Libet's Timing of Mental Events: Commentary on the Commentaries

✍ Scribed by Stanley Klein

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 39 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1053-8100
• DOI: 10.1006/ccog.2002.0569

✦ Synopsis

This issue of Consciousness and Cognition presents four target articles and eight commentaries on the target articles. The present article presents comments on those commentaries, grouped into backward referral and volition categories. Regarding backward referral:

(1) I disagree with my fellow commentators and take the unpopular position of defending Libet's notion of backward referral. (2) I join my fellow commentators in critiquing Libet's notion of a 500-ms delay. (3) I examine several of the hypotheses suggested by other commentators for why cortical and lateral meniscus stimulation give very different timing results. I suggest a simple experiment to help discriminate among the hypotheses. (4) I comment on why temporal reordering is more likely to occur late rather than early in mental processing. Regarding Libet's volition experiments, I ask what is the root of the controversy, given the general agreement on the data. I agree with a commentator that Libet's chronotheology rather than his chronoscience is the cause of much of the controversy. Rather than joining others in criticizing Libet for his chronotheology I point out that he is making a respectable philosophical (or theological) point regarding nondeterministic Free Will, but one that is easily misunderstood. I discuss two ways by which Libet's viewpoint can be brought into mainstream science.