Libet and the Denial of Free-Will

For over four decades, the deterministic paradigm within neurophilosophy has beenheavily anchored by the empirical legacy of Benjamin Libet’s voluntariness experiments,which suggest that unconscious neural activity (the Readiness Potential) precedes consciousintent. This paper demonstrates that this conventional interpretation represents a profoundstructural fallacy, which we term the HLF Gambit—a classic ignoratio elenchi (red herring)that conflates low-level, sub-second motor execution with high-level, macro-strategic humanvolition.By employing Aristotelian logical falsification, a hierarchical systems-engineering architecture that separates top-down intent from backend neural bookkeeping, and a structuralaudit of five key empirical milestones (including work by Brass & Haggard, Schurger etal., Bode et al., Soon et al., and Tomasello), we establish that Libet’s universal claimsare invalid. Ultimately, strategic human volition remains the primary sovereign architectof action, functioning as an evolutionary necessity that organizes and directs the brain’smechanical processing rather than falling victim to epiphenomenal illusion.