This argument that freedom happens in the thinking (the act of thinking) is not just articulated by Descartes and Aristotle, but also by the likes of J. S. Mill. But Mill used the society or group as the location to bring out this proposed freedom by the individual.

Don’t mind me none; just musing.....

Did Descartes actually demonstrate freedom, or did he rather posit that freedom was “...sensed within ourselves...”, and is hence “...self-evident and transparently clear...”?

we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” — L'éléphant

In Descartes, there are two ways of thinking, in which “...will has a wider scope than the intellect...”, so, yes, true enough.

The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

Except understanding itself presupposes a necessary singular subject, which couldn’t be any other that an “I”. “We” only indicates a multiplicity of singular subjects, doesn’t it?

Interesting topic, at any rate.

But Descartes actually demonstrated that there is, indeed, freedom in us. And it comes in the form of thinking, or rational thinking. How so? We can control our thinking. — L'éléphant

I'm not sure Descartes declared we had free will. He simply declared that which he was unable to doubt, in fact, that which arguably he had no control over, was that he thought, therefore he must be.

And we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” or the self. By differentiating ourself from the collective “we”. — L'éléphant

An interesting point. Our brains are actually many cells working in tandem with different parts that do different functions. I still don't see how that necessitates freedom though. I suppose its what you mean by freedom. Some people mean that freedom is absolute power, unconstrained by things such as biology. I think very few people would say that's viable.

Another term of freedom might be the freedom of external dominance of your internal conclusions. So if I decide to watch TV, no one will come and shut if off or threaten me because they don't think I should. I tend to like this definition more, as it avoids the notion of freedom from determinism, and more about the levels of influence within deterministic systems.

But that is a spring board for you to decide. What does freedom mean to you?

Except understanding itself presupposes a necessary singular subject, which couldn’t be any other that an “I”. “We” only indicates a multiplicity of singular subjects, doesn’t it? — Mww

So then the one thing we could deduce from it is that there was no understanding of self prior, since there was no understanding of singular subject. It's a primordial phenomenon that there was no "I" consciousness. It's hard to wrap one's head around it but that's what philosophers have posited.

I'm not sure Descartes declared we had free will. — Philosophim

No, he didn't. Not in the sense you're thinking. But he demonstrated in cogito that our thinking can be.

What does freedom mean to you? — Philosophim

I am in the group that believes there is free will in thought. Like I said in my OP, we tend to focus on action -- that our actions are determined. But if these philosophers posit that thinking is the springboard to action, and that there's freewill in thinking, let's start there. Aristotle's insistence on deliberation as future-oriented thinking implies the freedom of the will. We think of possibilities, we think of different scenarios, and we think logically. For example, there are truths (principles) to discover. If we do not have that freedom in thought, we would never discover these principles. Apparently, he believed that we could.

You might want to read Arthur Schopenhauer's "Essay on the Freedom of the Will." Presents what I consider one of the best essays ever written on this topic. Does, however, presuppose the reader is familiar with some basic tenets of Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

Hah! Indeed. Thanks.

Here, I pasted a passage from the book:

The freedom which therefore cannot be encountered in the operari must lie in the esse. It has been a fundamental error of all ages, an unwarranted inversion (hysteron-proteron), to attribute necessity to the esse and freedom to the operari. The converse is true: freedom lies in the esse alone, but the operari follows necessarily from it and the motives.
From what we do we know what we are. On this, and not on the pre sumed liberum arbitrium indifferentiae, rests the conscious ness of responsibility and the moral tendency of life. Every thing depends on what one is; what he does will follow therefrom of itself, as a necessary corollary. The consciousness of self-determination and originality which undeniably ac companies all our acts, and by virtue of which they are our acts, is therefore not deceptive, in spite of their dependence on motives.

