REVISITING LIBET’S EXPERIMENT: CURRENT CONTRIBUTIONS OF NEUROSCIENCE TO THE FREE-WILL ISSUE

• Autor(a) principal: Andrade, Otávio Morato de
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Cardoso, Renato César
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Kriterion (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/kriterion/article/view/42599
• topic: Livre-arbítrio; Neurociência; Paradigma de Libet; Free will; Neuroscience; Libet’s experiment

For a long time, the question of the existence of free will hasfueled philosophical debate with no definitive solution. Libet’s paradigm (1983) seemed to demonstrate that simple and apparently voluntary movements could be triggered not by consciousness, but by preconscious or random brain processes. Such findings had wide repercussions in the academic and scientific circles, triggering an extensive discussion among neuroscientists, philosophers and jurists. Exploring the interfaces between neuroscience and free will, the present work aims to formulate an updated synthesis of the diverse problematizations about the Libetian findings. It appears that Libet’s essay, although repeatedly analyzed and replicated in recent decades, still lacks a definitive interpretation, in part due to methodological controversies and specific conceptual shortcomings. The deepening of these investigations, combined with the new discoveriesoffered by neuroscience, can enrich research on free will in the coming years.