Electric Selves Bioelectricity, the Law, and the Limits of Consciousness
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 26, 2026 K.M Sharvalakshana
Electrical activity in the brain underlies neural communication and raises questions about awareness, free will, and legal responsibility. Benjamin Libet's readiness potential experiments show unconscious neural activity complicates legal assumptions about deliberate choice and criminal culpability. Cases at the boundaries of legal personhood—brain death, split-brain patients, and locked-in syndrome—illustrate how law uses electrical evidence as an imperfect proxy for consciousness. Brain-based lie detection technologies like fMRI and EEG reveal courts' uneasy relationship with neuroscience as evidence. David Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness suggests electrical activity may never fully explain subjective experience. The paper argues that law and science build frameworks atop a partially understood phenomenon, mirroring Frankenstein's mistake of mistaking the appearance of life for understanding it.