The Scientific Arguments Which Contain Freedom And Soft...

It seems to us that we are in control of our mind and body as a unified self. It means that we have free will to act. We can imagine it is like a homunculus in the Cartesian Theater which is responsible for making every decision in our brain. However, unless we can prove there is a homunculus in our brain, there is no consciousness. Libet and Wegner challenge the view that we do not have free will. â€Å"We can’t possibly know the tremendous number of mechanical influences on our behavior because we inhabit an extraordinarily complicated machine.† (Wegner, 2002) To answer the question, it requires we define free will and determinism. This question can be approached from numerous directions: From Libet and Wegner’s scientific data as well as†¦show more content†¦Under this assumption, it follows that our actions are determined by previous events over which they are not able to control. In other way to say, humans have no free will. Therefore, Free will and determinism seems incompatible to each other. Somebody who rejects free will is a determinist. There is a distinction between hard and soft determinists among determinists. Hard determinists are those who claim that people genuinely lack freedom in any form and are completely unaccountable for their actions; and soft determinists are those who claim that there are a certain kinds of freedom or accountability that are compatible with determinism. Neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet conducted experiments on human subjects to test when we become consciously alert of willing to carry out an action. Libet found that the cerebral processes preceded the awareness of the intention. It suggests that the volitional process is initiated mechanically and that unaware initiation of the voluntary procedure seems to mean that conscious will could not actually tell the brain to begin its preparation to carry out a voluntary act. Therefore, our conscious will did not make decision; the brain activity associated with the action was indeed under its way. Then, what is the role for conscious will in the performance of the action? Libet claims we