There seems to be a few questionable moves.

> Jay Garfield, professor of Buddhist philosophy explained the illusion of self this way

See Evan Thompson’s criticism regarding Garfields “illusory self” (& his entire “losing ourselves” book) here - https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/losing-ourselves-learning-to-live-without-a-self/ The main issue seems to be Garfield is conflating pre reflexive self consciousness with some “illusory” subject - object structure.

> Solidifying your “self” — what kind of person you are, your ideal preferences, your becoming, is always dangerous.

I don’t see why we need to be so extreme here, healthy doses of fixation upon self - improvement seems for a lot of people (including myself) rather psychologically healthy & generally quite beneficial etc, it’s not clear what the “danger” is supposed to be here unless it’s taken to obsessive levels.

> Reality is not just about you, when there are several billion people believing in this myth, the Earth and the rest of its inhabitants are truly f__ked.

It’s not clear to me what the “myth” is supposed to be here, what is it that people are wrongfully believing? That they exist as some self? Or as some separate self? Or that they exist at all? The “self” in general is an extremely nebulous term with dramatic variation in usage & conceptualisation, specifically in philosophical discussions regarding it people continuously talk past each other. Overall, to me, it seems our use of the word “self” isn’t even used, nobody in daily life uses the word “self” singularly. What has happened here is the typical everyday pronoun “myself” has been extracted & utilised for “analysis” to the point where we must ask what actually is this “self” we are talking about when we say “myself?” But this seems misguided, for the ordinary usage is not to talk of a self we have, but rather a self we are. I am a human being, not some self in a human being. When we look in a mirror and say “there I am” that is to indicate “there is a human being that I am.” Similarly, when we state “I had an experience” it is not to talk of some self having this experience, but rather this human being having this experience. Belief in “self” from this ordinary everyday perspective seems quite unproblematic, not really a myth.

>I think that the illusion comes from the fact that you are not actually separate from your environment

It's not clear to me why that should be an illusion, I don't see why individuation can't exist via certain boundary conditions, for example I can't access your mind, you can't access my mind, we're located in different spatial coordinates etc. Unless there's some ultimate "one" solipsistic mind which we are all fragments of, I don't see anything much illusory regarding individuation.

>The problem is that the self is itself an illusion

I've found these claims largely come down to how the self is initially conceptualised, someone might say the self is some "inner entity" within experience, upon which someone else may say no it's not, therefore it's declared illusory (similar to how Harris argues for the illusory self). Someone else may simply define self as not a "thing" one has but a "thing" one is, i.e talk of "self" is just talk of the human being I am, not talk of some "self" I own/have. It can largely just come down to linguistics & how we define "self" etc, it's an extremely jumbled topic & can also be conflated with maintenance of personal identity, which is largely a different philosophical discussion. Overall though, I don't see that there is any genuine "problem" of the self, rather just countless linguistic confusions & various moves people make. See here -

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/742/

>can anyone argue a sound incompatibalist viewpoint

I can't, hence compatibilism.

To be honest I'm not sure what you're trying to argue, compatibilism just says free will is compatible with determinism, that is we can still act freely, make decisions etc regardless if the universe is deterministic. It's not clear to me what you mean by "extra term."

What extra term?

What a great argument

>Compatibilism is implying there exists a determinism without decision making capacity.

But it's not implying that.

>Determinism is already compatibilism.

It is yeah, most compatibilists believe determinism to be true.

>It's just biased minds that can't accept biologically predetermined minds have a decision making apparatus, and it's all been accounted for, already, for several billion years.

But most compatibilists do accept that things are pre determined, they just don't believe that negates free will.

>It's once again, philosophers, unable to easily let go the ego and linguistic sphere of their thought process.

This seems quite an extraordinary claim, compatibilism has been around for centuries, it pre-dates back to the stoics, it's not some sporadic desperate invention by philosophers in reaction to scientific consensus regarding determinism.

No, philosophers who argue for the mereological fallacy (basically just a few Wittgenstein scholars, not many) aren't denying mental states/ consciousness, they're just saying it makes no sense to treat the brain as the organism/human being as a whole. Take the example of a clock — someone might be inclined to claim that it’s the hands that tell the time, others might claim it’s another part. But we know that it’s the entire clock that tells the time and that it only tells the time when it’s functionally integrated and correctly set.

It's the same for humans and their minds, etc. Psychological attributes are properties of people, it’s a person who thinks, not their brain. They might need a brain to think, but that doesn’t mean it’s the brain that thinks (and so on). This video by Peter Hacker nicely summarises the view - https://youtu.be/EMcmQPdi0Fs

>The intuitive perception of the self which most Westerners have is illusory

What perception do Westerners have of the self & why is it illusory?

> “We” are our brain.

Maybe not -

> Mereology is the logic of part/whole relations. The neuroscientists’ mistake of ascribing to the constituent parts of an animal attributes that logically apply only to the whole animal we shall call ‘the mereological fallacy’ in neuroscience.

> The principle that psychological predicates which apply only to human beings (or other animals) as wholes cannot intelligibly be applied to their parts, such as the brain, we shall call ‘the mereological principle’ in neuroscience.

> Human beings, but not their brains, can be said to be thoughtful or to be thoughtless; animals, but not their brains, let alone the hemispheres of their brains, can be said to see, hear, smell and taste things; people, but not their brains, can be said to make decisions or to be indecisive.

So the basic idea of the mereological fallacy (which is what the author may be committing) is claiming parts are responsible for something only the whole they are a part of can be responsible for. In neuroscience, the brain is the particular part that gets ascribed characteristics only the whole body or person can be responsible for.

I think it's easiest to deal with from the first person, since figuring out whether other people are doing things involves a variety of concerns about inferring mental activity from observed bodily behavior - though the issue is still pertinent there.

Let's just jump into some issues that just the basic first personal claim that "I think my brain is thinking" gives rise to. These are just questions to ask yourself for the sake of figuring out how to make sense of a person, a brain, and their status as either part or whole and how they can relate in a way that makes sense.

• Is my brain equivalent to my thinking, my activity in general, myself? How could it even still be just one part of a person's body if it's a whole person? Is it both a part and a whole, somehow? In what respects, such that this wouldn't be a contradiction?

• If I just were a brain, would I be part of a body that isn't my own? What of the other body parts, are they part of me or are they just sort of tools for me as a brain? How would sensation even work if that's all they are? My eyes and my brain are both important for a whole person to see colors on a theory that considers them parts, but if the brain is the whole person how does the affectation of the eye result in a brain's experience of color?

• What happens as a brain changes? If a brain is a body part of a whole person, that person can stay the same as experiencing subject as their brain develops, changes, etc. The person as a whole accounts for the unity of the body and the experiences resulting from its changes all being a process of a single subject. But if I am my brain, wouldn't I just cease to be when my brain changes, and some other brain-person would pop into being upon the instantiation of the new brain structure?

• What determines the limit of a body or body part? Why do we decide the brain material stops here, the eye material stops here, the whole person's body stops here, etc.? Why is it not just an arbitrarily selected aggregate of atomistic pieces of stuff any way you slice it?

Minimally, we can say the mereological fallacy is a criticism of a way of treating these kinds of questions that some philosophers believe does not make sense.