Do you believe in free will?

[Angrboda]

I don't know where the hell you are getting this idea that what I believe about the self comes from Buddhism or the Supernatural or some other brand of woo. Throughout this whole discussion you've been accusing me of holding opinions I do not hold. It's quite possible that I know as much as you do about cognitive science, so maybe you should read Wikipedia yourself, because from my vantage point, it looks like you misread something. Apparently, in your dimly lit world, if somebody disagrees with you about cognitive science, they must be a woo peddler, and therefore they hold positions X, Y, and Z. For the past two days you've been arguing against strawmen because you've been misunderstanding what I have been saying, largely because of your prejudice against woo peddlers. I'm saying that you are the woo peddler, not I. If you can't explain in detail what the self is in better detail than "somewhere in the brain" then your concept of self is itself a supernatural idea. And the reason for pointing this out is saying that the brain is the self is either not saying anything meaningful, or it's saying something supernatural. If you claim it means something, show me what it means — show me where in the brain the self is and how it operates. If you can't, then you're talking nonsense. "Mama mia, it's in there." does not give any legs to this metaphysically, ontologically and scientifically undefined notion of "self". And until you can give the notion some real legs, claiming that anything — ANYTHING — is it, is woo. So I'm asking you to defend your particular woo.

I'll assume the default, null hypothesis. The self does not exist. Define the self and prove it exists. (Then prove that the thing you've defined is exactly cotemporaneous with the neural tissue in the brain.)

For your convenience, here is the statement you were attempting to refute:
"A stickier question, at least for the compatibilist, is what is meant by "I". It's a shortcut to say that whatever is in the brain is the I, because it's not — there are many things in the brain that are not the I, and some, Buddhists, contend there isn't even an I. Equating the brain with the I is largely handwaving, albeit handwaving which many materialists have fought hard to sell....Simply leaving the "I" an undefined part of the brain is simply insufficient. Certainly the brain "causes" the I, but the brain is not the "I". The "I" is an idea in the brain."

Feel free to explain to me how an undefined idea like the self is the brain, or that it is anything at all. That's like saying this log contains phlogiston — you don't know what it is, you just know it's in there. And that my friend, is woo. I've asked you several times to more or less show me which neuronal circuits in the brain are those that make up the self and you've just waved the question off. And you wonder why I accuse you of handwaving?