- Title Pages
- Preface
- Contributors
- Introduction
-
Chapter 1 Do We Have Free Will? -
Chapter 2 Why Libet’s Studies Don’t Pose a Threat to Free Will -
Chapter 3 Libet on Free Will: Readiness Potentials, Decisions, and Awareness -
Chapter 4 Are Voluntary Movements Initiated Preconsciously? The Relationships between Readiness Potentials, Urges, and Decisions -
Chapter 5 Do We Really Know What We Are Doing? Implications of Reported Time of Decision for Theories of Volition -
Chapter 6 Volition: How Physiology Speaks to the Issue of Responsibility -
Chapter 7 What Are Intentions? -
Chapter 8 Beyond Libet: Long-term Prediction of Free Choices from Neuroimaging Signals -
Chapter 9 Forward Modeling Mediates Motor Awareness -
Chapter 10 Volition and the Function of Consciousness -
Chapter 11 Neuroscience, Free Will, and Responsibility -
Chapter 12 Bending Time to One’s Will -
Chapter 13 Prospective Codes Fulfilled: A Potential Neural Mechanism of Will -
Chapter 14 The Phenomenology of Agency and the Libet Results -
Chapter 15 The Threat of Shrinking Agency and Free Will Disillusionism -
Chapter 16 Libet and the Criminal Law’s Voluntary Act Requirement -
Chapter 17 Criminal and Moral Responsibility and the Libet Experiments -
Chapter 18 Libet’s Challenge(s) to Responsible Agency -
Chapter 19 Lessons from Libet - Author index
- Subject Index
Introduction
Introduction
- Chapter:
- (p.xi) Introduction
- Source:
- Conscious Will and Responsibility
- Author(s):
Benjamin Libet
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of our wills as a challenge to moral and legal responsibility. It is concerned with not whether anything causes our wills but, instead, whether our wills cause anything. This question is about the effects rather than the causes of our wills. It does not ask whether our wills are free but, rather, whether our wills are efficacious. The answer affects whether or how we can control what we do (that is, our actions) instead of whether we control what we choose to do (that is, our wills). The chapter then considers the views of Benjamin Libet and presents an overview of the subsequent chapters.
Keywords: conscious will, free will, willed actions, moral responsibility, legal responsibility
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Contributors
- Introduction
-
Chapter 1 Do We Have Free Will? -
Chapter 2 Why Libet’s Studies Don’t Pose a Threat to Free Will -
Chapter 3 Libet on Free Will: Readiness Potentials, Decisions, and Awareness -
Chapter 4 Are Voluntary Movements Initiated Preconsciously? The Relationships between Readiness Potentials, Urges, and Decisions -
Chapter 5 Do We Really Know What We Are Doing? Implications of Reported Time of Decision for Theories of Volition -
Chapter 6 Volition: How Physiology Speaks to the Issue of Responsibility -
Chapter 7 What Are Intentions? -
Chapter 8 Beyond Libet: Long-term Prediction of Free Choices from Neuroimaging Signals -
Chapter 9 Forward Modeling Mediates Motor Awareness -
Chapter 10 Volition and the Function of Consciousness -
Chapter 11 Neuroscience, Free Will, and Responsibility -
Chapter 12 Bending Time to One’s Will -
Chapter 13 Prospective Codes Fulfilled: A Potential Neural Mechanism of Will -
Chapter 14 The Phenomenology of Agency and the Libet Results -
Chapter 15 The Threat of Shrinking Agency and Free Will Disillusionism -
Chapter 16 Libet and the Criminal Law’s Voluntary Act Requirement -
Chapter 17 Criminal and Moral Responsibility and the Libet Experiments -
Chapter 18 Libet’s Challenge(s) to Responsible Agency -
Chapter 19 Lessons from Libet - Author index
- Subject Index
