Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

The Circular Ruins 350"If I wasn't real," Alice said-half-laughing through her tears, it all seem so ridiculous-"Ishouldn't be able to cry.""I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupt in a tone of greatcontempt.Rene Descartes asked himself whether he could tell for certain he wasn'tdreaming. "When I consider these matters carefully, I realize so clearly that there are noconclusive indications by which waking can be distinguished from sleep that I am quiteastonished, and bewilderment is such that it is almost able to convince me that Isleeping."It did not occur to Descartes to wonder if he might be a character in someoneelse's dream, or, if it did, he dismissed the idea out of hand Why? Couldn't you dream adream with a character in it who was not you but whose experiences were a part of yourdream? It is not easy to know how to answer a question like that. What would be thedifference between dreaming a dream in which you were quite unlike your waking selfmucholder or younger, or of the opposite sex-and dreaming a dream in which the maincharacter (a girl named Renee, let's say), the character from whose "point of view" thedream was "narrated," was simply not you b merely a fictional dream character, no morereal than the dream-drag chasing her? If that dream character were to ask Descartes'squestion, a wonder if she were dreaming or awake, it seems the answer would be the shewas not dreaming, nor was she really awake; she was just dream When the dreamer, thereal dreamer, wakes up, she will be annihilated But to whom would we address thisanswer, since she does not really ex! at all, but is just a dream character?Is this philosophical play with the ideas of dreaming and reality just idle? Isn'tthere a no-nonsense "scientific" stance from which we objectively distinguish betweenthe things that are really there and mere fictions? Perhaps there is, but then on which sideof the divide we put ourselves? Not our physical bodies, but our selves?Consider the sort of novel that is written from the point of view a fictionalnarrator-actor. Moby Dick begins with the words "Call Ishmael," and then we are toldIshmael's story by Ishmael. Call whom Ishmael? Ishmael does not exist. He is just acharacter in Melville's novel Melville is, or was, a perfectly real self, and he created afictional self who calls himself Ishmael-but who is not to be numbered among the realthings, the things that really are. But now imagine, if you can, a novel writing machine, amere machine, without a shred of consciousness selfhood. Call it the JOHNNIAC. (Thenext selection will help you imagine me such a machine, if you cannot yet convinceyourself you can do it)