7.11 Who Decides?

We eat, walk, speak, go visit an exhibition… Every day of our lives, we make countless decisions.

But are we truly free to choose what we do?

Did we really decide — or do we just think we did?

This 1983 paper published by Benjamin Libet and his collaborators attempted to answer these questions — and its conclusions are anything but simple to understand, let alone accept.

When we perform a voluntary action — like moving a finger — we tend to imagine a clear sequence: first comes the decision, then the brain sends a command to the muscles, and finally the movement happens.

In short: I decide to move my finger → my brain sends the signal → my finger moves.

But Libet was the first to show that this isn’t quite how things work. And later neuroscientific research — using increasingly advanced neuroimaging techniques — confirmed it.

In essence, a voluntary movement can begin unconsciously. A fraction of a second before we become aware of the intention to act, a measurable burst of electrical activity appears in the motor cortex. Which means: our consciousness is informed after the decision has already begun taking shape.

In other words, we don’t do what we decide: we decide what we have already started doing.

Maybe free will doesn’t exist.

Maybe our sense of agency is just an illusion.

Is this phenomenon evidence of intelligence – or the product of an automatic biochemical mechanism?