'Free will' is being able to exercise control over your actions, choices and decisions. We all 'feel' like we have free will, but the extent to which we really do is disputed (as usual) by different philosophers and for different reasons.
For libertarians (incompatibilists) the term suggests a complete freedom from the causal necessity that determines all other physical things. They believe that human beings are able to somehow 'stand' outside the causal chain of events and thereby make free and undetermined choices.
It's easy to see how someone like Descartes, who believed that the mind was metaphysical, could believe in free will - a metaphysical (non-physical) mind clearly won't be determined (controlled) by physical processes. Descartes was a dualist, he believed that human beings were made of two different 'substances': the 'physical' and the 'mental'. You can think of the 'mental' as being something like the 'soul'.
Please feed the animals.
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