But its true content reaches further than the acts and begins higher up. In truth it includes our being and essence itself, from which all acts proceed necessarily when motives arise. In this sense that consciousness of self-determination and originality, as well as the consciousness of responsibility accompanying our actions, can be compared to a hand which points to an object more remote than the one nearer by to which it seems to be pointing. In a word: man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily.
…
Consequently, my exposition does not eliminate freedom. It merely moves it out, namely, out of the area of simple actions, where it demonstrably cannot be found, up to a region which lies higher, but is not so easily accessible to our knowledge. In other words, freedom is transcendental. And this is also the sense in which I should like to interpret the statement of Malebranche,3 la liberte est un mystere, under whose aegis the present dissertation has attempted to solve the problem set by the Royal Society.

esse = essence or nature
operari = action

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!! BRAVO!!!!!!!!!

:up:

What does freedom mean to you?
— Philosophim
I am in the group that believes there is free will in thought. — L'éléphant

I see. That is not my personal opinion myself, but I feel that "free will" is such an ambiguous term that it can mean different things to different people without issue. Still, a very nice post L'elephant!

:up:

Sadly, naturalism has some harsh words against freedom of thinking. To the followers of naturalism, freedom is only an illusion. Some of the reasons given are : it's only biological, it's a collection of nerves and cells, and it's physiological. Among them: Stephen Hawking and Alex Rosenberg.

But the placement (where freedom resides) of their contention is, to me, misplaced. To them, because of our biological constitution and the chemicals that come with it, we are only given the illusion that we have the freedom in thinking.

I think this is again the reductionist and mechanical views of metaphysics, which I disagree with.

Actually, I was working from this....

We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

....from which the deduction of the self must have already been established, insofar as there must already be that to which the understanding of “we” belongs. Hence the presupposed necessary singular subject.

So then the one thing we could deduce from it is that there was no understanding of self prior.... — L'éléphant

Correct. Understanding, in and of itself, does not immediately give the self, but as soon as there is something understood, in this case “we”, a subject to which that something relates, is presupposed. Can’t have an understanding without that which understands. That the self to which understanding belongs, represented as “I”, is only a speculative metaphysical determination of pure reason.

Or so the story goes...
————-

“Freedom is transcendental”, Schopenhauer, 1839;
“There does exist freedom in the transcendental sense”, Kant, 1781.

S thought so, K thought so first. And everybody knows....first rules!!!

Just sayin’.....

.from which the deduction of the self must have already been established, insofar as there must already be that to which the understanding of “we” belongs. Hence the presupposed necessary singular subject. — Mww

While I haven't explained how we broke away from the collective awareness, the plurality, to self-consciousness, I'm telling you that there was no reasoning or deduction that went into it. Rational thinking of the "I" did not happen before when there was only the "we". When Descartes, for example, wrote the meditation, he wasn't starting from the beginning of self-awareness. Descartes, after all, was operating in the modern world, where our knowledge was already sophisticated and advance.

Can’t have an understanding without that which understands. That the self to which understanding belongs, represented as “I”, is only a speculative metaphysical determination of pure reason. — Mww

Yes, I admit we're both struggling and grappling with this idea that humans didn't begin thinking in the "I" tense. It's hard to understand that we didn't have this. What we did have in the primordial understanding of everything was the "we".

The only comparison I could think of is an animal which has every faculty of awareness -- the pack, the surrounding, where to get food, the hunt. Except, no self-awareness. If this animal sees its reflection, it would not think, "That's me". That animal could only think in terms of the pack, the many, its family.

humans didn't begin thinking in the "I" tense. It's hard to understand that we didn't have this. — L'éléphant

I’m ok with that.

Rational thinking of the "I" did not happen before when there was only the "we". — L'éléphant

While I’m hesitant to accept this, I won’t reject it either, without some proper argument to judge it by. I might go for rational thinking of “I” didn’t happen when there was only beings of similar kind, all running around the countryside and stuff, making babies, staying alive, before the advent of systemic pure thought. But when you say “we”, the inception of rational thinking must have occurred, if only as a conception of a discriminating relation between similarly existing things, as determined by one of them.

But I sorta get your point. Maybe I’m over-analyzing.

While I’m hesitant to accept this, I won’t reject it either, without some proper argument to judge it by. — Mww

If I've come across an explanation I will post it here.

Maybe you could start a thread on that. lol. How did we achieve self-awareness when there was none before. I'm guessing evolution and language development. But still, I'm not sure about that either.

