Ok. I mean virtual in the way it used in 'virtual reality' or 'virtual image' in optics. Somethig is virtual when it is only 'seems to be', when there is no physical object corresponding to it - a virtual object is a perception only.
if i use a VR headset and see a football there is no actual football - smike and mirrors have fooled me intoperceving something that isn't there. But even though it isn't there, it is in many ways 'as if' it was there, as if it was real.
The self, then, is virtual. I'd avoid saying it's an illusion because that might suggests it is purely figmentary, but a 'virtual football' isn't purely figmenary; it is a perception brought about by the cunning use of light from LEDs and LCDs.
The operation of the brain is such that it produces a perception that we label 'self', or sometimes 'I'. Just as it wouldbe possible to be fooledby a top-range VR that a virtual football is a real obect, we are fooled that the self is a real object. But just as with a virtual football therre is nothin that is really round and made of rubber in the world, the self/I we perceive is no where in the world. It is a perception conjured up by the activity of our brain.
The upshot is that when abody is disintegrated by a transporter the self is not destroyed because there is no self. The idea we have that 'I' is something that is real, that exists is an error induced by the vividness of the perception induced. All that exists in the world is the structured activity in our brains that generates a virtual self.
When the body is reconstructed the production of a virtual self restarts, but it's not the same self nor is it a differnt self because there is no self - it is virtual!
We are all - however much we feel otherwise - the production of a configurartion of atoms. In the 23rd century people have come to terms with being virtual, that their self doesn't actually exist. Not everyone in the 21st century is convinced, however!
