Pain in a phantom limb is real pain in something that does not exist, this can only happen because the mind's mapping of physical body to internal 'self' is not always perfect, and that ongoing process of internal modelling maintains the illusion of self. Given you see the self as an emergent property of a body, that locates your position on this much closer to my position than to say Alan Burns. I see it as an emergent phenomenon which has the illusory quality that it feels like a thing when it is in fact a process, and the fact that most people who have ever lived think about themselves as two distinct things, person and body, is evidence of the power of the illusion.
Real pain in something that does not exist. Yes, that is good.
I agree also that we may be edging closer to two cigarette paper difference between our views.
It’s just this point about illusions and if you still hold to that you know what I am going to say next.
I think you have no real option other to admit that what is illuded is not the various brain functions which individually cannot have illusions or the self being illuded into thinking it is a self, that has always been the stupidity of illusion of self thinking, but rather a philosophy. But which one I don’t rightly know or whether it’s mine.
The trouble is though if this is the case where it is a conceptual framework that is being illuded, reification is going on. To disprove a real self in order to fit in with materialism something more arguably illusiory and non material is being considered as real.
OR you are now able to tell us what it is which is having the illusion of self.
