Do We Have Any Control?

Questioning the notion of free will seems to be in fashion nowadays. So what is this idea of "free will?" I think a lot of us have an intuitive sense of what it is. It's the idea that our personal sense of agency or identity is what originates our actions. Who does what we do? Well, we do. If you're out for a walk with no particular destination, are you fully in control of the path you end up taking? As you're reading this post, are you able to stop and, for example, make a fist with your left hand? Did you just do that?

Whatever you're doing, why are you doing it? Is it simply because your brain looks like that of a person who would do what you're doing. Would another person with the same atoms in their skull do the same thing as you?

Apparently, studies have shown that a person's nervous system often indicates that an action will be taken before they report that they've decided to take it. I can see how this could be used to build a case for the non-existence of free will. However, the conditions of studies such as these seem contrived. Isn't real life more complicated?

Isn't it possible that such a study would occasionally observe the inexplicable termination of an impulse to do something before it is done? What would be the researcher's explanation in that case? Perhaps it would be that some previously unknown brain system took control and cancelled the action. So then the goalposts would move to the horizon of our knowledge, as they always do. And the existence or non-existence of free will would still sit off beyond that horizon.