Free Will Existence

Free will is fundamental to human existence (Arnason, 2011). Neuroscience implies that free will is not a defining feature of humanness, but is in fact an illusion concealed by biochemical complexity (Burns & Bechara, 2007). Developments in neuroscience have led us to question our views about whether we have conscious free will (Heisenberg, 2009; Nahmias, 2009; Smith, 2011). Various experiments into the phenomenon appear to show that we do not have conscious free will, however these experiments have been highly criticised for many reasons (Kolb & Wishaw, 2008). Despite these criticisms, there appears to be little evidence to suggest that we do in fact have conscious free will. Free will is fundamental to human existence and is defined as the
The first known research into conscious free will was by Libet et al (1983). Their research focused on the so-called unconscious intentions that take place when we make decisions regarded as free and voluntary (Haggard and Libet, 2015). Participants were asked to move their right wrist, at a time of their own choosing and then make a note of the time they were first aware of their desire to act, which he named ‘W’. Whilst they did this, an EEG machine monitored their brain activity. Attention was focused on a particular negative brain potential, called the RP, or Readiness Potential (Libet, 2003), situated in the supplementary motor area (SMA). It was discovered that the brain activity occurred almost three hundred milliseconds before participants reported the desire to act. These findings appear to show that simple actions are triggered by neural activity, and therefore support the idea that free will is an illusion (Libet, 2000). However, he also states that even though we have no conscious will in terms of initiating movement, we possess a cognitive ‘veto’, allowing us to cancel actions before we carry them out (Nahmias, 2014). This has often been referred to as “free won’t” (Shermer,
Klemm (2010) believes that the research to support the view has been grossly misinterpreted. Klemm argues that Wegner’s experiments test more than just the idea that people have conscious free will and that it is extremely difficult to tell whether the intent is conscious or unconscious. He also stated that Libets experiments are somewhat problematic, surrounding the reliability of introspection and the accuracy of timing awareness. Dennet and Weiner (1991) criticised Libet’s interpretations of the findings, as he stated that people have to shift their attention away from their intention, to the clock. This introduces a mismatch between the experience of will and the perceived position of the clock hand (Gregson, 1992). Matsuhashi and Hallett (2008) invented new methodology in order to estimate ‘W’. During their experiments, they discovered that the RP (which they named BP1) occurred before ‘W’ in two thirds of participants and the LRP always occurred after ‘W’. Klemm (2016) also argued that no one really knows where the conscious self lies within the brain, and that the motor cortex only began to increase in activity before the self-reported intent to