Mind Time by Benjamin Libet

Author:Benjamin Libet [Libet, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 067401846X
Publisher: Harvard University Press

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INTENTION TO ACT: DO WE HAVE FREE WILL?

How the brain deals with voluntary acts is an issue of fundamental importance to the role of conscious will and, beyond that, to the question of free will. It has been commonly assumed that in a voluntary act, the conscious will to act would appear before or at the start of the brain activities that lead to the act. If that were true, the voluntary act would be initiated and specified by the conscious mind. But, what if that were not the case? Is it possible that the specific brain activities leading to a voluntary act begin before the conscious will to act, in other words, before the person is aware that he intends to act? This possibility has arisen partly from our evidence that sensory awareness is delayed by a substantial time period of brain activities. If the internally generated awareness of the will or intention to act also is delayed by a required period of activities lasting up to about 500 msec, it seems possible that the brain’s activities that initiate a willed act begin well before the conscious will to act has been adequately developed.

We were able to examine this issue experimentally. What we found, in short, was that the brain exhibited an initiating process, beginning 550 msec before the freely voluntary act; but awareness of the conscious will to perform the act appeared only 150–200 msec before the act. The voluntary process is therefore initiated unconsciously, some 400 msec before the subject becomes aware of her will or intention to perform the act. The experimental evidence for this surprising sequence is given in this chapter.

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