Κυριακή 12 Οκτωβρίου 2025

Libet Experiment [Neuroscience and Free Will]



https://youtu.be/6VZqho-8iJY?si=fYBqJ7cdH-eloVVW

The neurologist Benjamin Libet performed a sequence of remarkable experiments in the early 1980's that were enthusiastically, if mistakenly, adopted by determinists and compatibilists to show that human free will does not exist.

His measurements of the time before a subject is aware of self-initiated actions have had a enormous, mostly negative, impact on the case for human free will, despite Libet's view that his work does nothing to deny human freedom.

Since free will is best understood as a complex idea combining two antagonistic concepts - freedom and determination, "free" and "will," in a temporal sequence, Libet's work on the timing of events can also be interpreted as supporting our "two-stage model" of free will.

Indeed, Libet himself argued that there was still room for a veto over a decision that may have been made unconsciously over 300 milliseconds before the agent is consciously aware of the decision to flex a finger, but before the action of muscles flexing. In his 2004 book, Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness, he presented a diagram of his work.

Libet says the diagram shows room for a "conscious veto."