How Libet-Style Experiments May (or May Not) Challenge Lay Theories of Free Will

摘要

Saigle, Dublijevic, and Racine (2018) provide a comprehensive review of research that has used Libet-style (Libet et al. 1983) paradigms to study motoric decision-making. In Libet-style paradigms, participants are asked to make a simple motor movement, commonly a flick of the wrist, whenever they feel the urge to do so. In many of these studies, EEGs are used to measure the readiness potential (RP), which is a measure of activity in the motor and supplementary motor cortices that reliably precedes voluntary movement., Libet et al. found that the RP not only reliably preceded voluntary motor movement, but that it also reliably preceded the conscious urge to move. As Saigle et al. note, these findings have been taken by Libet (1999) and others as posing a threat to free will, at least as free will is normally understood by laypeople.