A rebuttal to the naturalistic view of mind -- freedom in thinking is only an illusion - is this: how do the adherents of naturalism determined this "illusion"? Did they arrive at this conclusion through the brain processes? In that case, their conclusion is also an illusion.

They cannot assert that we do not have freedom in thinking because their conclusion is begging the question.

So, going back to the “I” of consciousness, it turns out that the “I” is not primordial or primitive in our view of the world. It is the “We”. The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. The plurality of existence which is embedded in our brain. So, experience, therefore, was not due to having the consciousness of self, but having the consciousness of the “we”. And we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” or the self. By differentiating ourself from the collective “we”. — L'éléphant

It is a good approach to an analysis of the self. The self is fashioned after a model of plurality, witnessed in the world of others. This idea has a history and I think it was Herbert Mead who is most famous for it. So when I observe myself, my behavior, feelings my own thoughts, I am working within a structure of social organized affairs: I AM the "other" of a conversation, as I witness myself.

This makes sense, but it does lead to a deeper issue, which is the digression toward the determinative self, the final self that is not the social model, but the one experiencing the social model. Here is where you approach Descartes: the cogito says "I think" and this is supposed to be the end of the line, the definitive self that is not epistemically assailable. The "we" is an empirical concept, and internalized model; Descartes cogito is not contingent like this. Of course, "I am" is an empirical concept, too! So we can see where Descartes has his limitations; but then again, it can be argued that this "I am" is existential, a true presence "behind" the utterance, which is called for since the transcendental ego does show up: Even if "I am" is an empirical social construction, "who" is this actual witness that can stand apart from the role playing?

A rebuttal to the naturalistic view of mind -- freedom in thinking is only an illusion - is this: how do the adherents of naturalism determined this "illusion"? Did they arrive at this conclusion through the brain processes? In that case, their conclusion is also an illusion.

They cannot assert that we do not have freedom in thinking because their conclusion is begging the question. — L'éléphant

The illusion? What do you mean? What question is begged? Not that I disagree, but how do you frame this?

It is a good approach to an analysis of the self. The self is fashioned after a model of plurality, witnessed in the world of others. This idea has a history and I think it was Herbert Mead who is most famous for it. So when I observe myself, my behavior, feelings my own thoughts, I am working within a structure of social organized affairs: I AM the "other" of a conversation, as I witness myself. — Constance

Yes, thanks for reference on Mead. I didn't know he wrote extensively on this subject -- the development of sense of self. So, to him, from my cursory reading about him, the development of the "I" came about when we developed language.

The illusion? What do you mean? What question is begged? Not that I disagree, but how do you frame this? — Constance

I made two posts in this thread about the critics who argue against the idea that we have freedom in thinking. The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain. When we think, we think in such a way that our thoughts are produced by the environmental stimuli acting on our nerves and cells and make us believe that it is our own voluntary thinking from which our thoughts are produced.

And I said this is question begging coming from the naturalists because they started off by claiming because of our nerves, cells, and chemicals, our thoughts are only produced by nerves, cells, and chemicals.

I made two posts in this thread about the critics who argue against the idea that we have freedom in thinking. The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain. When we think, we think in such a way that our thoughts are produced by the environmental stimuli acting on our nerves and cells and make us believe that it is our own voluntary thinking from which our thoughts are produced.

And I said this is question begging coming from the naturalists because they started off by claiming because of our nerves, cells, and chemicals, our thoughts are only produced by nerves, cells, and chemicals. — L'éléphant

