The article “A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked” is an article about debunking a certain phenomenon in the brain that has been used to argue against the concept of Free Will. The article begins by describing the argument behind us not having free will. By using a phenomenon in the brain known as bereitschaftpotential, or readiness potential, scientists argued about the lack of free will we have, as our brains indicated that they made a decision for us without our awareness. To be more specific, Benjamin Libet makes the case that “not only 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.” The article discusses this claim and shows findings that would debunk this theory. The article gave me ideas on how I should incorporate others’ works into my own. A point I can take away is to find experiments that are done by two groups of people: the creator(s) and the people who reenact them to see if they are correct. The article states that: “Schurger and two Princeton researchers repeated a version of Libet’s experiment. To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged.” This statement highlights what the writers used to help enhance their persuasiveness to the reader.
