at the Riddle," he anticipated quantum mechanics. Although chaos, by Peirce's definition, is that which is utterly homogeneous in its lack of structure, chaos does not have any rules to govern its behavior or to make it continue to behave in an ideally random (non-repeating) way. Thus, even chaos can produce coincidental regularity, which he called "primal matter" or the arche. As soon as primal matter is put in relation to chaos, there is a sense of change or of differentiation. Furthermore, the coincidental pattern may be self-reinforcing and persist through a process that Peirce says is similar to natural selection. (Although it doesn't operate with a notion of fitness so much as probability. And although the 2^nd law of thermodynamics says disorder is the most probable state, we now know there are many situations in which order increase is more probable.) In this way, the cosmos can spontaneously organize itself. Peirce's theory is a pretty good summary of what is meant by complexity science today. This view does not have a notion of metaphysical presence, originary meaning, or essential Platonic forms. The order, form, and meaning that arise out of nonlinear interactions are relatively objective, not radically subjective.

William James also had an unorthodox view of chance. He believed in a pluralistic universe. That is, he thought there might be a number of different ways of reaching the same end. The initial conditions of the universe would not have to have been uniquely given as Kant believed. As mentioned above, this idea too has been put on stronger scientific footing by nonlinear dynamics. Nature is limited in the kinds of forms it can produce from a virtually unlimited number of initial conditions.

So, now Henry.

In James' short story "The Middle Years," an author named Dencombe is at the end of his career. He looks back at his life's work, finally recognizing what his intention had been all along. He sees the whole now, and he wants a second chance to rewrite everything to make his intention more clear. His teleology seems to follow Kant. He feels that a prespecified plan is finally revealed in the end. But his best critic, a young doctor named Hugh, seems to possess a pragmatic teleology that better describes how intentionality emerges in the process of writing. Hugh realizes that Dencombe probably took advantage of chance patterns and further developed them. This way of developing an intention is a kind of selection process such as Peirce conceived. Hugh wisely declares, "It's for your mistakes I admire you"(249).

William James claimed that when we interact with something (even a chance pattern) we interpret it, and we construct a "teleological instrument" for the interpreted thing refers to "a particular interest in the conceiver" (24). Interaction with a thing sends it in a particular direction, influencing evolution. William argued that one helps create the actuality of the truth one assumes. His pragmatism sought to show how subjectivism directs "destiny."[iii] In this way, a writer such as Dencombe might be led by his own subjectivity to develop a relatively objective intention. An intention that emerges over time.

In "The Figure in the Carpet," there is another novelist, this one called Vereker. Like Dencombe, he believes his life's work is governed by a general intention. As he says, "The particular thing [he's] written [his] books most for." He claims it "chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma." Vereker becomes depressed when he realizes that his readers haven't yet comprehended his intention--or at least they haven't been able to express it if they have. There is one critic, named Corvic, who analyses every detail of Vereker's work in a reductive way. He cannot see the telos because it is only knowable through the relations of parts to the whole.

Now I would like to point out here that the problem is not that emergent meanings are merely subjective--and one would have to be Vereker to grasp his intention. The problem is that they cannot be described reductively.

Let me take a minute to reflect on why there seems to exist a problem of subjectivity in science. (I know that's an absurd statement, but I am only going to take a minute.) When one is attempting to describe or measure an emergent property, such as an intention or an organizational whole, it is usually an outside observer, who, having some pre-existing model, compares it to the data. If the data fits the model, the observer understands it. According to deconstruction, our models determine what we can know. This is considered a qualitative rather than a quantitative evaluation. In so much as empirical science is qualitative rather than quantitative, it cannot be considered completely objective. Teleologists, notably, argued that complex teleological systems cannot be described as such quantitatively. They require qualitative descriptions.

Theoretical physicists now claim it is possible to analyze emergent properties quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Instead of interpreting a data stream according to a given pre-existing model, scientists look at a model stream. The regularities found in the way a model improves and changes as more data is collected can become the basis of conceiving universal laws regulating how complexity arises from the interplay of disorder and order. [iv] Thus, emergence of an organizing self or meaning is defined by the dynamics of the process itself not an outside observer.

Let me point out that this is a radical idea in science, using a model stream instead of a data stream. It solves the problem of having to choose a system of representation. That is done automatically by the system itself. The theory is called "computational mechanics" and was developed by Jim Crutchfield, one of the original investigators of deterministic chaos.

Science is often a few of decades behind the best artists. Henry James expresses a similar idea to Crutchfield's in "The Art of Fiction" (1884). [v] He claims partial impressions, the "cluster of gifts," which "constitute experience" give one the "power to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern" (53). James argues that truth can be known through the accumulation of impressions (or models). Furthermore, it is the interaction of impressions that count. And as James also argued, the cause of the pattern is found in the dynamical nature of the process itself. Using a model stream allows one to attribute relative objectivity to the global pattern that emerges from local random interactions.

Corvic the critic is eventually successful at discovering Vereker's intention because, one might say, he finally learns to follow the advice in "Art of Fiction."

To conclude I have tried to argue, first, objectivity is not grounded upon metaphysical presence, as Derrida claims, second, teleology is concerned with nonlinear processes, not linear ones, and third, the new use of model streams in science can be compared to the way artists, such as James, have always worked. They have always been aware that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. And that what a thing is is given in its dynamical interactions. And finally, I'm attaching a label, teleological pragmatism, to this way of thinking about the emergence of character and of intention, in order to associate it, as it should be, with Kantian, Peircean, and Jamesian thinking.