The concept (or notion) of self is, to my thinking, synonymous with something called consciousness. There are those who question that as well, perhaps because there is no means (currently) of measuring it. Philosophy has no real estate on this matter, because it is all too theoretical and, well, slippery to get a handle on.. Hume and other early thinkers had not the beginnings of technological knowledge upon which to even begin a discussion of something so potentially profound. So, most, if not all of them, avoided any position on the matter---eschewed the topic as ineffable, as so it was. It seems unlikely to me that people like David Hume would have given Buddhism a second thought: too ethereal and, as such, inaccessible. Nowadays, there are a number of folks who have tried to explain consciousness---some of them highly respected. Mostly, their efforts have met scorn, disbelief, or worse, jealousy. I suspect many of them rue the day that they became interested in this philosophic tar baby. We are still light years away from a coherent approach to understanding the self; or consciousness; or whatever you wish to call this mystery which is odorless, colorless, tasteless and senseless. Seems to me. One possible, though tentative, avenue may lie with AI. I cannot begin to imagine how that could work---it is just a hunch.

时不时地，我被感动着去写一些不沉浸在哲学语境中的东西。现在不是那种时候。在一些人看来，我可能是站着不动的。这可能是真的。但是，至少我还站着。一个比我更聪明的人曾经告诉我:你必须坚持一些东西，否则你会爱上任何东西。在接下来的四十多年里，我发现这个律师无懈可击。

艾莉森·戈普尼克和第一个来电者提到的那个佛教学者的名字，S- K- ?

Yes, there is a unique self.

Free Will is the larger issue. It doesn't really matter what the thing is that takes an action if we can't attribute choice to it.

I enjoyed this show.

我无法理解虚幻自我的概念。这根本说不通。我们每个人都有能力;一种我们认为是“自我”的身份。它就像我们眼睛的颜色，或者我们出生时被赋予的名字一样真实。它是我们死后的回忆。但是，这绝不是幻觉。在我看来。现在，如果反现实主义者想要证明诸如眼睛颜色之类的东西是幻觉，那就去吧。那只是障眼法。 There is a lot of it going round, these days.

According to one authority, consciousness is a hallucination. I don't think so. But if the hallucination hypothesis IS right, then, by association, the self is illusion. Not in my opinion. So what are consciousness and self really? Appears they are whatever authorities say they are. Really?

Doing more digging--- mining definitions,as it were, the relation between consciousness and self is hard to explain, but harder still to explain away, as some thinkers have tried to do with consciousness, of itself---when they, in infinite wisdom, could do no better. (See Dennett's account, for example). There is what legal practitioners call a nexus, or connexion, between these terms and their meanings.
(I used the old spelling of connection to show temporal relationship, a century or so removed.

See, we cannot explain consciousness or selfness in the language of mathematics, physics or quantum mechanics. Just as there is no useful way of comparing a steam engine with a nuclear reactor: their energies can both exert force; do work. Outcome is similar. Input, far different. The point I am making is this: there will be no consensus on ideas about consciousness and self, .until procrastinators decide that notions of hallucination and illusion are, uh, irrational. There will be no next Big Thing. Try harder to think better. Go big, or stay home...