Put your hand in front of you and flex your wrist.

But Benjamin LeBett's experiments in the 1980s have cast some doubt on that.

he up subjects to an EEG machine measuring brain activity via electrodes on their scalps,

and then asked them to choose to perform a simple hand movement when they felt like it.

He also got them to record the time at which they made a conscious decision to move their hands.

Discerningly, he found evidence of brain activity initiating the movement hundreds of milliseconds before the conscious decision was reported.

his experiments seemed to show that the conscious decision was didn't cause the movement,

the brain activity bringing about movement started before the individual willed anything to happen.

Some people think this is proof that free will is an illusion,

that our conscious decisions are more like reports on what is already happening than the causes of our action.

But there's still time for what some have called free won't a conscious veto of an action that is started in the brain

Others are more skeptical about the implications of these experiments.

They point out difficulties of recording the time of a subjective decision And question whether Libet's findings could apply to more complex conscious decisions based

on reasons such as the decision to reject the claim that Libet's experiments undermine our idea of free will.

Are our 'conscious decisions' just reports on what is already happening?  Narrated by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

From the BBC Radio 4 series - A History of Ideas. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bwydw

This project is made in partnership with The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/historyofideas 
and the animations were created by Cognitive.

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