A determinist will argue that the principle of causality has no exception, notwithstanding the weirdness of quantum physics; and here, physics do know either, but they certainly don't deny effects have causes. This is an apodictic impossibility, that is, one cannot even imagine a spontaneous event (natural events presupposing this, so they are not the true ground of determinacy)--- that is how strong causality is. But the rub of determinism: We don't really know the nature of this intuition behind ex nihilo nihil fit. We call it causality and we acknowledge the apodicticity (trying to imagine an object moving by itself), but this is not an empirical concept, and so it is not contingent, its justification is not derived from something else, some logical argument. It is its "own presupposition". That is, it is a given, this, call it a "pure intuition" that cannot be spoken really. This make the determinist's position indeterminate, for intuitions as intuitions have no
Then there is freedom, a very rare event, for most of our lives are lived thoughtlessly, like when I drive a car and open a bottle: all automatic, spontaneous events, these fluid movements we go through without question or intrusion from analysis. If you ask me, those guys who stole the car, got drunk and killed ten people on the highway were anything but free in their actions. Even as they began their adventure of debauchery, and reviewed the law, the consequences, the danger, this was not sufficient for freedom, for the struggle to decide was a matter contained within the inner tensions between possible actions. Had their been more motivation on the side of care rather than carelessness, they wouldn't have done it. So why was there stronger motivation to do it? There must be in that entangled personal world of each a very extensive causal analysis, so complex untouchable by analysis, really.
Then what is "real" freedom? Real freedom lies within the mechanism of withdrawal, I can be argued, for when I turn the key to the ignition, and nothing happens, I withdraw from the engagement. There is the moment of indecision, of "indeterminacy" that is instantly filled with possibilities regarding the battery, the engine, who to call, and so on. But to fail to fill this indeterminacy with possibilities, herein lies freedom, for there is an absence of the sufficient cause putting effect in motion. The question is, how is this indeterminacy possible? It should not be possible. You can call it a mere illusion of indeterminacy, and insist that the moment before ideas are set in motion is always already filled, just not explicitly, yet. But then, Real freedom stands apart from any motivation. There may be in the background emerging potentialities, but there is no "standing in" and one of these.
The concept of human freedom rests with this indeterminacy. Probably the most pure form of this is seen in the concept of kriya yoga. But in our daily affairs, when we stand in conscious wonder about what we do, who we are, why we exist and so on, we are free of motivation. Doe this make us a spontaneous cause? Not exactly. But the freedom that can stand apart from the motivation to act, think, etc. conceives of possibilities from a stand point of diminished determination. But causality is apodictic, and there can be no room for "diminished determinism". Therein lies the issue.

I didn't proof read. Left off here above:

.....have no argument, no justification, no explanation. We cannot say we really understand such things at all, for they are givens, in the fabric of the world. Transcendental.

If you ask me, those guys who stole the car, got drunk and killed ten people on the highway were anything but free in their actions. Even as they began their adventure of debauchery, and reviewed the law, the consequences, the danger, this was not sufficient for freedom, for the struggle to decide was a matter contained within the inner tensions between possible actions. Had their been more motivation on the side of care rather than carelessness, they wouldn't have done it. So why was there stronger motivation to do it? — Constance

I don't think this is the "thinking" we're talking about in this thread. I gave examples of Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer's idea of freedom in thinking. It is rational thinking. And we don't always think rationally, of course, such as in your example above. The point of freedom in thinking is, we do have it at our disposal if we are so inclined. There is deliberation, there is decision, and there is future possibilities. That's what they mean.

But in our daily affairs, when we stand in conscious wonder about what we do, who we are, why we exist and so on, we are free of motivation. Doe this make us a spontaneous cause? — Constance

Yes, this is more like it. But spontaneity is not the idea here. We could be spontaneous and still be unthinking and undeliberative. We're after rational thinking.

I don't think this is the "thinking" we're talking about in this thread. I gave examples of Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer's idea of freedom in thinking. It is rational thinking. And we don't always think rationally, of course, such as in your example above. The point of freedom in thinking is, we do have it at our disposal if we are so inclined. There is deliberation, there is decision, and there is future possibilities. That's what they mean. — L'éléphant

