Benjamin Libet & Free Won't**

Hold out your arm. Look at it. Now bend your hand at the wrist. Do it whenever you want. Do it a few times.*

How did this process begin? Was it you? Was it these words?

In 1985, neuro-scientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment related to this.

With electrodes connected to their wrists and scalps, his subjects had brain waves recorded as they watched a clock with a spot revolving faster than a second hand. Like you, they were told to flex their wrists whenever. They were also told to note the spot's position at the time they decided to do so. They stated where they saw it, and Libet correlated their observations with data recorded by electrodes at wrist and scalp.

Libet measured three factors: the action's beginning, the moment of decision, and the Readiness Potential, which began a certain brain wave pattern. This pattern involves the brain's plans to carry out an action.

Okay, so what did he find out? This. The decision to act was recorded as taking place at some 200 milliseconds before the Readiness Potential, which occurred some 550 milliseconds before the action.

So what?, you ask. Only this. A decision to act did not start the process. It did not come before the Readiness Potential. It can be construed as an effect of the Potential as cause. The decision was determined, then, and not a function of free agency.

Surprised? Did you expect a different sequence, this one?: first, the decision to act, then the planning stage, otherwise known as Readiness Potential, followed by the action. Instead, the Readiness Potential preceded the decision. Understood one way, no decision caused the brain to get ready to act. The brain got ready, then gave the appearance that a decision was made.

Some who study this experiment can liken the sense of decision to a hood ornament over a truck engine, symbolic rather than instrumental of a driving force. Libet found one, Readiness Potential, two, decision, three, action. The Readiness Potential led to the action, with the decision to act as a result of the Readiness Potential. In their view, with true free will a decision should have generated the preparation to act, culminating in the Readiness Potential.

Others say that had the decision sprung into consciousness without anything preceding it, the event would have been like God in the Book of Genesis saying of the void, Let there be light! Something would have come out of nothing. We can deem it natural that something comes from something, in this case a decision from a Readiness Potential. Obvious proponents of something from something are scientific determinists. This handily dispenses with subject-object duality and explains all through a physical monism.

With a different argument, somebody might say that a neatly simple scientific experiment causes reductionist absurdity when applied to anything so complex as human agency—or free will, if you prefer. People daily engage in behavior more complex than moving their wrists. They raise children, handle office politics, respond to political news. These involve conscious experiences, not simple brain events which the Libet experiments record. The correlation of conscious experience to brain events is highly problematic.

Still, one interpretation is that while Libet's subjects thought they were deciding, they actually saw an internal replay of a decision that had already occurred. They did not initiate an action but thought they had. They thought their decision had caused the action, although the Readiness Potential may have caused the decision to act. No choice, here, they would argue. No volition, just a series of processes.

If Libet's subjects didn't have free will, they did have a kind of free won't. That is, he told them that they could veto an action. Instead of flexing a wrist, they could stop the movement. He discovered an action could be vetoed, but the subjects only had one tenth second (100 milliseconds) to do so. In short, they could not initiate an action and could only overrule any impulse if they were alert and acted instantly. This is reminiscent of Zen teachings about alertness as the road to freedom.

(Of this experiment, and its implications, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett* is reputed to have said "I want more freedom than that." *(Freedom Evolves, Elbow Room, Consciousness Explained, and other books.) In short, this does not mean he refuses to accept the facts but believes that they can be interpreted differently.)*( Slightly revised from a 2003 post.)

** Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. have conducted experiments that call into question Libet's findings. According to their view, the Readiness Potential only pays attention to decisions being made and does not mean that one is "decisionally" aware of his action after the fact. In short, the Readiness Potential is misconstrued as to its role.

Benjamin Libet and Free Won't

     Benjamin Libet and Free Won't

An updated, clearer article with the same title can be found by clicking here.

Hold out your arm. Look at it. Now bend your hand at the wrist. Do it whenever you want. Do it a few times.

How did this process begin? Was it you? Was it these words?

In 1985, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment similar to this. (See Free Will and Benjamin Libet's Experiments, 8 November 2003.)

With electrodes connected to their wrists and scalps, his subjects had brain waves recorded as they watched a clock with a spot revolving faster than a second hand. Like you, they were told to flex their wrists spontaneously. They were also told to note the spot's position at the time they decided to do so. They stated where they saw it, and Libet correlated their observations with data recorded by electrodes at wrist and scalp.

Libet measured three factors: the action's beginning, the moment of decision, and the Readiness Potential, which began a certain brain wave pattern. This pattern involves the brain's plans to carry out an action.

Okay, so what did he find out? This. The action was recorded as taking place before the decision to act.

Libet was surprised. He expected a different sequence, this one: first, the decision to act, then the planning stage, otherwise known as Readiness Potential, followed by the action. Instead, the Readiness Potential preceded the decision. No decision caused the brain to get ready to act. The brain got ready, then gave the appearance that a decision was made.

