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.

Every now and then, I am moved to write something that is not immersed in a philosophical context. This is not one of those times. In the view of some, I may be standing still. That might be true. But, at least I am still standing. As a wiser man than I once told me: you have to stand for something, or else you will fall for anything. Over the ensuing forty-odd years, I have found that counsel impeccable.

Name of the Buddhist scholar that both Alison Gopnik and the first caller mentioned, 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.

I cannot grasp the notion of an illusory self. That just does not make sense. Each of us has a faculty; an identity we think of as our 'self'. It is as real as the color of our eyes, or the name we were given at birth. It is a memory after we die. But, it never was illusion. Seems to me. Now, if anti-realists wish to argue that such things as eye color are illusion, go ahead. That is just smoke and mirrors. 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...

Essential predication within the context of free association of reference-contents for terms like self and selfness occurs by application of identity relations, that is, when one thing is said to be another. The key move in self-identity is adding the relation to the reference of a reflexive term, such as "here", "now", "I", et al. The ontological question of Self therefore asks whether or not such reflexive terms bear use-independent contents or are purely conventional. One way of answering this question is asking whether or not their contents are interchangeable. If self x would rather be self y because self y appears to self x to be a much happier self, then that indicates the conceivability of interchangeability. This however would violate the identity condition, since a change of self x's becoming self y does not entail a happiness-increase for self x, but rather self x's annihilation. The question can therefore be provisionally answered by saying that selfness is non-illusory (=exists) only in cases where the identity relation includes at least one reflexive term with non-interchangeable contents. Note that no claim is here made for what a self is or as to what other properties might be ascribed to one. The purpose of the suggestion is merely to point out the characteristic of ontological non-derivation ascribable to the contents of the self-concept, which in addition contributes to an explanation of its foundational status in Western philosophy.

It is curious how things, ideas, words and so on appear on a blog platform I read, one or several days after I have commented upon them. It is as if I MYSELF do not exist at all, but my ideas, words, and so on do.. There is never acknowledgement or attribution offered me. Sort of like the difference between scientific rationality and 'what if'. All this could be because of synchronicity? But I don't think so.

If, for a few moments, it can be considered that self is another term for consciousness, please consider this: there are some bloggers who are thinking about consciousness as an evolutionary process. Julian Jaynes suggested as much years ago when he wrote: 'the Origins of Consciousness...'
I thought he was on the right track, but his primary subject, bicameral mind, must have overarched the consciousness notion. I have done my own thinking on this and have left comments on some articles that parallel the subject. Seems to me it would be useful if we could say: we learn to be conscious. That would follow Piaget's account of childhood development: much better than calling it hallucination or illusion.