Immersivity Comes in Degrees of Computational Complexity: Metalepsis, Impossible Worlds, Simulations

The main goal of this paper is to provide a narratological and philosophical description of the concept of immersivity. In the first section we will focus on the definition of nine essential properties of immersivity. In the second section we will elaborate on the notion of immersivity from the perspective of the theory of possible worlds, and in the third section we will make a transition from narratology to metaphysics. The utility of such a transition is justified by the hypothesis that immersivity is a feature associated not only with simulations or fictional worlds, but that it is also a property of our ‘actual world’. In the fourth section we will review the philosophical literature on model-based science and computer simulations of physical phenomena, showing the conceptual proximity between models and narrative fiction. Finally, in the fifth section we will show how the phenomenon of immersivity can also be present in the case where the world, fictional or actual, is inconsistent