You wrote, "The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain."
If this is where the issue begins, then this whole affair of biology has to be understood at a more basic level, where the true argument of this "naturalism" lies. Naturalism is grounded in the apodicticity of the principle of causality. I mean, no one is going argue that decision making is a "natural" affair without understanding what it is in naturalism that decides things in the matter of human freedom. Nature is in turn what, exactly, that makes the case? It is this underlying causality that rules the determination of all natural events. Otherwise, naturalism simply begs the question: why is there no freedom in a natural world.
So you see, if you're talking about nature, the brain and neural transmissions along axonal fibers and on and on, and freedom, the matter instantly turns to causality. What else? Talk to a naturalist about reason, then. This will be a reductionist position: all reasoned thought is reducible brain functions. Then you are back to causality. The fight of freedom contra determinacy has its final argument here.
I move from this, on to an analysis you are ignoring, for reasons I cannot understand. Perhaps it is because it is unfamiliar. The argument presented above is grounded in a phenomenological method of thinking. The fluid continuity the lived life of a person is mostly the kind of think in which freedom doesn't even step in, for we don't usually freely act. Most of what we do is rote behavior. When it DOES become a matter of freedom, it is the kind of thing I described.
to say we "have it," that is, the freedom of thinking, if we are so inclined, simply begs the naturalist question. How is being so inclined make it free? Just the opposite, one would argue, for "being inclined" to do something would make the inclination the prime mover, not the agent who is so moved.

So, going back to the “I” of consciousness, it turns out that the “I” is not primordial or primitive in our view of the world. It is the “We”. The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

Well put. The 'self' depends upon an 'other,' and language ('interior monologue') depends on a tribal language.

:up:

Naturalism is grounded in the apodicticity of the principle of causality. — Constance

Okay, you got one thing right -- causality. But did you read what Schopenhauer wrote (I posted a passage in this thread). See where the necessity lies -- not in the thinking.

As to the definition of the naturalism as a philosophical view, please read up on the definition. I think you're missing the main point of naturalism. Yes, it is nature - but I want you to think in terms of philosophical argument.

but it does lead to a deeper issue, which is the digression toward the determinative self, the final self that is not the social model, but the one experiencing the social model. — Constance

Why must it be 'one' experiencing the model? What if the singularity of the ghost of the soul is part of a contingent and inherited model inspired by the perceived unity of its containing body? 'One is one around here.' 'One' can imagine a society where each body is understood to host several or seven souls, one for each day of the week, each learning to ignore what's not its concern on its six days off per week. It may be something like the unity of 'reason' that's projected on the body which is given a soul for its little prison palace.

it can be argued that this "I am" is existential, a true presence "behind" the utterance, which is called for since the transcendental ego does show up: Even if "I am" is an empirical social construction, "who" is this actual witness that can stand apart from the role playing? — Constance

I speculate that this 'one' is just reason or language, which is a unified system of concepts and a communal possession. The softwhere is one.

Real freedom lies within the mechanism of withdrawal, I can be argued, for when I turn the key to the ignition, and nothing happens, I withdraw from the engagement. There is the moment of indecision, of "indeterminacy" that is instantly filled with possibilities regarding the battery, the engine, who to call, and so on. — Constance

I think you are on to something, though the word 'real' is perhaps unnecessary. As I see it, one task of the philosopher is to reveal so-called necessity as a congealed and disguised contingency which hides in plain sight. 'That which is ontically nearest is ontologically farthest.' Trapped in the illusion of necessity, deviation is not yet even conceivable. Possibility languishes unborn. Along these lines, the philosopher has an intensity of withdrawal that allows the too obvious to finally become questionable.

Okay, you got one thing right -- causality. But did you read what Schopenhauer wrote (I posted a passage in this thread). See where the necessity lies -- not in the thinking.

As to the definition of the naturalism as a philosophical view, please read up on the definition. I think you're missing the main point of naturalism. Yes, it is nature - but I want you to think in terms of philosophical argument. — L'éléphant

What I gave you was a philosophical argument. The thoughts I presented issue from a phenomenological perspective on freedom, which takes the matter into the structure of the given experience of the free act. Acts are not free when they are practiced and done without explicit intention, like typing these words. So where does the issue of freedom in experience even arise at all? is the first question.

Schopenhauer, of course, gives a clear account of what determinism says. Writing about deliberating over future actions, he considers:

I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife............. This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: I can make waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed)- I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond. (F, 43)

That is, we are no more free than a flowing water to determine our future. Rorty put it like this, in the context of the epistemic relationship with the world: I no more have "knowledge" of the affairs around me in the traditional sense than a car's dent has knowledge of the offending guardrail. Thinking like this (Rorty's pragmatist position; and he was no naturalist at the level of ontology and epistemology analysis) entirely undermines talk about will and decision making (It also undoes any attempt to validate science's knowledge claims. That is, at this basic level of analysis. Otherwise, science is just fine, as analytic philosophers, inspired by grandfather Kant long ago).

