De controversiële erfenis van Benjamin Libet: vrije wilsceptici en hun critici over het belang van Libet-type experimenten in het debat over vrije wil en verantwoordelijkheid

The controversial legacy of Benjamin Libet. Free will skeptics and their critics on the importance of Libet-type experiments in the free will and responsibility debate. To most legal scholars free will is indispensable philosophical assumption underlying our penal law system. Since the 1980s Libet-type experiments (LT) tend to criticize this assumption by showing that unconscious brain processes instead of conscious and deliberative thoughts do initiate our decisions. Here, after summarizing the main findings, we review three branches of criticism: (a) methodological considerations, (b) objections made by philosophy of science, (c) metaphysical remarks that also concern moral and legal consequences. At the end of this review we discuss the possible impact of these neuropsychological investigations on matters of penal law such as legal accountability