Why the readiness potential became famous
Experiments descended from Benjamin Libet's work found a slow electrical readiness potential before people reported becoming consciously aware of an intention to move. Later imaging studies found weak predictive information about simple choices several seconds before reported awareness.
The interpretation is contested
The readiness potential may partly reflect ongoing stochastic neural fluctuations that cross a decision threshold rather than an unconscious brain having already made a fully specified decision. Breathing and other bodily rhythms also modulate both voluntary action timing and the readiness potential.
Prediction is far from destiny
Pre-decision brain signals generally predict simple choices only slightly better than chance and do not show that a person's future action is fixed in a way that could not be altered by later information, reflection or inhibition.
Science and philosophy are asking different questions
Neuroscience can test when and how decisions emerge in the brain. Whether a decision counts as 'free' depends on the definition — freedom from physical causation, ability to act for reasons, absence of coercion, or capacity to revise behaviour are different claims.
Research record
Soon et al. (2008) — Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brainPeer-reviewed · open sourcePark et al. (2020) — Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potentialPeer-reviewed · open sourceNichelli & Grafman (2024) — Free will and neuroscience reviewReview · open sourceHas Neuroscience Disproved Free Will?
Direct answer: No. Neuroscience has shown that decisions have unconscious precursors and that conscious intention is not the whole causal story, but it has not experimentally disproved every coherent concept of free will.
Libet-style findings matter, but the popular conclusion 'your brain decides before you do' outruns the evidence. The empirical results constrain theories of agency; they do not close the philosophical case.