Musings...
Was that really your decision? - Libet's Half Second
Benjamin Libet made a name for himself by poking into other people's heads. Really. He had a friend neuro-surgeon who would remove parts of people's brains to try to cure them from seizures. The operations were done with the subjects fully conscious. Libet was trying to find something in brains that could explain consciousness and free will.
So, while the patient was lying there, fully conscious, with his skull wide open, Libet would ask them to have a particular thought and then measure the brain activity in specific areas. Or he would stimulate the brain electrically and ask what the patient perceived. Was this ethically kosher? I don't know, apparently the patients gave their consent, but at any rate it was an experimenters' dream come true.
What Libet found was unsettling, to say the least. He found that the neural activity to execute an action started a full half second before the person 'took the decision'. In other words, at a certain instant you decide to lift your finger, but the neuronal commands to the muscles that must do the lifting started already half a second before you decided. So who DID decide, then??
Who is this 'ME' anyway?
We all have a pretty good idea who 'we' are, don't we? But how realistic is that? For starters, read this. Then we can talk...
I read my first book by Douglas Hofstadter more than 10 years ago: Gödel, Escher, Bach. A book exploring individuality (Who is this 'me') as well as (self) consciousness and above all Creativity (which is of course what each of the named persons have in common). Not an easy casual read, but very challenging and thought-provoking. As a follow-up I could suggest a collection of short essays Hofstadter compiled with Daniel Dennett, The Mind's I (a title that can be interpreted in more than one way.
