Eric Kerckhofs, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), delves into the intricate debate surrounding free will in his dissertation titled “Investigating whether we truly have free will.” His work addresses six fundamental issues regarding the concept of free will. He has a lofty goal of better understanding how conscious intention, brain activity, and the physical body interact to form human decisions.
The long-standing debate over the nature of free will has astonished the best minds in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience for generations. One of the key events in this discussion was the Libet test, which was run by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet during the 1980s. What this experiment taught us was absolutely incredible. Electrical brain activity associated with getting ready to move, called “readiness potential,” occurs several hundred milliseconds before people consciously become aware of their intention to move. Kerckhofs claims that the discovery is typically interpreted as disproving free will. He argues that it may not tell the whole story.
The Libet Experiment and Its Implications
In the original Libet experiment, subjects were instructed to move their fingers at arbitrary moments. Researchers tracked their brain activity and conscious movements in these movements. The findings showed that people’s brains got ready to move even before their conscious selves had made a decision to move. Unfortunately, these findings have been widely misinterpreted to claim that free will is just an illusion, and many determinists have been quick to pile on.
Kerckhofs argues that taken that way it misrepresents what actually is happening. He asserts, “Libet’s finding—that brain activity precedes conscious intention—is often misinterpreted.” He says the findings highlight the role of unconscious processes in decision-making. They don’t deny the effect of conscious will, either.
“What the experiments really show is that the brain prepares for action, not that conscious will plays no part,” Kerckhofs explains. His research challenges us to reconsider what these results actually indicate. It reminds us that perhaps the first virtue of exercising our free will is self-control.
Defining Free Will: Criteria and Perspectives
Kerckhofs identifies three essential criteria for defining free will: the ability to choose, control over actions, and acting for reasons. He emphasizes that understanding free will involves more than just analyzing timing between brain activity and conscious thought; it requires a holistic view that considers various factors influencing human behavior.
“The free will debate touches on how we view ourselves as human beings, as well as major societal issues such as responsibility and blame,” Kerckhofs notes. He argues that the national conversation about free will must include perspectives from multiple disciplines. Philosophy and neuroscience need to work together to encourage a more fruitful exchange.
The fields that examine it rarely collaborate. My intention was to get those two perspectives talking to each other,” he continues. By connecting these disciplines together, she wants to promote a broader understanding of free will’s complexities.
The Broader Debate: Determinism and Complexity
The discourse on free will frequently intersects with themes of determinism. The idea that all events are predetermined by preceding causes. Kerckhofs is aware that a lot of philosophers claim that determinism makes free will impossible. He questions this idea by looking to modern physics, which indicates a stranger and more complicated reality.
Cutting-edge physics is showing us that the universe is stranger than we ever imagined. It accepts chaos and complexity and welcomes a future of many different potentialities, he writes. This view opens up a radically new way of rethinking free will. It folds in both structural, deterministic principles and the nature of unpredictability itself.
Kerckhofs points to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and alien hand syndrome. These cases colorfully make the point of how damaging it can be when one loses the ability to choose how to act. “Disorders such as schizophrenia or alien hand syndrome show us what happens when that sense of control breaks down,” he explains.