Abstract
Benjamin Libet (Chicago, Illinois, 12 April 1916–Davis, California, 23 July 2007) was a scientist who conducted pioneering studies on consciousness and free will. He studied physiology, and between 1945 and 1948, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. During his academic career, he was a lecturer at the Albany Medical College, New York; research fellow in neurochemistry at the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia; and instructor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. In 1956, he collaborated with Sir John Eccles at Canberra (Australia) and subsequently became member of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.
The brain was evidently beginning the volitional process
in this voluntary act well before the activation
of the muscles that produced the movement.
My question then became: when does the conscious
wish or intention (to perform the act) appear?
(Do We Have Free Will?)
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References
Libet B (1999) Do we have free will? J Consc Stud 6:47–57
Libet B (2004) Mind time: the temporal factor in consciousness. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
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Cavanna, A.E., Nani, A. (2014). Benjamin Libet. In: Consciousness. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44088-9_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44088-9_25
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