The article A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked is an article by Bahar Gholipour detailing the research done in 1964 by Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke on the Bereitschaftspotential and the subsequent critiques and further exploration on the topic. Bahar Gholipour details the scientist’s description of the Bereitschaftspotential as “that the brain shows signs of a decision before a person acts, but that, incredibly, the brain’s wheels start turning before the person even consciously intends to do something”. This led into the discussion about free will and how something beyond us is telling our brains to activate. However, it could’ve also been something else entirely or that the old 1964 technology couldn’t properly record the data.

The idea that this Bereitschaftspotential “started to rise about 500 milliseconds before the participants performed an action” was incredibly interesting to me because I heard something very similar from Tor Nørretranders in his book The User Illusion made in 1991, where Tor Nørretranders describes that, before someone makes a decision, the person is unconscious for 0.5 seconds (which is also 500 milliseconds). Tor Nørretranders describes it like when a person sees a knife thrown at them, they have to process that information in that 0.5 seconds of unconsciousness then they react. It’s clear that there is an inspiration to that idea. However, much like Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke’s research, Tor Nørretranders also had criticisms, but not specifically about the 0.5 seconds.

I personally thought there seemed to be no correlation with the 500 milliseconds beforehand of brain activity and free will. I agreed with the idea that it seems like the brain has a will, or that it was a preparatory neuronal activity so that the action can be done without our active attention.