Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment in 1973 that questioned the existence of free will in humans. In an experiment, he put a dial in front of a person, on which a light was rapidly rotating. Sensors were connected to the subject's wrist and certain parts of his brain. At some time, when the subject made the decision to move the brush to which the sensor was attached, the subject memorized the number on which the light stopped (in fact, the decision time) by the dial. After that, he moved his brush. Sensors attached to the subject's brain recorded the activity of certain areas, called the "readiness potential". The time of the potential for readiness, decision-making and wiggling the brush were recorded by instruments.
Contrary to expectations, the devices showed the following sequence of events:
- first the potential for readiness appeared;
- then, after about 350 ms, the subject consciously made a decision to move his brush (this was recorded by the time on the dial in front of him);
- after about 100 ms there was a signal from the wrist of the hand.
Those. until the moment of a conscious decision of a person, his brain has already been activated. It turns out that our conscious decision is only a consequence of the cerebral unconscious activity of certain parts of the brain.
In other experiments, Dr. Libet compared the time when predetermined processes appeared in the mind and the time when these processes took place in the subject's brain. It turned out that human consciousness registered events half a second later than real time when they occurred. Those. consciousness lives as if in the past for half a second.
It turns out that our consciousness is only a recorder of events in the brain, and all decisions and actions are performed by the brain and subconsciousness automatically. Including, as the first experiment showed, this also applies to "deliberately" made decisions.
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Divided hemispheres
the corpus callosum (Latin corpus callosum) is a plexus of nerve fibers in the mammalian brain that connects the right and left hemispheres. The functions of the corpus callosum were little studied before, in the early 1960s, a group of scientists led by R. Sperry, who later received the Nobel Prize in 1981, performed a series of operations to cut the corpus callosum (callosotomy). Scientists were looking for a way to treat epilepsy. And after successful experiments on animals, they performed an operation on a person. The essence of the operation was to separate the cerebral hemispheres, which are connected by a dense neural network. This network is the corpus callosum.
Such operations made it possible to get rid of epileptic seizures, but they significantly changed a person's abilities, for example, “right-handers” were completely unable to write with their left hand and draw with their right. They could determine with their right hand what kind of object they were feeling, and choose one in the picture, but they could not name it, etc.
This has a direct application to the issue of free will: the amazing fact that two personalities of such a person do not conflict and do not even realize the existence of each other. The hemispheres were divided, but for them nothing seemed to have changed! One gets the impression that any action performed by our body is interpreted by consciousness (consciousnesses?) As a result of the manifestation of its free will, even if it was not. Imagine two people living in the same room but unaware of their neighbor. Every time a window is opened, each of them is convinced that it was he who opened it.
Interestingly, when the corpus callosum was dissected, visible differences were found in relation to something between the conscious and the unconscious in people who underwent surgery: for example, one subject claimed that he adored his wife, while the right hand hugged his wife and the left pushed her away.