Neuroscience and the Bereitschaftspotential: Current debates about free will and autonomy

The detection of the Bereitschaftspotential by Kornhuber and Deecke (H.H. Kornhuber, L. Deecke, Changes in the brain potential in voluntary movements and passive movements in man: readiness potential and reafferent potentials, Pflugers Arch. Gesamte Physiol. Menschen Tiere 284 (1965) 1–17) has fostered the integration of intention and free will into the cognitive sciences since the 1960s. Research in the following years seemed to indicate that determinism instead of free will guided human action and it was argued that neuroscientific research thus settled classic philosophical debates about the status of free will and the relationship between the mind and the brain. With this contribution to the ‘Professor Hans Helmut Kornhuber Memorial Symposium’ for the 53rd International Neuropsychiatric Pula Congress which took place in June 2013, we will outline the neuroscientific interpretations of the free will problem in the years following the discovery of the Bereitschaftspotential. The limits of these interpretations will be discussed by comparing them to philosophical concepts of freedom of will and by addressing some methodological questions. Finally, we will discuss a compatibilistic model of freedom.