If every choice has causes, does that make it less ours? Philosophers have argued for centuries about whether free will can coexist with determinism, the idea that the past and the laws of nature fix what happens next.
The disagreement is not simply about whether people make decisions. It is about what kind of control freedom requires: could we have acted otherwise, must we be the ultimate source of our actions, or is freedom the ability to act according to our reasons without coercion? Each definition changes the problem.
Compatibilists hold that freedom and determinism can fit together; incompatibilists deny this, though they differ on whether free will exists at all. Neuroscience investigates how decisions unfold in the brain, but experiments do not by themselves settle the philosophical question of responsibility or what freedom should mean.