But then there is Schopenhauer's "higher view":

the empirical character, like the whole man, is a mere appearance as an object of experience, and hence bound to the forms of all appearance ) time, space, and causality and subject to their laws. On the other hand, the condition and the basis of this whole appearance is his intelligible character, i.e. his will as thing in itself. It is to the will in this capacity that freedom, and to be sure even absolute freedom, that is, independence of the law of causality (as a mere form of appearances), properly belongs. (F,
97)

Yes, we are now in the world of noumena. How do we account for this? If I may depart from Schopenhauer on this, the problem lies in the radical distance Kant puts between our empirical selves and our noumenal selves, the latter being some impossible postulate. If you want to look closer into the anatomy of a free act, the only route is through phenomenology. Freedom reveals itself in the analysis Time and the event of pulling away from the seamless flow of determined actions. For this see what I wrote earlier.

the word 'real' is perhaps unnecessary. — lll

:fire: Perhaps nothing is necessary. Reality is overrated. Why is the film industry a multi-billion dollar enterprise?

Why must it be 'one' experiencing the model? What if the singularity of the ghost of the soul is part of a contingent and inherited model inspired by the perceived unity of its containing body? 'One is one around here.' 'One' can imagine a society where each body is understood to host several or seven souls, one for each day of the week, each learning to ignore what's not its concern on its six days off per week. It may be something like the unity of 'reason' that's projected on the body which is given a soul for its little prison palace. — lll

Well, you throw me off a bit with "soul" talk. But consider an adjacent idea: you are suggesting a body of dividedness rather than unity; or rather, the unity of any given occasion is a singularity that comes and goes. Right now I may be an accountant doing my job; later I am a parent instructing my children; and so on. Is this what you have in mind? This has been called the "fractal self" based on the observation that there is no perceivable singular self beyond all the various different selves we are in different contexts.

On the point that there must be "one" experiencing: Approach this apophatically: I am this abiding self in all that I can conceive. I think of myself as a parent, teacher, friend, and so on, but there is an position of being apart from all these can be. I may be a teacher, but I can withdraw from this and stand away from it, and in this it has no claim of me. It seems that whatever I think of, I can position myself apart from it, in an act of reflection. This reflective self is always NOT the role being played. But cannot be observed or even conceived.

I speculate that this 'one' is just reason or language, which is a unified system of concepts and a communal possession. The softwhere is one. — lll

Yes! I conditionally agree with this. I mean, this is a very tempting idea, especially when we examine the community nature of language, history, education and the structured self this produces. How can one think or have identity at all if one is not IN an historical context? Language itself is historical. And even the Buddhist Madhyamika concept of no self chimes in. But there are other features of our world that will not allow for this, depending, of course, on how one defines the self.

Why would the Madhyamika take this view? Go deep into a meditative state, and all that one is in the world is intentionally annihilated. Time is annihilated, if things go well, for what is time if not the passage of events, and if these are nullified then time is nullified (putting aside a physicist's take on this. Here, it is "stream of consciousness' time, foundational time, that is presupposed by empirical concepts). And the constructs of language and culture are suspended. NOT, however, that these are not in the underpinnings of the "nothingness" of a deep meditative state. After all, in this state one is not reduced to an infantile mentality. The constructed self is there, maintained in the "I am" position. But there is no mistaking the experienced vacuity, the nothingness of experience that sits before your awareness.

Who are you now? Neither baker nor candlestick maker. The empirical self suspended. Now the matter becomes, not analytic, but revelatory. One doesn't have to meditate for this: Just take yourself out of contextual relations with the world. Stand in a meadow and clear the mind, with more or less success. Argument ends here. Affirming the self in the openness of things is a radical move. An Emersonian move (see his little book called Nature). A Husserlian move (see his epoche). Tough to argue, though. But it can be approached phonologically in the analysis of the structure of experience. If you want to go there, it does get interesting. Let me know.