Speech and Free Will

Our sense of our actions is:

• We form an intention
• A neural impulses is then sent to muscles
• Our muscles contract and we act
• Libet found something different:
• A neural impulses is then sent to muscles
• We form an intention
• Our muscles contract and we act
• Speech is said to be a conscious, voluntary motor act of our free will
• Libet’s work would seem to challenge the freedom of the will
• Two views on human freedom
• Libertarianism: capacity to choose otherwise (against determinism)
• Compatibilism: acting without coercion (determinism and free coexist in some way)
• Maybe more productive to talk of free will as a response space (rather than “you have it or not”)
• Human response space (HRS) = the space a person can act within
• Motor speech disorders can narrow this space, where patients have less freedom to speak as they would like.
• SLPs can work in treatment to widen this HRS