If everything has causes, does free will still mean anything?

I think the answer depends on what you mean by free will. If you mean a choice that has no causes at all, that sounds less like freedom and more like randomness. But if you mean acting from your own reasons and values, without someone forcing or controlling you, that kind of agency can still exist in a deterministic world.

On that view, causes do not erase the difference between deciding freely and being threatened into doing something. The hard question is whether acting from your reasons is enough, if those reasons also have causes.

If determinism is true, then with exactly the same past and laws of nature, only one future can happen. In that sense, we could not have acted differently at the last moment. I find that hard to square with the strongest idea of free will, where more than one real option is open.

That does not make deliberation pointless. Thinking through a decision is itself part of what leads to an action. It may mean we should be cautious about treating people as deserving blame in some ultimate, unqualified sense, while still recognizing that choices affect others.

I don't think we have to settle the cosmic question before talking about everyday agency. We can ask whether someone understood their options, could respond to reasons, and acted without coercion. Those questions matter even if the deeper story about causes stays unsettled.

And unpredictability by itself would not prove free will. A choice being hard to predict is different from a person having control over it.