The sense of decision was rather like a hood ornament over a truck engine, symbolic rather than instrumental. Libet found one, Readiness Potential, two, decision, three, action. The Readiness Potential led to the action, with the decision to act as an impression after the fact.

In other words, while his subjects thought they were deciding, they actually saw an internal replay of a decision that had already occurred. They did not initiate an action but thought they had. They thought their decision had caused the action.

Libet's experiments suggest that his subjects apparently didn't have free will, but instead, a kind of free won't. That is, he told them that they could veto an action. Instead of flexing a wrist, they could stop the movement. He discovered an action could be vetoed, but the subjects only had one tenth second (100 milliseconds) to do so. In short, they could not initiate an action and could only overrule any impulse if they were alert and acted instantly. This is reminiscent of Zen teachings about alertness as the road to freedom. (See the Zen parable, "Attention means attention," in Ramesh Balsekar's Inconsistencies, 10 March 2004.)

(Of this experiment, and its implications, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett* is reputed to have said "I want more freedom than that." *(Freedom Evolves, Elbow Room, Consciousness Explained, and other books.) In short, this does not mean he refuses to accept the facts but believes that they can be interpreted differently.)

Now a question. Where is the self that seems to make all the decisions?

Time is out of joint for us. Another Libet experiment, in 1981, revealed that brain stimulation induces conscious sensory impressions, but only one half second after steady stimulation. In other words, consciousness builds over time. It lags behind events and only later corrects the delay by making us think that awareness occurred before the stimulus. (Our brains are masters of deception. See Gorillas and Inattentional Blindness, 13 March 2004.)

During meditation or other introspection, one looks steadily into his experience and finds nothing that lasts, only ever-changing impressions, thoughts, sensations, without separation between observer and observed.

Scottish philosopher David Hume said that whenever he delved within he found only perceptions--heat, cold, pain, pleasure--and from this concluded that the self was nothing but a bundle of perceptions. True, but beyond them, a perceiver remains as distinct from the sense of self, and it cannot be explained by that which it perceives. (See Perception, 8 December 2003.)

So do you make decisions? How do you know? If you believe so, find your beliefs and the self who believes them.

(Also see Wheeler and Delayed Choice, 11 January 2004; Penrose and Brain Wave Function Collapse, 23 January 2004; Free Will: Goswami, Balsekar, Libet, 28 December 2003, Daniel Dennett and Compatibilist Volition, 15 December 2003, Daniel Wegner and Free Will, 12 December 2003, Two Sages and A Taoist, 9 January 2004, Losing Control, 9 December 2003; Thought Experiment: Where Are You?, 8 March 2004; Brain in A Vat, 20 November 2003.)

Benjamin Libet's Personal View of Free Will

Benjamin Libet's Personal View of Free Will

"If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was travelling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will." (Attributed to Albert Einstein in the promotion site for Libet's The Volitional Brain. Perhaps from Einstein's autobiography, The World As I See It, in which he addresses his deterministic view of the universe.)

Most scientific thought concurs that the universe is deterministic and that the sense of free will is an illusion. Still, the question remains, as posed by T.S. Eliot:

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

("The Hollow Men," 1925)

Benjamin Libet conducted now famous experiments that seemed to light up the shadow as phrased in Eliot's poem. Essentially, they were that a subject thought he had made a decision to act, but instead the action occurred about a half second before the sense of a decision. The decision was illusory. The action involved no agent, no choosing person, but instead happened, with the sense of control occurring afterward. ( In this blog various articles can be found on free will in general and several on Libet in particular, especially Benjamin Libet and Free Won't, 4 May 2008.)

Despite the evidence of his own experiments, Benjamin Libet allows some room for free will in an otherwise deterministic world. He provides many of his arguments in The Volitional Brain (Libet, Freeman, and Sutherland, 1999).

Libet has this to say about his methods: "I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain (the 'readiness potential', RP) that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and 'truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites."

He has several justifications, one of which is that many readiness potentials are produced by the brain although only one is acted upon. Another is that the conscious mind can veto actions before they are performed. Into this he tosses the notion of "consciousness fields," which is more supposition than evidence-based theory.

Critics argue that he has created a homonculus, a little man inside, who over-rides unconscious urges to act, but his own experiments verify that such vetos do occur. In this regard, the burden of explaining away the evidence lies with his critics, for subjects are indeed able to stop actions within a very narrow window of time. This has been established by Libet's own experiments.

Also see in Mind Shadows Benjamin Libet & Free Won't**, 4 May 2008; Looking for Self: Yogi Berra, Forks in The Road, Benamin Libet and Free will, 8 November 2003; Michael Gazzaniga: The Mind's Past, 3 December 2012; Epiphenomenalism and Illusion of Conscious Control, 26 April 2011; Whose Fault Is It? Did Your Neurons Make You Do It?, 5 April 2011.