Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Fiction 464wouldn't it be true for Hamlet to say, "I am Shakespeare"? What do Macbeth, Banquo,Desdemona, and Prospero have in common? The consciousness of the one author,Shakespeare, which underlies and infuses each of them. (So too, there is the brotherhoodof man.) Playing on the intricacy both of our ontological status and of the first personreflexive pronoun, each of us too may truly say, "I am the author."Note From the AuthorSuppose I now tell you that the preceding was a work of fiction an the "I" didn'trefer to me, the author, but to a first person character. 0 suppose I tell you that it was nota work of fiction but a playful, and so of course serious, philosophical essay by me,Robert Nozick, (Not the Robert Nozick named as author at the beginning of this work-hema be, for all we know, another literary persona-but the one who attended P.S. 165.) Howwould your response to this whole work differ depending on which I say, supposing youwere willing, as you won't be, simply to accept my statement?May I decide which to say, fiction or philosophical essay, only now, as I finishwriting this, and how will that decision affect the character of what already was set downpreviously? May I postpone the decision further, perhaps until after you have read this,fixing its status and genre only then?Perhaps God has not decided yet whether he has created, in this world, a fictionalworld or a real one. Is the Day of Judgment the day he will decide? Yet what additionalthing depends upon which way he decides-what would either decision add to oursituation or subtract from it?And which decision do you hope for?