Neurophysiology and Judaism: The Case of B. Libet, Who Lived in the Interstice between Determinism and Free Will

Neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet (1916―2007) and his co-workers presented a series of experimental results which proved that free will in a voluntary physical action, like the flick of the wrist, appears about 550 milliseconds after the accumulation of Readiness Potentials (RP). These eyebrow-raising results, which showed free will appearing not before but after brain processes, caused great debates among scholars in many fields, including humanities, and led to a different way of regarding the role of free will and of determinism. A considerable number of scientists who held a bias toward determinism or naturalism related these findings to prove the negation of the existence of free will. Libet himself, however, defended the existence of free will consistently in the strange concept of Veto, which rejects or blocks the motor performance of the voluntary will. Behind his strong defense of free will or rejection of determinism, we may see his obligation as a Judaist to protect free will. And he thinks, based on his neurophysiological experiments, that Judaism as a system of ethics surpasses that of Christianity. Libet's interpretation of the striking experiments and his view on free will were, in the final analysis, influenced by Judaism.