Dispelling The Illusion That The Self Is An Illusion

Me:

I haven’t read the article or followed the link so maybe I’m missing something.

You said: “ That seems right to me.  I am a necessary illusion. I can know I am mere matter but I can't exist as if I were, and mere matter has seen to it.  The idea has a certain annoying charm.” 

And what seems right to you is, “We imagine something similar behind our own eyes. It’s a necessary illusion, rooted deep in our evolutionary history."  

And then you lastly say, “But to be told that our whole lives are governed by an illusion, that there "really" are no persons, is weird. It is the basis of our whole existence.”

So I take it you think your sense of your self/your person or the self or the person of another is an illusion, however weird. 

Do I have that right?

If I can get that clarified, I’ll try to go on to make a point. 

R:

Yes

Me:

Here’s the point I’m struggling to get clear following your “Yes.”

Dispelling or falsifying a claim that X is an illusion is a necessary condition for X to be so considered. If it’s rationally impossible to dispel or falsify claim X, then it can’t be an illusion in any meaningful sense.

Illusions mean a difference between how things seem and how they really are. So for claim X to be an illusion, we have to be able to show its falsity by evidence or logic.

If we can’t, then the claim fails.

So, to repeat, we can generally say, the possibility of dispelling or falsifying such claim X by logic and/or evidence is a necessary condition for an illusion to be one. That condition lets us separate “real illusions” from simply unfalsifiable claims. 

So then how do we falsify or dispel the claim that the self is an illusion?

R:

Both views are theories, and no-one has been able to falsify either.  

Me:

So on my logic, no illusion?

R:

Can't argue with that.  

Me:

What about with this: “logically, then, no illusion?” 

R:

0