I argue that we grasp distinctive, self-involving truths, or de se truths, through immersive experience. Drawing on examples involving gameplay and virtual reality, I defend the value of immersive exploration and virtual first personal perspectives, and explore the relation between a virtual first personal perspective and a real world first personal perspective. I then develop the connection between immersive modes of presentation, the de se, and transformative experience, and show how our grasp of qualitative truths in experience relates to our grasp of de se truths (and tensed truths) in experience. Tying the value of immersive gameplay and augmented reality to the value of gaining an immersive understanding of our future and possible selves, I argue that imaginative immersion in one’s future experience is a distinctive, experience-based way to discover de se truths. I close my discussion by exploring a case where an epistemic transformation scales up into a personal transformation. In such cases, the discovery of new phenomenal truths can lead to the discovery of new de se truths. When you face a life-defining change, you can ask yourself: Who will I become? This can be understood as a question about who you are and who you will become, asked from your first personal, subjective perspective. As such, it is also a question about the nature and character of your future lived experience, because the nature and character of your conscious, lived experience is a defining constituent of who you are. Framed this way, knowing your future lived experience is a way of knowing your future self. In this paper, I will explore this way of understanding one’s self, with a focus on understanding life-defining changes. “Who will I become?” when asked in high-stakes, life-defining contexts, connects the metaphysics of the self to the role of imagination, empathy, testimony, and the de se in self1 Thanks to Nilanjan Das, Josh Dever, Martin Glazier, Adam Lerner, Dilip Ninan, Simon Prosser, the St. Andrews metaphysics reading group, and the UNC transformative experience working group for discussion. 2 Life-defining choices, as self-involving choices, need not be self-interested in a selfish sense. Life-defining choices don’t even need to be self-involving choices. We often think about the futures of others who will be affected by our choices, and about how they will be formed. I will focus on self-involving choices for simplicity, but what I will say in much of this paper applies to the way we think of these choices for others as well as ourselves. 3 In this way, what I am saying has ideas in common with Chang (2015), Korsgaard (2009), and Bratman (1999): you make yourself into who you are partly because of your commitments and your choices. This partly defines who you are. But my focus is on the role of decision theory, new experience, the first person, and cognitive modeling in all of this, not on practical reasoning per se.

中文翻译：

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DE SE 对未来自己的偏好和同情心1

我认为，我们通过身临其境的体验掌握了独特的、涉及自我的真理，或本质真理。以游戏玩法和虚拟现实为例，捍卫沉浸式探索和虚拟第一个人视角的价值，探索虚拟第一个人视角与现实世界第一个人视角之间的关系。然后，我发展了沉浸式呈现模式、本质和变革性体验之间的联系，并展示了我们对体验中定性真理的把握与我们对体验中的本质真相（和时态真相）的把握之间的关系。将沉浸式游戏玩法和增强现实的价值与获得对我们未来和可能的自我的沉浸式理解的价值联系起来，我认为在一个人的未来体验中充满想象力的沉浸感是一种独特的，基于经验的方式来发现本质真理。我通过探索一个认知转换扩展为个人转换的案例来结束我的讨论。在这种情况下，新的现象真理的发现可以导致新的本质真理的发现。当你面临决定性的改变时，你可以问问自己：我会成为什么样的人？这可以理解为一个关于你是谁以及你将成为谁的问题，是从你的第一个人主观角度提出的。因此，这也是一个关于你未来生活经历的性质和特征的问题，因为你有意识的生活经历的性质和特征决定了你是谁。以这种方式构建，了解您未来的生活经历就是了解未来的自己的一种方式。在这篇论文中，我将探索这种认识自我的方式，重点是了解定义生活的变化。“我会成为谁？” 当在高风险、定义生活的环境中被问到时，将自我的形而上学与想象力、同理心、证词和自我的角色联系起来 1 感谢 Nilanjan Das、Josh Dever、Martin Glazier、Adam Lerner、Dilip Ninan 、Simon Prosser、圣安德鲁斯形而上学阅读小组、UNC 变革经验工作组进行讨论。2 决定生命的选择，作为涉及自我的选择，在自私的意义上不必是自私的。决定人生的选择甚至不需要是自我介入的选择。我们经常考虑将受到我们选择影响的其他人的未来，以及他们将如何形成。为了简单起见，我将专注于自我参与的选择，但是我将在本文的大部分内容中说明的内容适用于我们为他人和我们自己考虑这些选择的方式。3 这样一来，我所说的内容与 Chang (2015)、Korsgaard (2009) 和 Bratman (1999) 有着共同的想法：你之所以成为你自己，部分是因为你的承诺和你的选择。这部分定义了你是谁。但我的重点是决策理论、新体验、第一人称和认知模型在所有这些中的作用，而不是实际推理本身。