Free Will

[Pyrrho]

I have always treated free will as pertaining to whether or not your will is free (hence the name). If your will is not free, then you don't have a free will.

What do you mean by "your will is free"?

As for your definition, I suppose the one question that comes to my mind is whether or not it is possible to do other than what you will (and by extension whether or not it is possible to not have free will by your definition). For example, if a gunman demands you hand over your wallet, you obviously don't want to lose your wallet, but you don't want to die, either. In that scenario your will to live trumps your will to retain your wallet, and thus from a certain perspective you are still doing what it is your will to do by handing over the wallet to preserve your own life. The only exception to this rule that I can think of is a situation in which you are literally given no choice at all.

Your example makes me think of Aristotle's discussion of the topic of what is "voluntary" in Book III of his Nicomachean Ethics.  Since I know from experience that most people who read this are not going to click on a link to read anything, here are the first two paragraphs of Book III:

Since virtue is concerned with passions and actions, and on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity, to distinguish the voluntary and the involuntary is presumably necessary for those who are studying the nature of virtue, and useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments. Those things, then, are thought-involuntary, which take place under compulsion or owing to ignorance; and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle in which nothing is contributed by the person who is acting or is feeling the passion, e.g. if he were to be carried somewhere by a wind, or by men who had him in their power. 

But with regard to the things that are done from fear of greater evils or for some noble object (e.g. if a tyrant were to order one to do something base, having one's parents and children in his power, and if one did the action they were to be saved, but otherwise would be put to death), it may be debated whether such actions are involuntary or voluntary. Something of the sort happens also with regard to the throwing of goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himself and his crew any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions; for they are worthy of choice at the time when they are done, and the end of an action is relative to the occasion. Both the terms, then, 'voluntary' and 'involuntary', must be used with reference to the moment of action. Now the man acts voluntarily; for the principle that moves the instrumental parts of the body in such actions is in him, and the things of which the moving principle is in a man himself are in his power to do or not to do. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself. 

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicoma...3.iii.html


But I am more interested in your question about whether it is possible to do other than what you will.  Why does that matter?  Would there be an advantage to being able to do what you do not want to do?  Would it not be better if you cannot fail to do what you want to do?

However, that seems to be getting into the question of whether determinism is true or not.  I do not care about that for what I mean by "free will."

I suppose I really need an answer to my first question in this post to be sure how to react to the rest of what you are saying.