How the Libet Tradition Can Contribute to Understanding Human Action rather than Free Will

Experimental findings on the neurobiological roots of free will, pioneered by Benjamin Libet’s work in the 1980s, have been met with a mixture of acceptance and controversy. Discussions in both philosophy and cognitive neuroscience have indeed generated an active and at times polarized debate on whether such findings successfully disprove free will, which is the issue that is customarily considered to be at stake. In our view, this polarization often comes at the expense of genuine crossdisciplinary fertilization, which may turn into a mere attempt at bringing others round to one’s own positions. In this chapter, we argue for an alternative approach. In the first place, we claim that, in themselves, these findings do not address the problem of whether free will, as intended in the philosophical tradition, is illusory or not. However, we also claim that they should be taken as a valuable asset within a more comprehensive theory of human action, aiming to explain how individuals navigate the environment by means of a wide repertoire of more or less complex, flexible, and intelligent behaviors.