We often believe that we make free choices to act based on certain factors and that if the factors had been different, we could have chosen (done) otherwise. That is "free will." Causal determinism denies that we could have made other choices and our actions were predetermined.
Causal (Scientific) Determination - According to determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
If this is applied to the neurobiology of the mind, then, then the thoughts (choices) that the mind produces are predeterminined and free will is an illusion.
Laplace's Demon (1814)
"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."
— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
John Searle - The Paradox of Free Will and Determinism (30 minutes)
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