Do we have freewill

Benjamin Libet

The article concentrates on Libet’s own experiments showing that unconscious electrical activity in the brain preceded voluntary actions by up to 400ms. This discovery has been widely seized on, although not be Libet himself, as a proof that freewill does not exist and thus as a confirmation of the deterministic paradigm of mainstream neuroscience. The main flaw with these experiments and the conclusions drawn from them is that they focus on the trivial. In Libet’s own experiment the subjects had agreed to flex their wrist at some point, and therefore only the timing of the action constituted a free choice. [Read more] ...