Benjamin Libet And His Consequential Experiment on Consciousness
Benjamin Libet’s free-will demonstration
Contents
Prologue
Shockingly, many scientists question the existence of free-will. Some are convinced that we do not have free-will specifically because of Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s pioneering work. But it isn’t true. Free-will is, without a doubt, our homo sapien birthright. It is real. It is undeniable. And it is trivially available to everyone. Moreover, Benjamin Libet proved it. However, to recognize this point, you must update your understanding of what the phrase free-will means.
First, the skeptics do not see free-will because they apparently do not see reason. Reason is understandably hard to observe because it resides on the far side of free-will. It is also the opposite of habit. Furthermore, reason is conceptual, while habit is perceptual. So people, in habit, will struggle to conceptualize reason. And, if a person does not see reason, they will not likely recognize its door. Free Will.
Critically, reason is not decision-making. Habit is decision-making. Reason is instead the search for understanding, producing entirely new thoughts or behaviors–explicitly, I must add, without the help of others. Thus, there is no free-will in reason. The term free-will nevertheless implies the freedom to decide. And with free-will, you do. Free-will is the decision to halt habit decision-making so that you may subsequently begin the process of reason. Benjamin Libet, with his amazing research, identified the interruption of habit as free-won’t. So there it is. Free will is, in fact, free won’t. This counterintuitive fact is why free will remains stubbornly hidden from many.
Therefore, free will hides in plain sight as free won’t. Yet, there is a better, more revealing, name for free won’t. You know it as SELF-CONTROL. As I said, everyone could have free will/free won’t/SELF-CONTROL. Unfortunately, some merely decline to exercise it.
A small sampling of Free-will skeptics.
Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy – by Bob Doyle (Author)
Free Will – by Sam Harris
Free Will (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Free Will – Moving Beyond the Illusion: Screenplay for a Documentary – Amazon
There’s No Such Thing as Free Will – by Richard Dawkins
The Thinking Model
As depicted in figure 1 below, the brain is two principle thinking areas.
Area 1 is habit. People routinely think of this area as the human subconscious. It is not. It is you. Habit is materially located in the brain’s cortex. Area 2 is reason. Reason primarily resides in what is known as the brain’s prefrontal cortex. This area makes possible the wiser you.
Habit is the SELF, where area 2 comprises your wisdom–when it is developed using reason. Sigmond Freud understood area 1 as the id. Freud’s super-ego is area 2. Freud’s ego is the two regions together balanced by human free will (or, more accurately, free won’t). The application of human free-won’t is managed by your reason-developed wisdom. Still, I do not find Freud’s labels helpful. To me, it’s just habit, reason, and self-control (or sometimes free-won’t).
The Libet Experiment
Through some revolutionary work in the 1980s, Benjamin Libet changed how the world looks at free will. Unfortunately, because of the confusion surrounding the subject of free-will, it still varies.
The experimental method
It was simple.
A subject sits before a clock capable of measuring time in some detail (milliseconds). Subjects are then asked to observe and note the time (via the clock hand) on the clock when they decide to flex their wrist. Critically, they are free to flex their wrist whenever it suits them. Concurrently, researchers monitored the subject’s brain activity using an EEG (see the EEG cap in the sidebar).
The results
The experiment revealed that the brain begins building electrical potential (as detected by the EEG cap) to flex the wrist (on average) 350 ms before the subject was aware of their emerging decision to do it. The action, the actual flex of the wrist, happens another (on average) 200ms later. The individual, it appears, has 200ms to halt the decision to flex the wrist.
Free-won’t observed
In short, your subconscious decides, while your consciousness retains the power override.
Just imagine that. Your subconscious drives you. Can you accept this discovery? Yes, well, in truth, your subconscious is you. It is your SELF. Yet, your consciousness rides above it all. Interestingly, because of free-won’t, your consciousness still decides. It is like curling. Your consciousness sweeps in front of habit. I believe it is a thinking miracle.
For most people, it is hard to accept that what is otherwise known as your subconscious is, in fact, your acting brain. Yet, the Libet experiment demonstrates that the subject’s brain is moving to flick their wrist before they become aware of that decision. Then, for 200ms, the subject’s consciousness has a window of opportunity to reject that decision. The rejection, if it happens, is Libet’s free won’t. However, if true, the research also establishes that the subconscious is undeniably you. Think about that.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Your brain is sensing many scenarios at any moment using many neural networks. This is how we multitask. It is a biological gift. Humans do not use/possess a procedural logic system like a computer. Our brains are way more interesting. Your consciousness steers the process by allowing the preferred network solution to proceed in action or thought.
I think consciousness exists to integrate wisdom.
Learningframework Epilogue
The Free Will Proof
So, let us now consider free-will using logic.
First, From An Analytical Free-Will Doubter
Allow Dr. Eliezer J. Sternberg, a neurologist in Milford, Massachusetts, to concisely frame the free will question. From Eliezer J. Sternberg’s My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral Responsibility (quoting):
- If neurobiological determinism is true, everything we do is completely caused by prior biological events, so we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions.
- If indeterminism is true, our actions are random, and we cannot be held morally responsible for them.
- Either neurobiological determinism or indeterminism is true.
- Therefore, we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions.
In other words, free will, as people traditionally understand it (the freedom to make decisions), does not exist.
In his book, Eliezer J. Sternberg is troubled with contemporary neurology research with its free will implications. Sternberg nevertheless still believes in free-will. However, one can sense his doubt in his negative framing of the ‘free will’ issue above. Nevertheless, his doubt is misplaced. Sternberg’s free-will framing is merely incomplete.
But isn’t the process of reason deterministic?
My alternative determinism analysis
Neurobiological determinism is indeed either true or false (NOTE: this is TRUTH DETERMINISM—that is, that truth can be established). In graphical form, Sternberg and others have stated:
Image detailed discussion:
- If neurobiological determinism is false (indeterminism), “our actions are random, and we cannot be held morally responsible for them“;
- AGREED. Everyone concurs that human decision-making is not random and cannot be random. Neurobiological indeterminism does not exist.
- If neurobiological determinism is true (according to most, the only other possible option other than false) then “everything we do is completely caused by prior biological events, so we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions“;
- NO, Sternberg’s (and others’) view is incomplete.
Human neurobiological determinism is not one thing; it is two: (1) decisions in the service of the self (subjective truth) AND (2) decisions in the pursuit of truth (absolute truth). They are distinct and separate processes. Across the ages, philosophers and scientists have put (1) and (2) together or seemingly ignored (2) altogether. As a result, the solution to the free will question was beyond their philosophical reach.
I say absolute truth, in reason, is not determinable. Thus, integrating TRUTH INDETERMINISM
The bigger picture is this:
Moreover, the pursuit of truth is a process without end. The definition of reason requires it. Here also, if the pursuit of truth accepted eventual decision-making or deciding what is absolute truth, then (1) and (2) would again collapse into a single concept. Free will would again disappear.
Consequently, humans require a tool to move between the two viable neurological deterministic systems; this is free won’t.
FREE WON’T—your one free will decision.
