How it all began in 1975, when free will disappeared

Richard Graf’s passion for researching human decision making and behavior began in the mid-1970s when he studied mathematics and attended his first lectures on philosophy. His interest was sparked when Benjamin Libet questioned free will, the discussion of which remains controversial today.

What led to the discovery of the KiE trilogy

Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke discovered as early as 1964 the readiness potential that can be measured as neuronal activity in the brain before a voluntary action. Benjamin Libet took up this finding and wanted to measure how long a voluntary action lasts.

His results, which Libet published first in 1983, surprised experts as well as Libet himself and all those who believed in free will. The readiness potential, which indicates that the hand is raised willingly, was already apparent before the voluntary conscious decision. Thus Pandora’s box was opened and free will was questioned. Libet himself saved free will by granting a veto right that could still stop the action indicated by the potential for readiness. Renowned researchers, such as the brain researcher Wolf Singer, or the neurobiologist Gerhard Roth push free will into the realm of illusion and claim that there is no such thing as free will.

Free will has been the subject of controversial discussion since the Libet experiment and the debate is never-ending. In 2018, Deecke repeated his experiment in the open air and had test subjects jump off the Europa Bridge to overcome the criticism of the laboratory environment. The measurement results were identical to those of 1964.

Brain researcher John-Dylan Haynes reported in 2008 that Libet’s findings were not only confirmed, but greatly sharpened. He countered the criticism of Libet’s measuring methods with:

1. Replacing the EEG (Electroencephalography) with an imaging technique called Magnetic Resonance Imaging
2. Introduced the raising of the hand by the voluntary decision to press a button with the left and optionally with the right hand
3. Replaced the controversial measurement of the time of voluntary decision with pointing to a rotating disc by letters which the respondent could easily identify.

With his attempt in 2016 to demostrate free non-will, Haynes once again proved the existence of the decision before the decision, which about 200 milliseconds before the act could no longer be interrupted through the veto right.

Many scientists – such as Patrick Haggard and Martin Eimer, as well as Stefan Schmidt – have been repeating this for the last forty years, and their findings are consistent: There is a decision before the voluntary decision.

The KiE trilogy – the gateway to free will

On this basis and many other phenomena, the KiE trilogy was created, which proved that our actions and our thinking arise from the inseparability of emotions(E), intuition(i) and cognition(K). The decision before the voluntary decision is an emotive decision, which is generated in the emotional system with the logic of emotions. It can be recognized as an impulse and then leads to a conscious decision in a creation process, which results in a coherent world view.

The reproduced Libet experiments always come to the same result, because they always measure the human decision-making process. The overlapping measurement results from two decision systems have led to the controversial discussions. If one recognizes the emotive and emotive-cognitive cycles, the door to free will is opened once again.

Emotion Research

KiE research means bringing together different and contradictory things into a coherent unity, just as the emotive-cognitive cycles of the KiE trilogy in the coherent world view demand.

The Book

You can find more information in the book by Richard Graf:

Chapter 1. 3 “How humans function – the KiE concept”
2. chapter 5 “The theory of logic of emotions – how people are moved”.

Richard Graf „Die neue Entscheidungskultur“ – Mit gemeinsam getragenen Entscheidungen zum Erfolg, Hanser Verlag 2018

“The emotional system is the origin and end of all thinking. New thinking with conscious emotion logic extends both human and artificial intelligence.”

Link: https://www.k-i-e.com/buch/